purpose? To consider, to deliberate, to debate--what? What course of action shall, by mutual agreement, be taken by the States whom this convention will represent, what manner of resistance, what mode of redress? Now, sir, in all matters of this kind, in all revolutions, in all dissolutions of the ties which bind us together, the first step is the great difficulty. It is so even in social and private life; it is so in the married state. The first wanton and public outrage on the part of one towards the other of the parties is easily followed by such steps as end in total and thorough estrangement. Well, then, suppose no measures are proposed which look to a separation of the Union, as I have no reason to suppose that any will be proposed looking to that as an object, I fully believe that that convention in Mississippi which terminated its session in the call for this convention was influenced by high and patriotic motives, seeking to preserve and not to destroy the Union. If I wanted anything to satisfy me of that (besides other reasons which I have), the very fact that the convention was presided over by the venerable and venerated Chief Justice Sharkey, a most learned jurist and patriotic gentleman, would be sufficient for me. But when we have ascertained what people design by any particular movement, we are far, very far, from having ascertained what they may accomplish by it. Now, suppose this meeting should resolve that, by a common concurrence of the States represented, laws should be passed, police regulations be adopted, in those States, of the most irritating and offensive kind towards the Northern portion of the Union: such a course will not appear surprising, if we bear in mind the fact that slaves are constantly taken from our ports by vessels that visit them for the purpose of commerce; that, thus taken, they are withheld from us, and their seducers are neither discountenanced at home, nor restored to us for punishment; and that a flagrant wrong on one side naturally provokes to measures at once of protection and retaliation from the other. But, Mr. President, the moment these States, by mutual compact and agreement, have come to a resolution to adopt a particular course of measures upon this subject, they have left the platform of the Constitution; they are no longer upon it, because the Constitution expressly forbids a State to enter into any compact or agreement with another State without the consent of Congress. When this first step is taken, the process is easy and need not be traced to a final dissolution of our present Union: and, therefore, in the event of the meeting of this convention, with the slavery question in the situation I have mentioned, I have, I repeat, gloomy apprehensions of what may be, and most probably will be the result upon the destinies of our country. Force, Mr. President, cannot keep the States of this Union together, cannot preserve the constitutional Union. I