Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/653

 it is impossible not to desire to pause a moment and survey the scene around us, and the prospect before us. However obscure we may individually be, OUT connection with this great transaction will perpetuate our names for the praise or for the censure of future ages, and perhaps in regions far remote. If, then, we had no other motive for our actions but that of an honest desire for a just fame, we could not be indifferent to that scene and that prospect. But individual interests and ambition sink into insignificance in view of the interests of our country and of mankind. These interests awaken, at least in me, an intense solicitude.

It was said by some in the beginning, and it has been said by others later in this debate, that it was doubtful whether it would be the cause of slavery or the cause of freedom that would gain advantages from the passage of this bill. I do not find it necessary to be censorious, nor even unjust to others, in order that my own course may be approved; I am sure that the honorable senator from Illinois, [Mr. Douglas,] did not mean that the slave states should gain an advantage over the free states; for he disclaimed it when he introduced the bill. I believe in all candor, that the honorable senator from Georgia, [Mr. Toombs,] who comes out at the close of the battle as one of the chiefest leaders of the victorious party, is sincere in declaring his own opinion that the slave states will gain no unjust advantage over the free states, because he disclaims it as a triumph in their behalf. Notwithstanding all this, however, what has occurred here and in the country, during this contest, has compelled a conviction that slavery will gain something, and freedom will endure a severe, though I hope not an irretrievable, loss. The slaveholding states are passive, quiet, content, and satisfied with the prospective boon, and the free states are excited and alarmed with fearful forebodings and apprehensions. The impatience for the speedy passage of the bill, manifested by its friends, betrays a knowledge that this is the condition of public sentiment in the free states. They thought in the [sic]begining that it was necessary to guard the measure by inserting the Clayton amendment, which would exclude unnaturalized foreign inhabitants of the territories from the right of suffrage. And now they seem willing with almost perfect unanimity, to relinquish that safe-guard, rather than to delay the adoption of the principal measure for at most a year, perhaps for only a week or a day. Suppose that the senate should adhere to that condition, which so lately was thought so wise and so important — what then? The bill could only go back to the house of representatives, which must either yield or insist 1 In the one case or in the other, a decision in favor of the bill would be secured; for even if the house should disagree, the senate would have time to recede. But the majority will hazard nothing, even on a prospect so certain as this. They will recede at once, without a moment's further struggle, from the condition, and thus secure the passage of this bill now, tonight. Why such haste? Even if the question were to go to the country before a final decision here, what would there be wrong in that? There is no man living who will say that the country anticipated, or that he anticipated,