ome. It will have the effect to destroy
all sectional parties and sectional agitations. If, in the language of
the report of the committee, you withdraw the slavery question from
the halls of Congress and the political arena, and commit it to the
arbitrament of those who are immediately interested in and alone
responsible for its consequences, there is nothing left out of which
sectional parties can be organized. It never was done, and never can
be done on the bank, tariff, distribution, or any party issue which has
existed, or may exist, after this slavery question is withdrawn from
politics. On every other political question these have always supporters
and opponents in every portion of the Union--in each State, county,
village, and neighborhood--residing together in harmony and good
fellowship, and combating each other's opinions and correcting each
other's errors in a spirit of kindness and friendship. These differences
of opinion between neighbors and friends, and the discussions that grow
out of them, and the sympathy which each feels with the advocates of
his own opinions in every portion of this widespread Republic, add
an overwhelming and irresistible moral weight to the strength of
the Confederacy. Affection for the Union can never be alienated or
diminished by any other party issues than those which are joined upon
sectional or geographical lines. When the people of the North shall
all be rallied under one banner, and the whole South marshalled under
another banner, and each section excited to frenzy and madness by
hostility to the institutions of the other, then the patriot may well
tremble for the perpetuity of the Union. Withdraw the slavery question
from the political arena, and remove it to the States and Territories,
each to decide for itself, such a catastrophe can never happen. Then
you will never be able to tell, by any Senator's vote for or against any
measure, from what State or section of the Union he comes.

Why, then, can we not withdraw this vexed question from politics? Why
can we not adopt the principle of this bill as a rule of action in all
new Territorial organizations? Why can we not deprive these agitators of
their vocation and render it impossible for Senators to come here upon
bargains on the slavery question? I believe that the peace, the harmony,
and perpetuity of the Union require us to go back to the doctrines of
the Revolution, to the principles of the Constitution, to the principl