True, Slavery will be for a short term only, for twenty-one years, if you please, but that is a long time for Slavery.

I cannot consent to admit a new State with such a curse for twenty-one years.

How little slavery it takes to make a Slave State is illustrated by Delaware, with less than eighteen hundred slaves, sending two Senators of Slavery to this Chamber.

Never, Sir, by my vote; and as the Senate sees fit to discard the effort I have made, I deem it my duty to vote against the bill.

Not according to any contract or agreement; not according to any “due process of law”; not even according to any statute.

But if the Constitution, in a case where it is singularly explicit, can be disregarded without question in the exercise of the Rights of War, it is vain to invoke its provisions in other cases, where it is less explicit, in restraint of…

There is no attainder of treason, no ex post facto law, and no taking of property without due process of law; for the judicial proceedings which these bills institute are competent for the purpose.

Therefore do I assert unhesitatingly that these bills are above constitutional objection.

I have said enough of surrender by recognition of the Slave States, or, in other words, of the Slave Power, out of the Union.

It is well known that these were the sentiments of the founders of our Republic, which, in its early treaty with Prussia, took the lead in denouncing the whole system of privateering.

If we cannot do this, let us at least keep from affording new facilities to an offensive system.

What our country denounced in other days should not now be proclaimed and glorified.

I wish the treaty had been such as to afford a stronger example; but it must be accepted as the judgment of our country at that time; and to my mind it is a practical denunciation of privateering, worthy of the illustrious character by…

It proposes to cruise against a non-existent commerce, for the sake of a non-existent booty.

It accords to private individuals the belligerent right of search, which must be fruitful of trouble in our relations with the great neutral powers.

It is in the nature of a menace to foreign nations, and therefore worse than useless.

It vitalizes and legalizes a system which civilization always accepted with reluctance, and our own country was one of the earliest and most persistent to denounce.

It does all this without accomplishing any substantial good.

If it be said that ships are needed for transportation, or for the blockade, or in order to pursue pirates on the sea, then, I repeat, let the Government hire them.

The first, as we have already seen, abandons part of the Union to the Slave Power; the other subjects the whole Union to the Slave Power.

To this end I offer a substitute for the present bill, which will secure to the Government all the aid it can desire, without the disadvantage or shame of a measure which can be justified only by overruling necessity.

Do not sanction it now on the ocean; or, if you are disposed to sanction it, call it not a militia of the seas.

A brave and intelligent people will not bend before menace, nor can any such attempt affect a well-considered national policy.

All history and reason show that such conduct is more irritating than soothing.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.