Gentlemen, I have been some time before the public.  My character is known, my life is before the country.  I profess to love liberty as much as any man living; but I profess to love American liberty, that liberty which is secured to the country by the government under which we live; and I have no great opinion of that other and higher liberty which disregards the restraints of law and of the Constitution.  I hold the Constitution of the United States to be the bulwark, the only bulwark, of our liberties and of our national character, I do not mean that you should become slaves under the Constitution.  That is not American liberty.  That is not the liberty of the Union for which our fathers fought, that liberty which has given us a right to be known and respected all over the world.  I mean only to say, that I am for constitutional liberty.  It is enough for me to be as free as the Constitution of the country makes me.

Now, Gentlemen, let me say, that, as much as I respect the character of the people of Western New York, as much as I wish to retain their good opinion, if I should ever hereafter be placed in any situation in public life, let me tell you now that you must not expect from me the slightest variation, even of a hair’s breadth, from the Constitution of the United States.  I am a Northern man.  I was born at the North, educated at the North, have lived all my days at the North.  I know five hundred Northern men to one Southern man.  My sympathies, all my sympathies, my love of liberty for all mankind, of every color, are the same as yours.  My affections and hopes in that respect are exactly like yours.  I wish to see all men free, all men happy.  I have few personal associations out of the Northern States.  My people are your people.  And yet I am told sometimes that I am not a friend of liberty, because I am not a Free Soil man.  What am I?  What was I ever?  What shall I be hereafter, if I could sacrifice, for any consideration, that love of American liberty which has glowed in my breast since my infancy, and which, I hope, will never leave me till I expire?

Gentlemen, I regret that slavery exists in the Southern States; but it is clear and certain that Congress has no power over it.  It may be, however, that, in the dispensations of Providence, some remedy for this evil may occur, or may be hoped for hereafter.  But, in the mean time, I hold to the Constitution of the United States, and you need never expect from me, under any circumstances, that I shall falter from it; that I shall be otherwise than frank and decisive.  I would not part with my character as a man of firmness and decision, and honor and principle, for all that the world possesses.  You will find me true to the North, because all my sympathies are with the North.  My affections, my children, my hopes, my everything, are with the North.  But when I stand up before my country, as one appointed to administer the Constitution of the country, by the blessing of God I will be just.