“In other words, it is the deliberate, settled, fixed opinion of the honorable gentleman who made that speech, that rather than the extension of slavery _one foot_,--yes sir, there is no qualification, _one foot_,--he would prefer a disunion of these states; he would prefer all the horrors of civil war, all the monstrous, untold, and almost inconceivable atrocities of a servile war; he would pile the earth with dead; he would light up heaven with midnight conflagrations; all this, yea, and more,--all the vials of wrath which God in his providence might see fit to pour down upon us, he would suffer, rather than permit, not one man who is now free to be made a slave,--that would be extravagant enough,--but rather than permit one man who now stands upon the soil of North Carolina a slave, to stand a slave upon the soil of New Mexico: “Yes, sir, here is a sacrifice of life and happiness, and of all that is dear to the black and white races together, to a mere idealism,--a sacrifice proposed by a gentleman who claims to be a philosopher, and to speak the language of calm deliberation,--a sacrifice of our glorious Union proposed by a patriot,--not rather than freemen should be made slaves,--not rather than the condition of even one human being should be made worse than it now is,--but rather than one man shall remove from one spot of the earth to another without an improvement of his condition, without passing from slavery to freedom. Sir, after that announcement, thus made, which I beg to say, sir, I did not seek,--for the speech I have never read; the extract I found in one of the newspapers of the day,--after that announcement, talk not of southern violence, talk not of southern egotism, talk not of our disposition to sacrifice to our peculiar notions and our peculiar relations, the peace and happiness, the growing prosperity, and the mutual concord of this great Union. Now, sir, if that announcement goes abroad into the southern country, attended by the wanton application of this Wilmot proviso, an irritating commentary upon that patriotic announcement, what can be expected? What but the deepest emotions of indignation in the bosoms of those born and brought up where slavery exists, and taking totally different views of the institution from those which are taken by the honorable gentleman who has placed himself upon this cool and deliberate, humane and philosophical position.”