here. But, if that be true, what is the use of asking for the
protection anyhow, much less in the Constitution? Why require
protection where you will have nothing to protect? All you appear to
desire it for is New Mexico. Nothing else is left. Yet, you will not
accept New Mexico at once, because ten years of experience have
proved to you that protection has been of no use thus far. But, if
so, how can you expect that it will be of so much more use hereafter
as to make it worth dissolving the Union?

But, if we pass to the other condition, is it any more reasonable?
Are we going to fight because we cannot agree upon the mode of
disposing of our neighbor's lands? Are we to break up the Union of
these States, cemented by so many years of common sufferings, and
resplendent with so many years of common glory, because it is
insisted that we should incorporate into what we regard as the
charter of our freedom a proclamation to the civilized world that we
intend to grasp the territory of other nations whenever we can do
it, for the purpose of putting into it certain institutions which
some of us disapprove, and that, too, whether the people inhabiting
that territory themselves approve of it or not?

I am almost inclined to believe that they who first contrived this
demand must have done so for the sake of presenting a condition
which they knew beforehand must be rejected, or which, if accepted,
must humiliate us in the dust forever. In point of fact, this
proposal covers no question of immediate moment which may not be
settled by another and less obnoxious one. Why is it, then,
persevered in, and the other rejected? The answer is obvious. You
want the Union dissolved. You want to make it impossible for
honorable men to become reconciled. If it be, indeed, so, then on
you, and you alone, shall rest the responsibility of what may
follow. If the Union be broken up, the reason why it happened shall
remain on record forever. It was because you rejected one form of
settling a question which might be offered and accepted with honor,
in order to insist upon another which you knew we could not accept
without disgrace. I answer for myself only when I say that, if the
alternative to the salvation of the Union be only that the people of
the United States shall, before the Christian nations of the earth,
print in broad letters upon the front of their charter of republican
government the dogma of slave propagandism over the