s early in the morning, and I hope I shall not say anything
that may be construed as offensive. I rise merely that we may have an
understanding of this question.

"It is not Slavery in the Territories, it is not expansion, which is the
difficulty. If the resolution which the Senator from Wisconsin
introduced here, denying the right of Secession, had been adopted by
two-thirds of each branch of this department of the Government, and had
been ratified by three-fourths of the States, I have no hesitation in
saying that, so far as the State in which I live and to which I owe my
allegiance is concerned, if she had no other cause for a disruption of
the Union taking place, she would undoubtedly have gone out.

[To insert as an additional article of amendment to the
Constitution, the following: "Under this Constitution, as
originally adopted, and as it now exists, no State has power to
withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States: but this
Constitution, and all laws passed in pursuance of its delegated
powers, are the Supreme Law of the Land, anything contained in any
constitution, ordinance, or act of any State, to the contrary
notwithstanding."]

"The moment you deny the right of self-government to the free White men
of the South, they will leave the Government. They believe in the
Declaration of Independence. They believe that:

"'Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the People to
alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as
to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.'

"That principle of the Declaration of Independence is the one upon which
the free White men of the South predicated their devotion to the present
Constitution of the United States; and it was the denial of that, as
much as anything else, that has created the dissatisfaction in that
Section of the Country.

"There is no instrument of writing that has ever been written that has
been more misapprehended and misunderstood and misrepresented than this
same unfortunate Declaration of Independence, and no set of gentlemen
have ever been so slandered as the fathers who drew and signed that
Declaration.

"If there was a thing on earth tha