Leaving it a prey to lawless adventure, you will only increase the difficulties of dealing with a region so vast and so remote.

I submit this as a question of sound policy,--I will not say of integrity, but simply of sound policy on the part of our Government, a republic representing republican institutions, by whose conduct republican institutions are always…

Surely you will not fail to protect the national honor; nor will you stick at the letter of the treaty.

I have alluded to two important matters under treaties; but there is still another, more important than any treaty or any appropriation, which dwarfs treaties and dwarfs appropriations, which is not less important, certainly, than the…

I refer to a whole region of our Republic, embracing two extensive States, now menaced by a foe more dangerous to the national peace and welfare than any tribe of Indians.

Enforce the two Amendments of the Constitution,--one abolishing Slavery, and the other declaring the rights of citizens.

Any delay to exercise so clear a power is a failure of duty; and it becomes more reprehensible, when we consider the perils that may ensue.

There can be no doubt that Unionists, whether black or white, in Maryland, require your protection.

I hope you will be able to do good at the extra session, and extend and protect the rights of the freedmen, as they are sadly in need of it in Kentucky.

Kentucky needs reconstruction, and it is your duty to provide it.

Let her colored citizens enjoy the full-blown rights of citizens, and let the white Unionists there have the protection of their votes.

Pass this bill, and you supersede strife on this much-vexed and disturbing question in other States of the Union.

You at once bring to the elective franchise thousands of good citizens, pledged by their lives and inspired by their recently received rights to sustain the good cause which you have so much at heart.

Do this; help in this way the final settlement of the national troubles; pass this bill of peace,--for such it will be, giving repose in all the Northern States,--and in this way help establish repose in all the rest of the country.

I object to it as a departure from sound usage, as contrary to the spirit of the Constitution, and as setting up an impediment and obstruction to the transaction of public business of an urgent character, which you cannot neglect without…

I ask you to provide for the execution of recent treaties with Venezuela and Russia, to assure protection to Unionists in Maryland and Kentucky, and to give peace to the country.

Above all, do not make a bad precedent, to be quoted hereafter to the injury of the Republic.

I do not believe Congress would have come together, if they had had faith in the President.

I believe the session beginning on the 4th of March had its origin in want of confidence in the President.

Therefore I submit that the resolution, if not positively unconstitutional, is contrary to the spirit of that instrument.

In his judgment, “there are some questions about which a Senator has no right to conform his view to that of the majority,” and he took the original resolution to be of that class.

Unquestionably the Senate has the power which he attributes to it; but it has not the right.

Now, assuming that the Senate has the power which the Senator from Maine claims, it seems to me it has not the right.

It has not the right to disregard the spirit of the National Constitution; and the present proposition is of that character.

The Senator would not vote for anything he regarded as hostile to the spirit of the Constitution.