Surely, Sir, if ever there was occasion for the exercise of this right, the time had come in Kansas.

The people there were subjugated by a horde of foreign invaders, and brought under a tyrannical code of revolting barbarity, while among them property and life were exposed to shameless assaults which flaunted at noonday, and to reptile…

Self-defence is the first law of Nature; and unless this law is temporarily silenced, as all other law is silenced there, you cannot condemn the proceedings in Kansas.

Thus, on every ground of precedent, whether as regards population or forms of proceeding,--also, on the vital principle of American Institutions,--and, lastly, on the supreme law of self-defence, do I now invoke the power of Congress to…

If you hesitate for want of precedent, then do I appeal to the great principle of American Institutions.

If, forgetting the origin of the Republic, you turn away from this principle, then, in the name of human nature, trampled down and oppressed, but aroused to just self-defence, do I plead for the exercise of this power.

Will you push them back to renew their struggle with a deadly foe, or will you preserve them in security and peace?

Will you cast them again into the den of Tyranny, or will you help their despairing efforts to escape?

At every stage the similitude between the wrongs of Kansas and those other wrongs against which our fathers rose becomes more apparent.

Read the Declaration of Independence, and there is hardly an accusation against the British Monarch which may not now be hurled with increased force against the American President.

He has done that which he ought not to have done, and has left undone that which he ought to have done.

As the tyranny of the British King is all renewed in the President, so are renewed on this floor the old indignities which embittered and fomented the troubles of our fathers.

But the Senator touches nothing which he does not disfigure--with error, sometimes of principle, sometimes of fact.

He cannot ope his mouth, but out there flies a blunder.

He cannot, surely, forget its shameful imbecility from Slavery, confessed throughout the Revolution, followed by its more shameful assumptions for Slavery since.

He cannot forget its wretched persistence in the slave-trade, as the very apple of its eye, and the condition of its participation in the Union.

South Carolina counts by centuries, where Kansas counts by years.

In the one is the long wail of Slavery; in the other, the hymn of Freedom.

And if we glance at special achievement, it will be difficult to find anything in the history of South Carolina which presents so much of heroic spirit in an heroic cause as shines in that repulse of the Missouri invaders by the…

Not the first time in history will a scaffold become the pedestal of honor.

Out of death comes life, and the “traitor” whom he blindly executes will live immortal in the cause.

To such, indeed, time-honored safeguards of popular rights can be a name and nothing more.

What are trial by jury, Habeas Corpus, ballot-box, right of petition, liberty in Kansas, your liberty, Sir, or mine, to one who lends himself, not merely to the support at home, but to propagandism abroad, of that preposterous wrong which…

Such a cause can be maintained only by the practical subversion of all rights.

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