Gentlemen, that is the Constitution of the United States.  Do we, or do we not, mean to conform to it, and to execute that part of the Constitution as well as the rest of it?  I believe there are before me here members of Congress.  I suppose there may be here members of the State legislature, or executive officers under the State government.  I suppose there may be judicial magistrates of New York, executive officers, assessors, supervisors, justices of the peace, and constables before me.  Allow me to say, Gentlemen, that there is not, that there cannot be, any one of these officers in this assemblage, or elsewhere, who has not, according to the form of the usual obligation, bound himself by a solemn oath to support the Constitution.  They have taken their oaths on the Holy Evangelists of Almighty God, or by uplifted hand, as the case may be, or by a solemn affirmation, as is the practice in some cases; but among all of them there is not a man who holds, nor is there any man who can hold, any office in the gift of the United States, or of this State, or of any other State, who does not bind himself, by the solemn obligation of an oath, to support the Constitution of the United States.  Well, is he to tamper with that?  Is he to palter?  Gentlemen, our political duties are as much matters of conscience as any other duties; our sacred domestic ties, our most endearing social relations, are no more the subjects for conscientious consideration and conscientious discharge, than the duties we enter upon under the Constitution of the United States.  The bonds of political brotherhood, which hold us together from Maine to Georgia, rest upon the same principles of obligation as those of domestic and social life.

Now, Gentlemen, that is the plain story of the Constitution of the United States, on the question of slavery.  I contend, and have always contended, that, after the adoption of the Constitution, any measure of the government calculated to bring more slave territory into the United States was beyond the power of the Constitution, and against its provisions.  That is my opinion, and it always has been my opinion.  It was inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, or thought to be so, in Mr. Jefferson’s time, to attach Louisiana to the United States.  A treaty with France was made for that purpose.  Mr. Jefferson’s opinion at that moment was, that an alteration of the Constitution was necessary to enable it to be done.  In consequence of considerations to which I need not now refer, that opinion was abandoned, and Louisiana was admitted by law, without any provision in, or alteration of, the Constitution.  At that time I was too young to hold any office, or take any share in the political affairs of the country.  Louisiana was admitted as a slave State, and became entitled to her representation in Congress on the principle of a mixed basis.  Florida was afterwards admitted.  Then, too, I was out of Congress.  I had formerly been a member, but had ceased to be