I think I see that in progress which will disfigure and deform the Constitution.  While these territories remain territories, they will be a trouble and an annoyance; they will draw after them vast expenses; they will probably require as many troops as we have maintained during the last twenty years to defend them against the Indian tribes.  We must maintain an army at that immense distance.  When they shall become States, they will be still more likely to give us trouble.

I think I see a course adopted which is likely to turn the Constitution of the land into a deformed monster, into a curse rather than a blessing; in fact, a frame of an unequal government, not founded on popular representation, not founded on equality, but on the grossest inequality; and I think that this process will go on, or that there is danger that it will go on, until this Union shall fall to pieces.  I resist it, to-day and always!  Whoever falters or whoever flies, I continue the contest!

I know, Sir, that all the portents are discouraging.  Would to God I could auspicate good influences!  Would to God that those who think with me, and myself, could hope for stronger support!  Would that we could stand where we desire to stand!  I see the signs are sinister.  But with few, or alone, my position is fixed.  If there were time, I would gladly awaken the country.  I believe the country might be awakened, although it may be too late.  For myself, supported or unsupported, by the blessing of God, I shall do my duty.  I see well enough all the adverse indications.  But I am sustained by a deep and a conscientious sense of duty; and while supported by that feeling, and while such great interests are at stake, I defy auguries, and ask no omen but my country’s cause!

[Footnote 1:  Mr. Jefferson.]

[Footnote 2:  Mr. Upshur.]

[Footnote 3:  Mr. Tyler.]

[Footnote 4:  Mr. Rusk.]

[Footnote 5:  Mr. Rusk.]

[Footnote 6:  Major Gaines.]

EXCLUSION OF SLAVERY FROM THE TERRITORIES.

REMARKS MADE IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, ON THE 12TH OF AUGUST, 1848.

[In the course of the first session of the Thirtieth Congress, a bill passed the House of Representatives to organize a government for the Territory of Oregon.  This bill received several amendments on its passage through the Senate, and among them one moved by Mr. Douglass of Illinois, on the 10th of August, by which the eighth section of the law of the 6th of March, 1820, for the admission of Missouri, was revived and adopted, as a part of the bill, and declared to be “in full force, and binding, for the future organization of the territories of the United States, in the same sense and with the same understanding with which it was originally adopted.”

This, with some of the other amendments of the Senate, was disagreed to by the House.  On the return of the bill to the Senate, a discussion arose, and continued for several days, on the question of agreement or disagreement with the amendments of the House to the Senate’s amendments.