History is to record us.  Is it to record that when the destruction of the Union was imminent; when we saw it tottering to its fall; when we saw brothers arming their hands for hostility with one another, we stood quarrelling about points of party politics; about questions which we attempted to sanctify and to consecrate by appealing to our conscience as the source of them?  Are we to allow such fearful catastrophes to occur while we stand trifling away our time?  While we stand thus, showing our inferiority to the great and mighty dead, showing our inferiority to the high positions which we occupy, the country may be destroyed and ruined; and to the amazement of all the world, the great Republic may fall prostrate and in ruins, carrying with it the very hope of that liberty which we have heretofore enjoyed; carrying with it, in place of the peace we have enjoyed, nothing but revolution and havoc and anarchy.  Shall it be said that we have allowed all these evils to come upon our country, while we were engaged in the petty and small disputes and debates to which I have referred?  Can it be that our name is to rest in history with this everlasting stigma and blot upon it?

Sir, I wish to God it was in my power to preserve this Union by renouncing or agreeing to give up every conscientious and other opinion.  I might not be able to discard it from my mind; I am under no obligation to do that.  I may retain the opinion, but if I can do so great a good as to preserve my country and give it peace, and its institutions and its Union stability, I will forego any action upon my opinions.  Well, now, my friends (addressing the Republican Senators), that is all that is asked of you.  Consider it well, and I do not distrust the result.  As to the rest of this body, the gentlemen from the South, I would say to them, can you ask more than this?  Are you bent on revolution, bent on disunion.  God forbid it.  I cannot believe that such madness possesses the American people.  This gives reasonable satisfaction.  I can speak with confidence only of my own State.  Old Kentucky will be satisfied with it, and she will stand by the Union and die by the Union if this satisfaction be given.  Nothing shall seduce her.  The clamor of no revolution, the seductions and temptations of no revolution, will tempt her to move one step.  She has stood always by the side of the Constitution; she has always been devoted to it, and is this day.  Give her this satisfaction, and I believe all the States of the South that are not desirous of disunion as a better thing than the Union and the Constitution, will be satisfied and will adhere to the Union, and we shall go on again in our great career of national prosperity and national glory.