The Senator from Michigan knows well that nothing I say can have anything but kindness for him. He has declared on this floor to-day that he listened with regret to my speech. I have never avowed on this floor how often, with heart brimming full of friendship for him, I have listened with regret to what has fallen from his lips. I have never said that he stood here to utter sentiments which seemed beyond all question disloyal to the character of the Fathers and to the true spirit of the Constitution; but this, with his permission, and in all kindness, I do now say to him. The Senator proceeded very briefly and in a cursory manner to criticise my statement of the Michigan case. Sir, my statement was founded on the actual documents. No word was mine: it was all from Jackson, from Grundy, from Buchanan, from Benton, from the Democratic leaders of that day. When the Senator criticised me, his shaft did not touch me, but fell upon them. And here I leave the Senator from Michigan. To the Senator from Illinois I should willingly yield the privilege of the common scold,--the last word; but I will not yield to him, in any discussion with me, the last argument, or the last semblance of it. He has crowned the outrage of this debate by venturing to rise here and calumniate me. He has said that I came here, took an oath to support the Constitution, and yet determined not to support a particular clause in that Constitution. To that statement I give, to his face, the flattest denial. When it was made previously on this floor by the absent Senator from South Carolina [Mr. BUTLER], I then repelled it: you shall see how explicitly and completely. I read from the debate of the 28th of June, 1854, as published in the “Globe.” Here is what I answered to the Senator from South Carolina:-- “This Senator was disturbed, when, to his inquiry, personally, pointedly, and vehemently addressed to me, whether I would join in returning a fellow-man to Slavery, I exclaimed: ‘Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?’” You will observe that the inquiry of the Senator was, whether I would join in returning my fellow-man to slavery? It was not, whether I would support any clause of the Constitution of the United States?--far from that. I then proceeded:-- “In fitful phrase, which seemed to come from unconscious excitement, so common with the Senator, he shot forth various cries about ‘dogs,’ and, among other things, asked if there was any ‘dog’ in the Constitution? The Senator did not seem to bear in mind, through the heady currents of that moment, that, by the false interpretation he fastens upon the Constitution,”-- and in which the Senator from Illinois now joins,--