Such is the Union, and such are the glorious fruits which are now threatened with subversion and destruction. Well, sir, the first question which naturally arises, is, supposing the Union to be dissolved tor any of the causes or grievances which are complained of, how far wili dissolution furnish a remedy for those grievances? If the Union is to be dissolved for any existing cause, it will be because slavery is interdicted or not allowed to be introduced into the ceded territories; or because slavery is threatened to be abolished in the District of Columbia; or because fugitive slaves are not restored, as in my opinion they ought to be, to their masters. These, I believe, would be the causes, if there be any causes which can lead to the dreadful event to which I have referred. Let us suppose the Union dissolved; what remedy does it, in a severed state, furnish for the grievances complained of in its united condition? Will you be able at the South to push slavery into the ceded territory? How are you to do it, supposing the North, or all the states north of the Potomac, in possession of the navy and army of the United States? Can you expect, I say, under these circumstances, that if there is a dissolution of the Union you can carry slavery into California and New Mexico? Sir, you cannot dream of such an occurrence.

If it were abolished in the District of Columbia and the Union were dissolved, would the dissolution of the Union restore slavery in the District of Columbia? Is your chance for the recovery of your fugitive slaves safer in a state of dissolution or of severance of the Union than when in the Union itself? Why, sir, what is the state of the fact? In the Union you lose some slaves and recover others; but here let me revert to a fact which I ought to have noticed before, because it is highly creditable to the courts and juries of the free states. In every instance, as far as my information extends, in which an appeal has been made to the courts of justice to recover penalties from those who have assisted in decoying slaves from their masters-in every instance, as far as I have heard the court has asserted the rights of the owner, and the jury has promptly returned an adequate verdict on his behalf. Well, sir, there is then some remedy while you are a part of the Union for the recovery of your slaves, and some indemnification for their loss. What would you have, if the Union was severed? Why, the several parts would be independent of each other-foreign countries-and slaves escaping from one to the other would be like slaves escaping from the United States to Canada. There would be no right of extradition, no right to demand your slaves; no right to appeal to the courts of justice to indemnify you for the loss of your slaves. Where one slave escapes now by running away from his master, hundreds and thousands would escape if the Union were dissevered-I care not how or where you run the line, or whether independent sovereignties be established. Well, sir, finally, will you, in case of a dissolution of the Union, be safer with your

slaves within the separated portions of the states than you are now! Mr. President, that they will escape much more frequently from the border states no one will deny.

And, sir, I must take occasion here to say that, in my opinion, there is no right on the part of any one or more of the states to secede from the Union. War and dissolution of the Union are identical and inevitable, in my opinion. There can be a dissolution of the Union only by consent or by war. Consent no one can anticipate, from any existing state of things. is likely to be given, and war is the only alternative by which a dissolution could be accomplished. If consent were given if it were possible that we were to be separated by one great line-in less than sixty days after such consent was given war would break out between the slaveholding and non-slaveholding portions of this Union-between the two independent parts into which it would be erected in virtue of the act of separation. In less than sixty days, I believe, our slaves from Kentucky, flocking over in numbers to the other side of the river, would be pursued by their owners. Our hot and ardent spirits would be restrained by no sense of the right which appertains to the independence of the other side of the river, should that be the line of separation. They would pursue their slaves into the ajacent free states; they would be repelled, and the consequence would be that, in less than sixty days, war would be blazing in every part of this now happy and peaceful land.

And, sir, how are you going to separate the states of this Confederacy? In my humble opinion, Mr. President, we should begin with at least three separate Confederacies. There would be a Confederacy of the North, a Confederacy of the Southern Atlantic slaveholding states, and a Confederacy of the valley of the Mississippi. My life upon it, that the vast population which has already concentrated and will concentrate on the head-waters and the tributaries of the Mississippi will never give their consent that the mouth of that river shall be held subject to the power of any foreign state or community whatever. Such, I believe, would be the consequences of a dissolution of the Union, immediately ensuing; bnt other Confederacies would spring up from time to time, as dissatisfaction and discontent were disseminated throughout the country-the Confederacy of the lakes, perhaps the Confederacy of New England, or of the Middle States. Ah, sir, the veil which covers these sad and disastrous events that lie beyond it, is too thick to be penetrated or lifted by any mortal eye or hand.

Mr. President, I am directly opposed to any purpose of secession or separation. I am for staying within the Union, and defying any portion of this Confederacy to expel me or drive me out of the Union I am or staying within the Union and fighting for my rights, if necessary, with the sword, within the bounds and under the safeguard of the Union. I am for vindicating those rights, not by being driven out of the Union harshly and unceremoniously by any portion of this Confederacy.

Here I am within it, and here I mean to stand and die, as far as my individual wishes or purposes can go-within it to protect my property and defend myself, defying all the power on earth to expel me of drive me from the situation in which I am placed. And would there not be more safety in fighting within the Union than out of it? Suppose your rights to be violated, suppose wrong to be done you, aggresions to be perpetrated upon you, can you not better vindicate them -if you have occasion to resort to the last necessity, the sword, for a restoration of those rights-within, and with the sympathies of a large portion of the population of the Union, than by being without the Union, when a large portion of the population have sympathies adverse to your own? You can vindicate your rights within the Union better than if expelled from the Union, and driven from it without ceremony and without authority.

