en complain? When I left my home in
the West to come to this place, all was calm, cheerful, and contented.
I heard of no discontent. I apprehended that there was nothing to
interrupt the harmonious course of our legislation. I did not learn
that, since we adjourned from this place at the end of the last session,
there had been any new fact intervening that should at all disturb the
public mind. I do not know that there has been any encroachment upon
the rights of any section of the country since that time; I came here,
therefore, expecting to have a very harmonious session. It is very true,
sir, that the great Republican party which has been organized ever since
you repealed the Missouri Compromise, and who gave you, four years ago,
full warning that their growing strength would probably result as it
has resulted, have carried the late election; but I did not suppose that
would disturb the equanimity of this body. I did suppose that every man
who was observant of the signs of the times might well see that things
would result as they have resulted. Nor do I understand now that
anything growing out of that election is the cause of the present
excitement that pervades the country.

Why, Mr. President, this is a most singular state of things. Who is it
that is complaining? They that have been in a minority? They that have
been the subjects of an oppressive and aggressive Government? No, sir.
Let us suppose that when the leaders of the old glorious Revolution met
at Philadelphia eighty-four years ago to draw up a bill of indictment
against a wicked King and his ministers, they had been at a loss what
they should set forth as the causes of their complaint. They had
no difficulty in setting them forth so that the great article of
impeachment will go down to all posterity as a full justification of all
the acts they did. But let us suppose that, instead of its being these
old patriots who had met there to dissolve their connection with the
British Government, and to trample their flag under foot, it had
been the ministers of the Crown, the leading members of the British
Parliament, of the dominant party that had ruled Great Britain for
thirty years previous: who would not have branded every man of them as a
traitor? It would be said: "You who have had the Government in your own
hands: you who have been the ministers of the Crown, advising everything
that has been done, set up here that you have been oppressed and
aggrieved by t