Presidential Candidates:: Containing Sketches, Biographical, Personal and Political, of Prominent Candidates for the Presidency in 1860Bartlett, D. W. (David W.)
History
Presidential Candidates:: Containing Sketches, Biographical, Personal and Political, of Prominent Candidates for the Presidency in 1860
Bartlett, D. W. (David W.)
Statesmen -- United States; United States -- Biography
"Mr. Cutting then arose and replied to the remarks made by Mr.
Breckinridge on Thursday last. He adverted to his course in moving
that the Senate Nebraska bill be committed to the committee of the
whole on the state of the Union, and said that at that time he
gave his reasons for the act, and declared that there was no
gentleman on this floor who was to be regarded as a stronger and
more zealous advocate of the great principle which the measure was
said to contain--that of non-intervention--than he was. But the
bill required amendment and discussion before it could receive
that support to which, in his opinion, it was entitled. After this
subject had been disposed of, and after the elapse of some two
days, a gentleman from a slaveholding State, who had had no lot or
parcel in its discussion, as a volunteer merely, came into the
House, and thought it not incompatible with his character as a
leading member to undertake to assail his motives; though it was
true that he disclaimed any intention of attacking them. The
gentleman [Mr. Breckinridge] came into the House, with
concentrated wrath and bitterness, to assail him for having, in
his place, and under his responsibility as a member, stated his
views frankly as to the direction this bill ought to take.
"The gentleman had charged him with being a secret enemy of the
bill, and, while professing friendship for it, as having taken a
course which would end in its destruction. When did the gentleman
from Kentucky ever hear him say he was friendly to the bill? The
gentleman was present, and heard him declare his opposition to it
in the shape in which it came from the Senate, and the belief that
not only himself, but a majority of the House, would be found
against it. Had not the gentleman sufficient perspicuity of
understanding to know the difference between the principles
involved in a measure and a bill which professed to carry them
out? And when he [Mr. C.] declared in this House frankly and
openly, before the question on the motion to commit was put, that
he was against the bill, but in favor of the principles which it
professed to enact, how came the gentleman to undertake to declare
that he [Mr. C.] had declared himself a friend of the bill,
against the record, against the reports that appeared everywhere?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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