He is bold.  He shrinks from nothing.  Like Danton, he may cry, “l’audace! l’audace! toujours l’au-dace!” but even his audacity cannot compass this work.  The Senator copies the British officer who, with boastful swagger, said that with the hilt of his sword he would cram the “stamps” down the throats of the American people, and he will meet a similar failure.  He may convulse this country with a civil feud.  Like the ancient madman, he may set fire to this Temple of Constitutional Liberty, grander than the Ephesian dome; but he cannot enforce obedience to that Tyrannical Usurpation.

The Senator dreams that he can subdue the North.  He disclaims the open threat, but his conduct still implies it.  How little that Senator knows himself or the strength of the cause which he persecutes!  He is but a mortal man; against him is an immortal principle.  With finite power he wrestles with the infinite, and he must fall.  Against him are stronger battalions than any marshalled by mortal arm—­the inborn, ineradicable, invincible sentiments of the human heart; against him is nature in all her subtle forces; against him is God.  Let him try to subdue these. * * *

With regret, I come again upon the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Butler), who, omnipresent in this debate, overflowed with rage at the simple suggestion that Kansas had applied for admission as a State; and, with incoherent phrases, discharged the loose expectoration of his speech, now upon her representative, and then upon her people.  There was no extravagance of the ancient parliamentary debate, which he did not repeat; nor was there any possible deviation from truth which he did not make, with so much of passion, I am glad to add, as to save him from the suspicion of intentional aberration.  But the Senator touches nothing which he does not disfigure—­with error, sometimes of principle, sometimes of fact.  He shows an incapacity of accuracy, whether in stating the Constitution, or in stating the law, whether in the details of statistics or the diversions of scholarship.  He cannot ope his mouth, but out there flies a blunder.  Surely he ought to be familiar with the life of Franklin; and yet he referred to this household character, while acting as agent of our fathers in England, as above suspicion; and this was done that he might give point to a false contrast with the agent of Kansas—­not knowing that, however they may differ in genius and fame, in this experience they are alike:  that Franklin, when entrusted with the petition of Massachusetts Bay, was assaulted by a foul-mouthed speaker, where he could not be heard in defence, and denounced as a “thief,” even as the agent of Kansas has been assaulted on this floor, and denounced as a “forger.”  And let not the vanity of the Senator be inspired by the parallel with the British statesman of that day; for it is only in hostility to Freedom that any parallel can be recognized.