it happen that
not even a bare majority here, when the Country trusted to our hands is
going to ruin, have been competent to devise any measure of public
safety? How does it happen that we have not had unanimity enough to
agree on any measure of that kind? Can we account for it to ourselves,
gentlemen? We see the danger; we acknowledge our duty, and yet, with
all this before us, we are acknowledging before the world that we can do
nothing; acknowledging before the world, or appearing to all the world,
as men who do nothing! Sir, this will make a strange record in the
history of Governments and in the history of the world. Some are for
Coercion; yet no army has been raised, no navy has been equipped. Some
are for pacification; yet they have been able to do nothing; the dissent
of their colleagues prevents them; and here we are in the midst of a
falling Country, in the midst of a falling State, presenting to the eyes
of the World the saddest spectacle it has ever seen. Cato is
represented by Addison as a worthy spectacle, 'a great man falling with
a falling State,' but he fell struggling. We fall with the ignominy on
our heads of doing nothing, like the man who stands by and sees his
house in flames, and says to himself, 'perhaps the fire will stop before
it consumes all.'"

One of the strong pleas made in the Senate that night, was by Mr.
Douglas, when he said: "The great issue with the South has been that
they would not submit to the Wilmot proviso. The Republican Party
affirmed the doctrine that Congress must and could prohibit Slavery in
the Territories. The issue for ten years was between Non-intervention
on the part of Congress, and prohibition by Congress. Up to two years
ago, neither the Senator (Mason) from Virginia, nor any other Southern
Senator, desired affirmative legislation to protect Slavery. Even up to
this day, not one of them has proposed affirmative legislation to
protect it. Whenever the question has come up, they have decided that
affirmative legislation to protect it was unnecessary; and hence, all
that the South required on the Territorial question was 'hands off;
Slavery shall not be prohibited by Act of Congress.' Now, what do we
find? This very session, in view of the perils which surround the
Country, the Republican Party, in both Houses of Congress, by a
unanimous vote, have backed down from their platform and abandoned the
doctrine of Congressional prohibition. This very week t