f
it to have slavery when they are admitted into the Union as States, and
to have it during the existence of the territorial government. That is
all. Is it not the cheapest price at which such a blessing as this Union
was ever purchased? You think, perhaps, or some of you, that there is no
danger, that it will but thunder and pass away. Do not entertain such a
fatal delusion. I tell you it is not so. I tell you that as sure as we
stand here disunion will progress. I fear it may swallow up even old
Kentucky in its vortex--as true a State to the Union as yet exists in
the whole Confederacy--unless something be done; but that you will have
disunion, that anarchy and war will follow it, that all this will take
place in six months, I believe as confidently as I believe in your
presence. I want to satisfy you of the fact.

* * * * *

The present exasperation; the present feeling of disunion, is the
result of a long-continued controversy on the subject of slavery and
of territory. I shall not attempt to trace that controversy; it is
unnecessary to the occasion, and might be harmful. In relation to such
controversies, I will say, though, that all the wrong is never on one
side, or all the right on the other. Right and wrong, in this world,
and in all such controversies, are mingled together. I forbear now any
discussion or any reference to the right or wrong of the controversy,
the mere party controversy; but in the progress of party, we now come
to a point where party ceases to deserve consideration, and the
preservation of the Union demands our highest and our greatest
exertions. To preserve the Constitution of the country is the highest
duty of the Senate, the highest duty of Congress--to preserve it and to
perpetuate it, that we may hand down the glories which we have received
to our children and to our posterity, and to generations far beyond us.
We are, Senators, in positions where history is to take notice of the
course we pursue.

History is to record us. Is it to record that when the destruction of
the Union was imminent; when we saw it tottering to its fall; when we
saw brothers arming their hands for hostility with one another, we stood
quarrelling about points of party politics; about questions which we
attempted to sanctify and to consecrate by appealing to our conscience
as the source of them? Are we to allow such fearful catastrophes to
occur while we stand trifling away our time? While we