The second proposition is, “that property in slaves shall be entitled to the same protection from the Government of the United States, in all of its departments, everywhere, which the Constitution confers the power upon it to extend to any other property, provided nothing herein contained shall be construed to limit or restrain the right now belonging to every State to prohibit, abolish, or establish and protect slavery within its limits.”  We demand of the common government to use its granted powers to protect our property as well as yours.  For this protection we pay as much as you do.  This very property is subject to taxation.  It has been taxed by you and sold by you for taxes.  The title to thousands and tens of thousands of slaves is derived from the United States.  We claim that the Government, while the Constitution recognizes our property for the purposes of taxation, shall give it the same protection that it gives yours.  Ought it not to be so?  You say no.  Every one of you upon the committee said no.  Your Senators say no.  Your House of Representatives says no.  Throughout the length and breadth of your conspiracy against the Constitution, there is but one shout of no!  This recognition of this right is the price of my allegiance.  Withhold it, and you do not get my obedience.  This is the philosophy of the armed men who have sprung up in this country.  Do you ask me to support a government that will tax my property; that will plunder me; that will demand my blood, and will not protect me?  I would rather see the population of my native State laid six feet beneath her sod than they should support for one hour such a government.  Protection is the price of obedience everywhere, in all countries.  It is the only thing that makes government respectable.  Deny it and you cannot have free subjects or citizens; you may have slaves.

We demand, in the next place, “that persons committing crimes against slave property in one State, and fleeing to another, shall be delivered up in the same manner as persons committing crimes against other property, and that the laws of the State from which such persons flee shall be the test of criminality.”  That is another one of the demands of an extremist and rebel.  The Constitution of the United States, article four, section two, says: 

“A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice and be found in another State, shall, on demand of the executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime.”  But the non-slave-holding States, treacherous to their oaths and compacts, have steadily refused, if the criminal only stole a negro, and that negro was a slave, to deliver him up.  It was refused twice on the requisition of my own State as long as twenty-two years ago.  It was refused by Kent and by Fairfield, Governors of Maine, and representing, I believe, each of the then Federal