"Sir, I have as much attachment to the union of these States, under the constitution of our fathers, as any freeman ought to have. I am ready to concede and sacrifice for it whatever a just and honorable man ought to sacrifice. I will do no more. I have not heeded the aspersions of those who did not understand or desired to misrepresent my conduct or opinions. The time has come when I shall not only utter them, but make them the basis of my political action here. I do not, then, hesitate to avow before this house and the country, and in the presence of the living God, that if by your legislation you seek to drive us from the Territories of California and New Mexico, purchased by the blood and treasure of the whole people, and to abolish slavery in the District, thereby attempting to fix a national degradation upon half of the States of this confederacy, _I am for disunion_; and if my physical courage be equal to the maintenance of my convictions of right and duty, I will devote all I am and all I have on earth to its consummation." "The Territories are the common property of the United States.... You are their common agents; it is your duty while they are in the territorial state to remove all impediments to their free enjoyment by both sections ... the slaveholder and the non-slaveholder. You have made the strongest declarations that you will not perform this trust; that you will appropriate to yourselves all the Territories.... Yet with these declarations on your lips, when southern men refuse to act with you in party caucuses in which you have a controlling majority--when we ask the simplest guaranty for the future--we are denounced out of doors as recusants and factionists, and indoors we are met with the cry of 'Union, union!'" "Give me securities that the power of the organization which you seek will not be used to the injury of my constituents, then you have my co-operation; but not till then.... Refuse them, and, as far as I am concerned, 'let discord reign forever.'"