We will go back to 1845 when you admitted Texas; back to the Missouri Compromise of 1820. You certainly can complain of nothing previous to that time. If, since then, there has been any law of Congress passed which is unjust toward you, which infringes upon your rights, which operates unfairly upon your interests, we will join you in securing its repeal. We will go farther. If you will point out any act of the Republican Party which has given you just cause for apprehension, we will give you all security against it. We will do any thing but amend the fundamental law of Government. Before we do that we must be convinced of its necessity. When you propose essential changes in the Constitution you must expect that they will be subjected to a critical examination; if not here, certainly elsewhere. I object to those proposed by the majority of the committee-- 1st. For what they _do_ contain. 2nd. For what they _do not_ contain. I do not propose to criticize the language used in your propositions of amendment. That would be trifling. I think the language very infelicitous, and if I supposed those propositions were to become part of the Constitution, I should think many verbal changes indispensable. But I pass by all that, and come at once to the substance. I object to the propositions, sir, because they would put into the Constitution new expressions relating to slavery, which were sedulously kept out of it by the framers of that instrument; left out of it, not accidentally, but because, as MADISON said, they did not wish posterity to know from the Constitution that the institution existed. But I object further, because the propositions contain guarantees for slavery which our fathers did not and would not give. In 1787 the convention was held at Philadelphia to establish our form of Government. WASHINGTON was its presiding officer, whose name was in itself a bond of union. It was soon after the close of a long and bloody war. Shoulder to shoulder--through winter snows and beneath summer suns--through such sufferings and sacrifices as the world had scarcely ever witnessed--the people of these States, under Providence, had fought and achieved their independence. Fresh from the field, their hearts full of patriotism, determined to perpetuate the liberties they had achieved, the people sent their delegates into the convention to frame a Constitution which would preserve to their posterity the blessings they had won.