What is the cause of our present differences? It is not found in any action of the North. No Northern State proposes to disrupt the Union or to threaten its stability. But certain of the Southern slave States come here and say to us that certain alleged rights of theirs must be secured, or they cannot induce their people to consent to remain in the Union. I have heard a great deal said in this Conference about civil war. Now, civil war is not a pleasant subject to consider; but, gentlemen, I pray you to remember that the North proposes no civil war. She declines to consider the subject at all, now. If civil war is brought upon the country, it will be your work, not ours. The North will do all she can to stay your hands--to prevent you from plunging the country into civil war. She will not enter upon it until you force her to do so. When you begin it, and force her into war in order to defend the Government and the Union, I have no doubt she will enter the field and carry on civil war until the Union is restored and its enemies put down. Let me ask you, gentlemen, who have so much to say about war, whether you had not better leave that question where it is? It has been assumed, and very often stated here, that the present Constitution gives the right to the Southern slave owner to take his negroes into any of the Territories of the United States, and hold them there as slaves. I think it would be well for you not to act so entirely upon that assumption. A different view prevails quite extensively at the North. It will be a long time before that view is changed. Now, you gentlemen of the South propose to restore the Missouri Compromise line. To induce us to adopt it, you say that the territory south of it is a barren, worthless desert--that slavery can never obtain a substantial foothold there. Why, then, do you make the subject one of so much importance? Why do you risk all the calamities of civil war and a disruption of the Union for such a poor reward? We should distrust all your statements, we should disbelieve all your professions of patriotism, if we could for a moment credit the assertion that you would break up the Union on such a worthless pretext. You ring the changes in our ears upon the decision of the Supreme Court in your favor. Let me tell you plainly that there is no section of the Union in which the decisions of that court have been so fully and fairly respected and observed as in the free States of the North. With that you should be satisfied.