Others say, "We swear to support the Constitution as we understand it, and we consider it an anti-slavery instrument." In other words, you swear to support an interpretation which is contrary to the plain, obvious, and common meaning of the instrument; contrary to the interpretation put upon it by its framers; contrary to that followed by all the executive and legislative departments of the government, from its first establishment until now; and contrary to that which has been adjudged to be its true interpretation by the final arbiter of its meaning. Of course, you intend to support the true meaning of the Constitution. Do you really believe that the people of the United States did not mean by their words what those words then commonly meant? Do you really doubt the historical fact of the humiliating compromise between the delegates from the Southern and Eastern States in the Philadelphia Convention, by which the latter undertook to barter the moral sense of their constituents for what was supposed to be their interest? Do you really believe that the people have suffered their servants to go on in ignorance of the true meaning for sixty years? In fact, do you venture to affirm, or do you in perfect sincerity and truthfulness believe, that your interpretation has ever at any time been considered right by the people of the United States, or by any considerable number of them? You deceive yourself with words! What is the Constitution? Not the meaning which you or I, or any third person, may please to put upon it; but that meaning, and that meaning only, which consists with its being, what it declares itself to be, the supreme law of the land. Until, therefore, you can show that the Constitution may properly receive as many different interpretations as there are oaths to support it, and still be in fact the supreme law, the one, single, definite rule for all, States as well as people, you have no right to say, "I will support the pro-slavery clauses as I understand them." To support them in any other sense than that which is affixed to them, as the supreme law of the land, is merely to evade the true meaning of your oath.