Your appointment finds me in a private station, with which I am entirely content. For the first time in my life I am called to political office. With none of the experience possessed by others to smooth the way of labor, I might well hesitate. But I am cheered by the generous confidence which throughout a lengthened contest persevered in sustaining me, and by the conviction, that, amidst all seeming differences of party, the sentiments of which I am the known advocate, and which led to my original selection as candidate, are dear to the hearts of the people throughout this Commonwealth. I derive, also, a most grateful consciousness of personal independence from the circumstance, which I deem it frank and proper thus publicly to declare and place on record, that this office comes to me unsought and undesired. Acknowledging the right of my country to the service of her sons wherever she chooses to place them, and with a heart full of gratitude that a sacred cause is permitted to triumph through me, I now accept the post of Senator. I accept it as the servant of Massachusetts, mindful of the sentiments solemnly uttered by her successive Legislatures, of the genius which inspires her history, and of the men, her perpetual pride and ornament, who breathed into her that breath of Liberty which early made her an example to her sister States. In such a service, the way, though new to my footsteps, is illumined by lights which cannot be missed. I accept it as the servant of the Union, bound to study and maintain the interests of all parts of our country with equal patriotic care, to discountenance every effort to loosen any of those ties by which our fellowship of States is held in fraternal company, and to oppose all _sectionalism_, in whatsoever form, whether in unconstitutional efforts by the North to carry so great a boon as Freedom into the Slave States, in unconstitutional efforts by the South, aided by Northern allies, to carry the _sectional_ evil of Slavery into the Free States, or in any efforts whatsoever to extend the _sectional_ domination of Slavery over the National Government. With me the Union is twice blessed: first, as powerful guardian of the repose and happiness of thirty-one States, clasped by the endearing name of country; and next, as model and beginning of that all-embracing Federation of States, by which unity, peace, and concord will finally be organized among the Nations. Nor do I believe it possible, whatever the delusion of the hour, that any part can be permanently lost from its well-compacted bulk. _E Pluribus Unum_ is stamped upon the national coin, the national territory, and the national heart. Though composed of many parts united into one, the Union is separable only by a crash which shall destroy the whole.