I shall not spend much time on the question that seems to give my honorable friend (Mr. Crittenden) so much concern—­the constitutional right of a State to secede from this Union.  Perhaps he will find out after a while that it is a fact accomplished.  You have got it in the South pretty much both ways.  South Carolina has given it to you regularly, according to the approved plan.  You are getting it just below there (in Georgia), I believe, irregularly, outside of the law, without regular action.  You can take it either way.  You will find armed men to defend both.  I have stated that the discontented States of this Union have demanded nothing but clear, distinct, unequivocal, well-acknowledged constitutional rights; rights affirmed by the highest judicial tribunals of their country; rights older than the Constitution; rights which are planted upon the immutable principles of natural justice; rights which have been affirmed by the good and the wise of all countries, and of all centuries.  We demand no power to injure any man.  We demand no right to injure our confederate States.  We demand no right to interfere with their institutions, either by word or deed.  We have no right to disturb their peace, their tranquillity, their security.  We have demanded of them simply, solely—­nothing else—­to give us equality, security, and tranquillity.  Give us these, and peace restores itself.  Refuse them, and take what you can get.

I will now read my own demands, acting under my own convictions, and the universal judgment of my countrymen.  They are considered the demands of an extremist.  To hold to a constitutional right now makes one considered as an extremist—­I believe that is the appellation these traitors and villains, North and South, employ.  I accept their reproach rather than their principles.  Accepting their designation of treason and rebellion, there stands before them as good a traitor, and as good a rebel as ever descended from revolutionary loins.

What do the rebels demand?  First, “that the people of the United States shall have an equal right to emigrate and settle in the present or any future acquired territories, with whatever property they may possess (including slaves), and be securely protected in its peaceable enjoyment until such Territory may be admitted as a State into the Union, with or without slavery, as she may determine, on an equality with all existing States.”  That is our territorial demand.  We have fought for this Territory when blood was its price.  We have paid for it when gold was its price.  We have not proposed to exclude you, though you have contributed very little of blood or money.  I refer especially to New England.  We demand only to go into those Territories upon terms of equality with you, as equals in this great Confederacy, to enjoy the common property of the whole Union, and receive the protection of the common government, until the Territory is capable of coming into the Union as a sovereign State, when it may fix its own institutions to suit itself.