50.

MR. PRESIDENT:

In the progress of this debate it has been again and again argued that
perfect tranquillity reigns throughout the country, and that there is
no disturbance threatening its peace, endangering its safety, but that
which was produced by busy, restless politicians. It has been maintained
that the surface of the public mind is perfectly smooth and undisturbed
by a single billow. I most heartily wish I could concur in this picture
of general tranquillity that has been drawn upon both sides of the
Senate. I am no alarmist; nor, I thank God, at the advanced age at which
His providence has been pleased to allow me to reach, am I very easily
alarmed by any human event; but I totally misread the signs of the
times, if there be that state of profound peace and quiet, that absence
of all just cause of apprehension of future danger to this confederacy,
which appears to be entertained by some other senators. Mr. President,
all the tendencies of the times, I lament to say, are toward
disquietude, if not more fatal consequences. When before, in the midst
of profound peace with all the nations of the earth, have we seen a
convention, representing a considerable portion of one great part of
the Republic, meet to deliberate about measures of future safety in
connection with great interests of that quarter of the country? When
before have we seen, not one, but more--some half a dozen legislative
bodies solemnly resolving that if any one of these measures--the
admission of California, the adoption of the Wilmot proviso, the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia--should be adopted by
Congress, measures of an extreme character, for the safety of the great
interests to which I refer, in a particular section of the country,
would be resorted to? For years, this subject of the abolition of
slavery, even within this District of Columbia, small as is the number
of slaves here, has been a source of constant irritation and disquiet.
So of the subject of the recovery of fugitive slaves who have escaped
from their lawful owners: not a mere border contest, as has been
supposed--although there, undoubtedly, it has given rise to more
irritation than in other portions of the Union--but everywhere
through-out the slave-holding country it has been felt as a great evil,
a great wrong which required the intervention of congressional power.
But these two subjects, unpleasant as has been the agitation to which
they have given