The Senator from Louisiana, with these professions on his lips, proceeds to ask, doubtless with complete sincerity, but in strange forgetfulness of our country's history: "Did we ever bring this subject into Congress?" Yes, Sir, that was his inquiry,--as if there was any moment, from the earliest days of the Republic, when the supporters of Slavery ceased to bring this subject into Congress. Almost from the beginning it has been here, through the exercise of _usurped power_, nowhere given under the Constitution: for I am glad to believe that the Constitution of my country contains no words out of which Slavery, or the power to support Slavery, can be derived; and this conclusion, I doubt not, will yet be affirmed by the courts. And yet the honorable Senator asks, "Did we ever bring this subject into Congress?" The answer shall be plain and explicit. Sir, you brought Slavery into Congress, when, shortly after the adoption of the Constitution, you sanctioned it in the District of Columbia, within the national jurisdiction, and adopted that barbarous slave code, still extant on your statute-book, which the Senator from Connecticut [Mr. GILLETTE] so eloquently exposed to-night. You brought Slavery into Congress, when, at the same period, you accepted the cession of territories from North Carolina and Georgia, now constituting States of the Union, with conditions in favor of Slavery, and thus began to sanction Slavery in territories within the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress. You brought Slavery into Congress, when, at different times, you usurped a power, not given by the Constitution, over fugitive slaves, and by most offensive legislation thrust your arms into distant Northern homes. You brought Slavery into Congress, when, by express legislation, you regulated the coastwise slave-trade, and thus threw the national shield over a traffic on the coast of the United States which on the coast of Congo you justly brand as "piracy." You brought Slavery into Congress, when, from time to time, you sought to introduce new States with slaveholding Constitutions into the National Union. And, permit me to say, Sir, you brought Slavery into Congress, when you called upon us, as you have done even at this very session, to pay for slaves, and thus, in defiance of a cardinal principle of the Constitution, pressed the National Government to recognize property in man. And yet the Senator from Louisiana, with strange simplicity, says that the South only asks to be let alone. Sir, the honorable Senator borrows the language of the North, which, at each of these usurpations, exclaims, "Let us alone!" And let me say, frankly, that peace can never prevail until you do let us alone,--until this subject of Slavery is banished from Congress by the triumph of Freedom,--until Slavery is driven from its usurped foothold, and Freedom is made _national_ instead of _sectional_,--and until the National Government is brought