Why these attacks on individuals by name, and two thirds of the Senate collectively?  Is it the object to drive men here to dissolve social relations with political opponents?  Is it to turn the Senate into a bear garden, where Senators cannot associate on terms which ought to prevail between gentlemen?  These attacks are heaped upon me by man after man.  When I repel them, it is intimated that I show some feeling on the subject.  Sir, God grant that when I denounce an act of infamy I shall do it with feeling, and do it under the sudden impulses of feeling, instead of sitting up at night writing out my denunciation of a man whom I hate, copying it, having it printed, punctuating the proof-sheets, and repeating it before the glass, in order to give refinement to insult, which is only pardonable when it is the outburst of a just indignation.

Mr. President, I shall not occupy the time of the Senate.  I dislike to be forced to repel these attacks upon myself, which seem to be repeated on every occasion.  It appears that gentlemen on the other side of the chamber think they would not be doing justice to their cause if they did not make myself a personal object of bitter denunciation and malignity.  I hope that the debate on this bill may be brought to a close at as early a day as possible.  I shall do no more in these side discussions than vindicate myself and repel unjust attacks, but I shall ask the Senate to permit me to close the debate, when it shall close, in a calm, kind summary of the whole question, avoiding personalities.

Mr. Sumner:  Mr. President, To the Senator from Illinois, I should willingly leave the privilege of the common scold—­the last word; but I will not leave to him, in any discussion with me, the last argument, or the last semblance of it.  He has crowned the audacity of this debate by venturing to rise here and calumniate me.  He said that I came here, took an oath to support the Constitution, and yet determined not to support a particular clause in that Constitution.  To that statement I give, to his face, the flattest denial.  When it was made on a former occasion on this floor by the absent Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Butler), I then repelled it.  I will read from the debate of the 28th of June, 1854, as published in the Globe, to show what I said in response to that calumny when pressed at that hour.  Here is what I said to the Senator from South Carolina: 

“This Senator was disturbed, when to his inquiry, personally, pointedly, and vehemently addressed to me, whether I would join in returning a fellow-man to slavery?  I exclaimed, ’Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?’”

You will observe that the inquiry of the Senator from South Carolina, was whether I would join in returning a fellow-man to slavery.  It was not whether I would support any clause of the Constitution of the United States—­far from that. * * *