I have thus proved beyond controversy that the averment of the bill, which my amendment proposes to strike out, is untrue.  Senators, will you unite in a statement which you know to be contradicted by the history of the country?  Will you incorporate into a public statute an affirmation which is contradicted by every event which attended or followed the adoption of the compromise acts?  Will you here, acting under your high responsibility as Senators of the States, assert as a fact, by a solemn vote, that which the personal recollection of every Senator who was here during the discussion of those compromise acts disproves?  I will not believe it until I see it.  If you wish to break up the time-honored compact embodied in the Missouri compromise, transferred into the joint resolution for the annexation of Texas, preserved and affirmed by these compromise acts themselves, do it openly—­do it boldly.  Repeal the Missouri prohibition.  Repeal it by a direct vote.  Do not repeal it by indirection.  Do not “declare” it “inoperative,” “because superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850.”

Mr. President, three great eras have marked the history of this country in respect to slavery.  The first may be characterized as the Era of enfranchisement.  It commenced with the earliest struggles for national independence.  The spirit which inspired it animated the hearts and prompted the efforts of Washington, of Jefferson, of Patrick Henry, of Wythe, of Adams, of Jay, of Hamilton, of Morris—­in short, of all the great men of our early history.  All these hoped for, all these labored for, all these believed in, the final deliverance of the country from the curse of slavery.  That spirit burned in the Declaration of Independence, and inspired the provisions of the Constitution, and the Ordinance of 1787.  Under its influence, when in full vigor, State after State provided for the emancipation of the slaves within their limits, prior to the adoption of the Constitution.  Under its feebler influence at a later period, and during the administration of Mr. Jefferson, the importation of slaves was prohibited into Mississippi and Louisiana, in the faint hope that those Territories might finally become free States.  Gradually that spirit ceased to influence our public councils, and lost its control over the American heart and the American policy.  Another era succeeded, but by such imperceptible gradations that the lines which separate the two cannot be traced with absolute precision.  The facts of the two eras meet and mingle as the currents of confluent streams mix so imperceptibly that the observer cannot fix the spot where the meeting waters blend.

This second era was the Era of conservatism.  Its great maxim was to preserve the existing condition.  Men said:  Let things remain as they are; let slavery stand where it is; exclude it where it is not; refrain from disturbing the public quiet by agitation; adjust all difficulties that arise, not by the application of principles, but by compromises.