Do not suppose, Mr. President, that I feel as if engaged in a forbidden or improvident act.  No such thing.  I am contending with a local and “peculiar” interest, an interest which has already banded together with a force sufficient to seize upon every avenue by which a petition can enter this chamber, and exclude all without its haven.  I am not now contending for the rights of the negro, rights which his Creator gave him and which his fellow-man has usurped or taken away.  No, sir!  I am contending for the rights of the white person in the free States, and am endeavoring to prevent them from being trodden down and destroyed by that power which claims the black person as property.  I am endeavoring to sound the alarm to my fellow-citizens that this power, tremendous as it is, is endeavoring to unite itself with the monied power of the country, in order to extend its dominion and perpetuate its existence.  I am endeavoring to drive from the back of the negro slave the politician who has seated himself there to ride into office for the purpose of carrying out the object of this unholy combination.  The chains of slavery are sufficiently strong, without being riveted anew by tinkering politicians of the free States.  I feel myself compelled into this contest, in defence of the institutions of my own State, the persons and firesides of her citizens, from the insatiable grasp of the slaveholding power as being used and felt in the free States.  To say that I am opposed to slavery in the abstract, are but cold and unmeaning words, if, however capable of any meaning whatever, they may fairly be construed into a love for its existence; and such I sincerely believe to be the feeling of many in the free States who use the phrase.  I, sir, am not only opposed to slavery in the abstract, but also in its whole volume, in its theory as well as practice.  This principle is deeply implanted within me; it has “grown with my growth and strengthened with my strength.”  In my infant years I learned to hate slavery.  Your fathers taught me it was wrong in their Declaration of Independence:  the doctrines which they promulgated to the world, and upon the truth of which they staked the issue of the contest that made us a nation.  They proclaimed “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that amongst these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  These truths are solemnly declared by them.  I believed then, and believe now, they are self-evident.  Who can acknowledge this, and not be opposed to slavery?  It is, then, because I love the principles which brought your government into existence, and which have become the corner stone of the building supporting you, sir, in that chair, and giving to myself and other Senators seats in this body—­it is because I love all this, that I hate slavery.  Is it because I contend for the right of petition, and am opposed to slavery, that I have been denounced by many as