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 328 Southern Historical Society Papers.

we or do we not mean to conform to it and to execute that part of the Constitution as well as the rest of it ? I believe there are before me here members of Congress. I suppose there may be here mem- bers of the State Legislature or executive offices under the State government. I suppose there may be judicial magistrates of New York, executive officers, assessors, supervisors, justices of the peace, and constables before me. Allow me to say, gentlemen, that there is not, there cannot be, any one of these officers in this assemblage or elsewhere who has not, according to the form of the usual obliga tion, bound himself by solemn oath to support the Constitution. They have taken their oaths on the Holy Evangelists of Almighty God, or by uplifted hands, as the case may be, or by solemn affirma- tion as is the practice in some cases ; but among all of them there is not a man who holds, nor is there any man who can hold, any office in the gift of the United States, or of this State, or of any other State, who does not bind himself by the solemn obligation of an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. Well, is he to tamper with that ? Is he to palter ? Gentlemen, our political duties are as much matters of conscience as any other duties. Our sacred domestic duties our most endearing social relations are not more the subjects for conscientious consideration or a conscientious dis- charge than the duties we enter upon under the Constitution of the United States. The bonds of political brotherhood, which hold us together from Maine to Georgia, rest upon the same principles of obligation as those of social and domestic life."

At Capon Springs, Virginia, June 28, 1851, Mr. Webster said: "The leading sentiment in the toast from the Chair is, 'The Union of the States.' The Union of the States; what mind can comprehend the consequences of that union, past, present, and to come. The union of these States is the all-absorbing topic of the day. On it all men speak, write, think, and dilate from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. And yet, gentlemen, I fear that its importance has been but insufficiently appreciated.

" How absurd it is to suppose that when different parties enter into a compact for certain purposes, either can disregard any one provi- sion, and expect, nevertheless, the other to observe the rest. I intend, for one, to regard and maintain and carry out to the fullest extent the Constitution of the United States, which I have sworn to support in all its parts and provisions. It is written in the Constitution : ' No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another shall, in consequence of any law or regulations