In a retrospect of my six years as a Member of the House of Representatives, I can see, and will freely admit, that my chief fault was my intense partisanship. This grew out of a conscientious feeling that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was an act of dishonor, committed by a dominating party controlled by slaveholders and yielded to by leading northern Democrats, headed by Douglas, with a view on his part to promote his intense ambition to be President of the United States. I felt that this insult to the north should be resented by the renewed exclusion, by act of Congress, of slavery north of the line of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes. This feeling was intensified by my experience in Kansas during the investigation of its affairs. The recital by the Free State men of their story, and the appearance and conduct of the "border ruffians," led me to support extreme measures. The political feebleness of Mr. Buchanan, and the infamy of the Dred Scott decision, appeared to me conclusive evidence of the subserviency of the President and the Supreme Court to the slave power. The gross injustice to me personally, and the irritating language of southern Members in the speakership contest, aroused my resentment, so that in the campaign of 1860 I was ready to meet the threats of secession with those of open war. It was unfortunate that the south at this time was largely represented in Congress by men of the most violent opinions. Such men as Keitt, Hindman, Barksdale, and Rust, were offensive in their conduct and language. They were of that class in the south who believed that the people of the north were tradesmen, hucksters, and the like, and therefore were cowards; that one southern man was equal in a fight to four northern men; that slavery was a patent of nobility, and that the owner of slaves was a lord and master. It is true that among the southern Members there were gentlemen of a character quite different. Such men as Letcher, Aiken and Bocock entertained no such opinions, but were courteous and friendly. But even these shared in the opinions of their people that, as slavery was recognized by the constitution, as an institution existing in many of the states, it should not be excluded from the common territory of the Union, except by the vote of the people of a territory when assuming the dignity and power of a state. It would appear that as in 1860 the exclusion of slavery from Kansas was definitely settled by the people of that state, and that as the only region open to this controversy was New Mexico, from which slavery was excluded by natural conditions, there was no reason or ground for an attempt to disrupt the Union. In fact, this pretense for secession was abandoned by South Carolina, and the only ground taken for attempting it was the election of Mr. Lincoln as President of the United States. If this was conceded to be a just cause for secession, our government would become a rope of sand; it would be worse than