"I have a word or two more to say. My honorable friend from Illinois, as it seemed to me--his nature is impulsive, and perhaps he was carried further than he intended--seemed to intimate that the President of the United States had not acted sincerely in this matter; that his usurpation was a clear one, and that he was to be censured for that usurpation. What has he done? He has vetoed this bill. He had a constitutional right to do so. Not only that; if he believed that the effect of the bill would be that which he states in his Veto Message, he was not only authorized but bound to veto it. His oath is to 'preserve' as well as to 'protect and defend' the Constitution of the United States; and believing, as he does, and in that opinion I concur, that this bill assails the Constitution of the United States, he would have been false to his plighted faith if he had not returned it with his objections. "He desires--and who does not?--that the Union shall be restored as it originally existed. He has a policy which he thinks is best calculated to effect it. He may be mistaken, but he is honest. Congress may differ with him. I hope they will agree sooner or later, because I believe, as I believe in my existence, that the condition in which the country now is can not remain without producing troubles that may shake our reputation, not only in our own eyes, but in the eyes of the civilized world. Let the day come when we shall be again together, and then, forgetting the past, hailing the present, and looking forward to the future, we shall remember, if we remember the past at all, for the exhibition of valor and gallantry displayed on both sides, and find in it, when we become one, a guarantee that in the future no foreign hostilities are to be dreaded, and that no civil discord need be apprehended." Mr. Trumbull said: "The opinion of Judge Curtis, from which the Senator read, was the opinion of a dissenting judge, entitled to very great credit on account of the learning and ability of that judge, but it was not the opinion of the court, and an examination of the entire opinion, which is very lengthy, would perhaps not sustain the precise principles the Senator from Maryland laid down. But, sir, I have another authority which I think of equal weight with that of Judge Curtis--not pronounced in a judicial tribunal it is true, but by one of the most eminent members of the bar in this nation; I may say by a gentleman who stands at the head of the bar in America at this time--an opinion pronounced, too, in the exercise of official duties; and I propose to read a few sentences from that opinion, for it is to be found reported in the Congressional Globe containing the proceedings of this body less than ninety days ago. This is the language: