Our Senator also objects that those who oppose him in this matter do not entirely agree with one another.  He reminds me that in my firm adherence to the constitutional rights of the slave States I differ widely from others who are cooperating with me in opposing the Nebraska Bill, and he says it is not quite fair to oppose him in this variety of ways.  He should remember that he took us by surprise—­astounded us by this measure.  We were thunderstruck and stunned, and we reeled and fell in utter confusion.  But we rose, each fighting, grasping whatever he could first reach—­a scythe, a pitchfork, a chopping-ax, or a butcher’s cleaver.  We struck in the direction of the sound, and we were rapidly closing in upon him.  He must not think to divert us from our purpose by showing us that our drill, our dress, and our weapons are not entirely perfect and uniform.  When the storm shall be past he shall find us still Americans, no less devoted to the continued union and prosperity of the country than heretofore.

Finally, the Judge invokes against me the memory of Clay and Webster, They were great men, and men of great deeds.  But where have I assailed them?  For what is it that their lifelong enemy shall now make profit by assuming to defend them against me, their lifelong friend?  I go against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; did they ever go for it?  They went for the Compromise of 1850; did I ever go against them?  They were greatly devoted to the Union; to the small measure of my ability was I ever less so?  Clay and Webster were dead before this question arose; by what authority shall our Senator say they would espouse his side of it if alive?  Mr. Clay was the leading spirit in making the Missouri Compromise; is it very credible that if now alive he would take the lead in the breaking of it?  The truth is that some support from Whigs is now a necessity with the Judge, and for this it is that the names of Clay and Webster are invoked.  His old friends have deserted him in such numbers as to leave too few to live by.  He came to his own, and his own received him not; and lo! he turns unto the Gentiles.

A word now as to the Judge’s desperate assumption that the compromises of 1850 had no connection with one another; that Illinois came into the Union as a slave State, and some other similar ones.  This is no other than a bold denial of the history of the country.  If we do not know that the compromises of 1850 were dependent on each other; if we do not know that Illinois came into the Union as a free State,—­we do not know anything.  If we do not know these things, we do not know that we ever had a Revolutionary War or such a chief as Washington.  To deny these things is to deny our national axioms,—­or dogmas, at least,—­and it puts an end to all argument.  If a man will stand up and assert, and repeat and reassert, that two and two do not make four, I know nothing in the power of argument that can stop him.  I think I can answer the Judge so long as he sticks to the premises; but when he flies from them, I cannot work any argument into the consistency of a mental gag and actually close his mouth with it.  In such a case I can only commend him to the seventy thousand answers just in from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.