Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/211

 YANCEY is as sacred to us as yours is to you, that is recog- nized as such by the Constitution of our common country — shall enjo3% unmolested, the rights to go into the Territories, and to remain there, and enjoy those rights as citizens of the United States, as long as our common government holds those Territories in trust for the States of which we are citizens. That is all. We shall go to the wall upon this issue if events shall demand it, and accept defeat upon it. Let the threatened thunders roll and the lightning flash through the sky, and let the dark cloud now resting on the Southern horizon be pointed out by you. Let the world know that our people are in earnest. In accepting defeat upon that issue, my countrymen, we are bound to rise, if there is virtue in the Consti- tution. But if we accept your policy, where shall we be ? We shall then have assented to the great fact involved in adopting your platform, that the government is a failure so far as the pro- tection of the South in the Territories is con- cerned. We should be estopped for ever from asserting our principle simply by your pointing to the record that we had assented to the fact that the government could not be administered on a clear assertion of our rights. Is it true, gentlemen of the Northwest? Is it true, gentle- men of the whole country, that our government is a failure so far as the plain and unequivocal rights of the South are concerned? If it be a failure, we are not patriots unless we go to 201