“The Senator from South Carolina tells us that the speech is to be condemned, and he quotes the venerable and distinguished Senator from Michigan [Mr. CASS]. I do not know what Mr. Sumner could stand. The Senator says he could not stand the censure of the Senator from Michigan. _I could_; and I believe there are a great many in this country whose powers of endurance are as great as my own. I have great respect for that venerable Senator; but the opinions of no Senator here are potential in the country. This is a Senate of equals. The judgment of the country is to be made up on the records formed here. The opinions of the Senator from Michigan, and of other Senators here, are to go into the record, and will receive the verdict of the people. By that I am willing to stand. “The Senator from South Carolina tells us that the speech is to be condemned. It has gone out to the country. It has been printed by the million. It has been scattered broadcast amongst seventeen millions of Northern freemen who can read and write. The Senator condemns it; South Carolina condemns it: but South Carolina is only a part of this Confederacy, and but a part of the Christian and civilized world. South Carolina makes rice and cotton, but South Carolina contributes little to make up the judgment of the Christian and civilized world. I value her rice and cotton more than I do her opinions on questions of scholarship and eloquence, of patriotism or of liberty. “Mr. President, I have no desire to assail the Senator from South Carolina, or any other Senator in this body; but I wish to say now that we have had quite enough of this asserted superiority, social and political. We were told, some time ago, by the Senator from Alabama [Mr. CLAY], that those of us who entertained certain sentiments fawned upon him and other Southern men, if they permitted us to associate with them. This is strange language to be used in this body. I never fawned upon that Senator. I never sought his acquaintance,--and I do not know that I should feel myself honored, if I had it. I treat him as an equal here,--I wish always to treat him respectfully; but when he tells me or my friends that we fawn upon him or his associates, I say to him that I have never sought, and never shall seek, any other acquaintance than what official intercourse requires with a man who declared, on the floor of the Senate, that he would do what Henry Clay once said ‘no gentleman could do,’--hunt a fugitive slave.