ever would have been a Fire-eater, South,"--apparently ignoring
the palpable fact that had there been no Slavery in the South, there
could have been no "Abolitionists, North."

He heatedly denounced the "fanatical gentlemen" who desired the passage
of this measure; declared they intended by its passage "to destroy the
Institution of Slavery or to destroy the Union," and exclaimed: "Pass
this Amendment and you make an impassable chasm, as if you were to put a
lake of burning fire, between the adhering States and those who are out.
You will then have to make it a War of conquest and extermination before
you can ever bring them back under the flag of the Government. There is
no doubt about that proposition."

Mr. Sumner, at this point, withdrew his proposed amendment, at the
suggestion of Mr. Howard, who expressed a preference "to dismiss all
reference to French Constitutions and French Codes, and go back to the
good old Anglo-Saxon language employed by our Fathers, in the Ordinance
of 1787, (in) an expression adjudicated upon repeatedly, which is
perfectly well understood both by the public and by Judicial Tribunals
--a phrase, which is peculiarly near and dear to the people of the
Northwestern Territory, from whose soil Slavery was excluded by it."

[The following is the language of "the Ordinance of 1787" thus
referred to:

"ART. 6.--There shall be neither Slavery nor Involuntary Servitude
in the said Territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes,
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: * * *."]

Mr. Davis thereupon made another opposition speech and, at its
conclusion, Mr. Saulsbury offered, as a substitute, an Article,
comprising no less than twenty sections--that, he said, "embodied in
them some things" which "did not meet his personal approbation," but he
had consented to offer them to the Senate as "a Compromise"--as "a Peace
offering."

The Saulsbury substitute being voted down, the debate closed with a
speech by Mr. McDougall--an eloquent protest from his standpoint, in
which, after endorsing the wild statement of Mr. Hendricks that 250,000
of the people of African descent had been prematurely destroyed on the
Mississippi, he continued.

"This policy will ingulf them. It is as simple a truth as has ever been
taught by any history. The Slaves of ancient time were not the Slaves
of a different Race. The Romans compelled the Gaul and the Celt,
brought them to th