stand thus,
showing our inferiority to the great and mighty dead, showing our
inferiority to the high positions which we occupy, the country may be
destroyed and ruined; and to the amazement of all the world, the great
Republic may fall prostrate and in ruins, carrying with it the very hope
of that liberty which we have heretofore enjoyed; carrying with it, in
place of the peace we have enjoyed, nothing but revolution and havoc and
anarchy. Shall it be said that we have allowed all these evils to come
upon our country, while we were engaged in the petty and small disputes
and debates to which I have referred? Can it be that our name is to rest
in history with this everlasting stigma and blot upon it?

Sir, I wish to God it was in my power to preserve this Union by
renouncing or agreeing to give up every conscientious and other opinion.
I might not be able to discard it from my mind; I am under no obligation
to do that. I may retain the opinion, but if I can do so great a good as
to preserve my country and give it peace, and its institutions and its
Union stability, I will forego any action upon my opinions. Well, now,
my friends (addressing the Republican Senators), that is all that is
asked of you. Consider it well, and I do not distrust the result. As
to the rest of this body, the gentlemen from the South, I would say to
them, can you ask more than this? Are you bent on revolution, bent on
disunion. God forbid it. I cannot believe that such madness possesses
the American people. This gives reasonable satisfaction. I can speak
with confidence only of my own State. Old Kentucky will be satisfied
with it, and she will stand by the Union and die by the Union if this
satisfaction be given. Nothing shall seduce her. The clamor of no
revolution, the seductions and temptations of no revolution, will
tempt her to move one step. She has stood always by the side of the
Constitution; she has always been devoted to it, and is this day. Give
her this satisfaction, and I believe all the States of the South that
are not desirous of disunion as a better thing than the Union and the
Constitution, will be satisfied and will adhere to the Union, and
we shall go on again in our great career of national prosperity and
national glory.

But, sir, it is not necessary for me to speak to you of the consequences
that will follow disunion. Who of us is not proud of the greatness we
have achieved? Disunion and separation destroy that greatness.