The Senator asked me if I would help to reduce a fellow-man to bondage.

You stand in my presence, as a coëqual Senator, and tell me that it is a dog’s office to execute the Constitution of the United States?

But nobody cares about your recognitions as an individual; but as a Senator, and a constitutional representative, you stand differently related to this body.

Of Slavery I speak strongly, as I must; but thus far, even at the expense of my argument, I have avoided the contrasts, founded on details of figures and facts, which are so obvious, between the Free States and “slaveholding communities”…

They are weapons prepared by contribution, and discharged in this body with a view of gratifying the feelings of resentment and malice,--with a view of wounding the pride of the State which I represent, and through her to stab the…

The arms of Massachusetts are Freedom, Justice, Truth.

Strong in these, she is not driven to the necessity of resorting to ‘attempted assassination,’ either in or out of the Senate.

I will say, however, that his language and his deportment to my colleague on that occasion were aggressive and overbearing in the extreme.

I would remind my friend of an old league between the four New England States, made while they were colonies, expressly repudiating trial by jury for the reclamation of fugitive slaves.

In the face of this Act of 1646, the learned Senator from South Carolina wished his friend from Missouri to incorporate into his speech a false accusation against Massachusetts and the New England colonies.

And he went so far as to assert that this old law contained an allusion to ‘slaves,’ when the word ‘slaves’ was not mentioned, and ‘servants’ only was employed.

He has applied to my colleague every expression calculated to wound the sensibilities of an honorable man, and to draw down upon him sneers, obloquy, and hatred, in and out of the Senate.

In my place here, I now pronounce these continued assaults upon my colleague unparalleled in the history of the Senate.

Whatever men may say of its sentiments,--and coming ages will indorse its sentiments,--it will be placed among the ablest parliamentary efforts of our own age or of any age.

I have great respect for that venerable Senator; but the opinions of no Senator here are potential in the country.

The judgment of the country is to be made up on the records formed here.

The Senator condemns it; South Carolina condemns it: but South Carolina is only a part of this Confederacy, and but a part of the Christian and civilized world.

South Carolina makes rice and cotton, but South Carolina contributes little to make up the judgment of the Christian and civilized world.

I value her rice and cotton more than I do her opinions on questions of scholarship and eloquence, of patriotism or of liberty.

President, I have no desire to assail the Senator from South Carolina, or any other Senator in this body; but I wish to say now that we have had quite enough of this asserted superiority, social and political.

I have simply to say that I know nothing in that Senator, moral, intellectual, or physical, which entitles him to use such language towards members of the Senate, or any portion of God’s creation.

I know nothing in the State from which he comes, rich as it is in the history of the past, that entitles him to speak in such a manner.

God knows I have not a feeling in my heart against her, or against her public men; but I do say it is time that these arrogant assumptions ceased here.

This is no place for assumed social superiority, as though certain Senators held the keys of cultivated and refined society.

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