Mr. President,—­The gentleman from South Carolina has admonished us to be mindful of the opinions of those who shall come after us.  We must take our chance, Sir, as to the light in which posterity will regard us.  I do not decline its judgment, nor withhold myself from its scrutiny.  Feeling that I am performing my public duty with singleness of heart and to the best of my ability, I fearlessly trust myself to the country, now and hereafter, and leave both my motives and my character to its decision.

The gentleman has terminated his speech in a tone of threat and defiance towards this bill, even should it become a law of the land, altogether unusual in the halls of Congress.  But I shall not suffer myself to be excited into warmth by his denunciation of the measure which I support.  Among the feelings which at this moment fill my breast, not the least is that of regret at the position in which the gentleman has placed himself.  Sir, he does himself no justice.  The cause which he has espoused finds no basis in the Constitution, no succor from public sympathy, no cheering from a patriotic community.  He has no foothold on which to stand while he might display the powers of his acknowledged talents.  Every thing beneath his feet is hollow and treacherous.  He is like a strong man struggling in a morass:  every effort to extricate himself only sinks him deeper and deeper.  And I fear the resemblance may be carried still farther; I fear that no friend can safely come to his relief, that no one can approach near enough to hold out a helping hand, without danger of going down himself, also, into the bottomless depths of this Serbonian bog.

The honorable gentleman has declared, that on the decision of the question now in debate may depend the cause of liberty itself.  I am of the same opinion; but then, Sir, the liberty which I think is staked on the contest is not political liberty, in any general and undefined character, but our own well-understood and long-enjoyed American liberty.

Sir, I love Liberty no less ardently than the gentleman himself, in whatever form she may have appeared in the progress of human history.  As exhibited in the master states of antiquity, as breaking out again from amidst the darkness of the Middle Ages, and beaming on the formation of new communities in modern Europe, she has, always and everywhere, charms for me.  Yet, Sir, it is our own liberty, guarded by constitutions and secured by union, it is that liberty which is our paternal inheritance, it is our established, dear-bought, peculiar American liberty, to which I am chiefly devoted, and the cause of which I now mean, to the utmost of my power, to maintain and defend.