the duties upon which I now enter. But I have long since determined, with regard to myself, that I belong to my State—my country—and never shall shrink from any place assigned me in her service.
Unaccustomed as I am to participate in the proceedings of deliberative bodies, I bring into your service no qualification, save a willing mind, and, I trust, an honest heart fixed and fully determined to perform my duty with entire impartiality, and I bespeak your kind aid, indulgence and forbearance.
Before I take this Chair, gentlemen, I ask you to indulge me in a few remarks.
The occasion on which we are called together is one of the most solemn and important that ever assembled a People. Our Government—the inheritance from a noble ancestry—the greatest achievement of human wisdom, made to secure to their posterity the Rights and Liberties purchased with their blood, is crumbling into ruins. Every day and almost every hour brings intelligence confirming the opinion that its dissolution is at hand. One State—one of the time-honored Thirteen—has withdrawn the powers granted in the Constitution which constituted her a member of the Union, and she is now from under the political power of the Government. All our sister Southern States immediately adjacent to us are at this moment moving in the same direction, under circumstances that render their action as certain as any thing in the future. And as we look further and beyond, we see the same swell of public sentiment, that a sense of wrong always inspires, agitating the great heart of the more distant Slave States. And no reasonable doubt can be entertained by the most hopeful and sanguine, that this excitement in public sentiment will extend and increase, and intensify until all the States that are now known as slave States will withdraw their political connection from the non-slaveholding States, unite themselves in a common destiny and establish another Confederation.
Why all this? The story is soon told.
In the formation of the Government of our Fathers, the Constitution of 1787, the institution of domestic slavery is recognised, and the right of property in slaves is expressly guaranteed.
The People of a portion of the States who were parties to the Government were early opposed to the institution. The feeling of opposition to it has been cherished, and fostered, and inflamed until it has taken possession of the public mind at the North to such an extent that it overwhelms every other influence. It has seized the political power and now threatens annihilation to slavery throughout the Union.
At the South, and with our People of course, slavery is the element of all value, and a destruction of that destroys all that is property.
