Cydnor Tompkins: “It will not be conceived, from these observations, that it is my wish to hold these unhappy people (negroes) in slavery.”

I have endeavored to show what slavery is, what it has done, and what it intends to do.

Yet the whole power of this Government is devoted to that one object; its entire strength concentrated in one spasmodic effort to extend slavery.

The agricultural, the manufacturing, the great commercial interests of this country, are entirely ignored, neglected, and forgotten, that the interests of one hundred thousand slaveholders may be advanced.

We will not follow your example; we will not pass laws in plain and palpable violation of your rights, and in palpable violation of the Constitution, and then drive out, by threats or violence, any man who may come into the State to test…