have
such confidence in the intelligence of the people of the whole
South, that when the history and character of this instrument shall
be known, even those who would be glad to find some plausible
pretext for dissolving the Union will see that its rejection by
Congress would not furnish them with such a one as they could make
available for their purposes.

When the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was under discussion, in 1854, in
looking to all the consequences which might follow the adoption of
that measure, I could not overlook the fact that a sentiment of
hostility to the Union was widely diffused in certain States of the
South; and that that sentiment was only prevented from assuming an
organized form of resistance to the authority of the Federal
government, at least in one of the States, in 1851, by the earnest
remonstrance of a sister State, that was supposed to sympathize with
her in the project of establishing a southern republic. Nor could I
fail to remember that the project--I speak of the convention held in
South Carolina, in pursuance of an act of the legislature--was
then postponed, not dropped. The argument was successfully urged
that an enterprise of such magnitude ought not to be entered upon
without the co-operation of a greater number of States than they
could then certainly count upon. It was urged that all the
cotton-planting States would, before a great while, be prepared to
unite in the movement, and that they, by the force of circumstances,
would bring in all the slaveholding States. The ground was openly
taken, that separation was an inevitable necessity. It was only a
question of time. It was said that no new aggression was necessary
on the part of the North to justify such a step. It was said that
the operation of this government from its foundation had been
adverse to southern interests; and that the admission of California
as a free State, and the attempt to exclude the citizens of the
South, with their property, from all the territory acquired from
Mexico, was a sufficient justification for disunion. It was not a
mere menace to deter the North from further aggressions. These
circumstances made a deep impression on my mind at the time, and
from a period long anterior to that I had known that it was a maxim
with the most skillful tacticians among those who desire separation,
that the slaveholding States must be united--consolidated into one
party. That object once effected, disunion, it was