is country. Do you ask me to support a
government that will tax my property; that will plunder me; that
will demand my blood, and will not protect me? I would rather see the
population of my native State laid six feet beneath her sod than they
should support for one hour such a government. Protection is the price
of obedience everywhere, in all countries. It is the only thing that
makes government respectable. Deny it and you cannot have free subjects
or citizens; you may have slaves.

We demand, in the next place, "that persons committing crimes against
slave property in one State, and fleeing to another, shall be delivered
up in the same manner as persons committing crimes against other
property, and that the laws of the State from which such persons flee
shall be the test of criminality." That is another one of the demands of
an extremist and rebel. The Constitution of the United States, article
four, section two, says:

"A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime, who
shall flee from justice and be found in another State, shall, on demand
of the executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered
up to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime." But the
non-slave-holding States, treacherous to their oaths and compacts, have
steadily refused, if the criminal only stole a negro, and that negro was
a slave, to deliver him up. It was refused twice on the requisition of
my own State as long as twenty-two years ago. It was refused by Kent and
by Fairfield, Governors of Maine, and representing, I believe, each
of the then Federal parties. We appealed then to fraternity, but we
submitted; and this constitutional right has been practically a dead
letter from that day to this. The next case came up between us and the
State of New York, when the present senior Senator (Mr. Seward) was
the Governor of that State; and he refused it. Why? He said it was not
against the laws of New York to steal a negro, and therefore he would
not comply with the demand. He made a similar refusal to Virginia. Yet
these are our confederates; these are our sister States! There is
the bargain; there is the compact. You have sworn to it. Both these
Governors swore to it. The Senator from New York swore to it. The
Governor of Ohio swore to it when he was inaugurated. You cannot bind
them by oaths.

Yet they talk to us of treason; and I suppose they expect to whip
freemen into loving such brethren!