Sir, I have said that I thought there was no right on the part of one or more states to secede from the Union. I think so. The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity-unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity. And every state that then came into the Union, and every state that has since come into the Union, came into it binding itself, by indissoluble bands, to remain within the Union itself, and to remain within it by its posterity forever. Like another of the sacred connections, in private life, it is a marriage which no human authority can dissolve or divorce the parties from. And if I may be allowed to refer to some examples in private life, let me say to the North and to the South, what husband and wife say to each other: We have mutual faults; neither of us is perfect; nothing in the form of humanity is perfect; let us, then, be kind to each other-forbearing, forgiving each other's faults-and above all, let us live in happiness and peace together.

Mr. President, I have said, what I solemnly believe, that dissolution of the Union and war are identical and inevitable; that they are convertible terms; and such a war as it would be following a dissolution of the Union! Sir, we may search the pages of history, and none so ferocious, so bloody, so implacable, so exterminating--not even the wars of Greece, including those of the Commoners of England and the revolutions of France-none, none of them all would rage with such violence, or be characterized with such bloodshed and enormities as would the war which must succeed, if that event ever happens. the dissolution of the Union. And what would be its termination? Standing armies, and navies, to an extent stretching the revenue of each portion of the dissevered members, would take place. An exterminating war would follow-not, sir, a war of two or three years' duration, but a war of interminable duration-and exterminating wars would ensue. until, after the struggles and exhaustion of both parties, some Philip or Alexander, some Cæsar or Napoleon, would arise and

cut the Gordian knot, and solve the problem of the capacity of man for self-government, and crush the liberties of both the severed portions of this common empire. Can you doubt it?

Look at all history-consult her pages, ancient or modern-look at human nature; look at the contest in which you would be engaged in the supposition of war following upon the dissolution of the Union, such as I have suggested; and I ask you if it is possible for you to doubt that the final disposition of the whole would be some despot treading down the liberties of the people-the final result would be the extinction of this last and glorious light which is leading all mankind, who are gazing upon it, in the hope and anxious expectation that the liberty which prevails here will sooner or later be diffused throughout the whole of the civilized world. Sir, can you lightly contemplate these consequences? Can you yield yourself to the tyranny of passion, amid dangers which I have depicted in colors far too tame of what the result would be if that direful event to which I have referred should ever occur? Sir, I implore gentlemen, I adjure them, whether from the South or the North, by all that they hold dear in this world-by all their love of liberty-by all their veneration for their ancestors-by all their regard for posterity-by all their gratitude to Him who has bestowed on them such unnumbered and countless blessings-by all the duties which they owe to mankind-and by all the duties which they owe to themselves, to pause, solemnly to pause at the edge of the precipice, before the fearful and dangerous leap is taken into the yawning abyss below, from which none who ever take it shall return in safety.

Finally, Mr. President, and, in conclusion, I implore, as the best blessing which Heaven can bestow upon me, upon earth, that if the direful event of the dissolution of this Union is to happen, I shall not survive to behold the sad and heart-rending spectacle.

PROTEST AGAINST SLAVERY IN NEBRASKA AND KANSAS CHARLES SUMNER.

The Senate, May 25, 1854.

I hold in my hand, and now present to the Senate, one hundred and twenty-five separate remonstrances, from clergymen of every Protestant denomination in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, constituting the six New England States.

With pleasure and pride I now do this service, and at this last stage interpose the sanctity of the pulpits of New England to arrest an alarming outrage-believing that the remonstrants, from their emin

ent character and influence as representatives of the intelligence and conscience of the country, are peculiarly entitled to be heard,—and, further, believing that their remonstrances, while respectful in form, embody just conclusions, both of opinion and fact. Like them, sir, I do not hesitate to protest against the bill yet pending before the Senate, as a great moral wrong, as a breach of public faith, as a measure full of danger to the peace, and even existence of our Union. And, sir, believing in God, as I profoundly do, I cannot doubt that the opening of an immense region to so great an enormity as slavery is calculated to draw down upon our country his righteous judg

ments.

"In the name of Almighty God, and in his presence," these remonstrants protest against the Nebraska Bill. In this solemn language, most strangely pronounced blasphemous on this floor, there is obviously no assumption of ecclesiastical power, as is perversely charged, but simply a devout observance of the Scriptural injunction, “Whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord." Let me add, also, that these remonstrants, in this very language, have followed the example of the Senate, which at our present session, has ratified at least one important treaty beginning with these precise words, "In the name of Almighty God." Surely, if the Senate may thus assume to speak, the clergy may do likewise, without imputation of blasphemy, or any just criticism, at least in this body.

I am unwilling, particularly at this time, to be betrayed into anything like a defence of the clergy. They need no such thing at my hands. There are men in this Senate justly eminent for eloquence, learning, and ability; but there is no man here competent, except in his own conceit, to sit in judgment on the clergy of New England. Honorable Senators, so swift with criticism and sarcasm, might profit by their example. Perhaps the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Butler), who is not insensible to scholarship, might learn from them something of its graces. Perhaps the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Mason), who finds no sanction under the Constitution for any remonstrance from clergymen, might learn from them something of the privileges of an American citizen, And perhaps the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglas), who precipitated this odious measure upon the country, might learn from them something of political wisdom. Sir, from the first settlement of these shores, from those early days of struggle and privation, through the trials of the Revolution, the clergy are associated not only with the piety and the learning, but with the liberties of the country. New England for a long time was governed by their prayers more than by any acts of the Legislature; and at a later day their voices aided even the Declaration of Independence. The clergy of our time speak, then, not only from their own virtues, but from echoes yet surviving in the pulpits of their fathers.

From myself, I desire to thank them for their generous interposi