t is a waste of time to answer
the allegations that the emancipation of the negro race would induce
them to make war on the white race. Every fact in the history of
emancipation proves the reverse; and he that will not believe those
facts, has darkened his own understanding, that the light of reason
can make no impression: he appeals to interest, not to truth, for
information on this subject. We do not fear his errors, while we are
left free to combat them. The Senator implores us to cease all
commotion on this subject. Are we to surrender all our rights and
privileges, all the official stations of the country, into the hands
of the slaveholding power, without a single struggle? Are we to cease
all exertions for our own safety, and submit in quiet to the rule of
this power? Is the calm of despotism to reign over this land, and the
voice of freemen to be no more heard! This sacrifice is required of
us, in order to sustain slavery. _Freemen_, will you make it? Will you
shut your ears and your sympathies, and withhold from the poor,
famished slave, a morsel of bread? Can you thus act, and expect the
blessings of heaven upon your country? I beseech you to consider for
yourselves.

Mr. President, I have been compelled to enter into this discussion
from the course pursued by the Senate on the resolutions I submitted a
few days since. The cry of abolitionist has been raised against me. If
those resolutions are abolitionism, then I am an abolitionist from the
sole of my feet to the crown of my head. If to maintain the rights of
the States, the security of the citizen from violence and outrage; if
to preserve the supremacy of the laws; if insisting on the right of
petition, a medium through which _every person_ subject to the laws
has an undoubted right to approach the constitutional authorities of
the country, be the doctrines of abolitionists, it finds a response in
every beating pulse in my veins. Neither power, nor favor, nor want,
nor misery, shall deter me from its support while the vital current
continues to flow.

Condemned at home for my opposition to slavery, alone and singlehanded
here, well may I feel tremor and emotion in bearding this lion of
slavery in his very _den_ and upon his own ground. I should shrink,
sir, at once, from this fearful and unequal contest, was I not
thoroughly convinced that I am sustained by the power of truth and the
best interests of the country.

I listened to the Senator of Kentucky w