It has been further alleged that it was the slave power which attempted to break up the government, because of its defeat, and that that power had hitherto controlled the government in its interest. In the first place, it is as well to state that as far as the executive branch of the government was concerned, there had been nothing of which to complain on the part of the Southern people. The great difficulty had been with the legislative department, which always manifested a disposition, more or less, to be aggressive on the subject of slavery, and the Southern people looked to the executive to interpose its conservative influence. The preponderance of Northern men in Congress, already increased by the admission of Oregon and Minnesota, and soon further to be increased by the admission of Kansas, had become so great, that the only hope of the South was in the executive, and when that branch of the government was also sectionalized, there was no safety for the weaker section. The people of the South had never asked the government to protect slavery; they had merely asked that it should be let alone, and left where the Constitution left it. In entering the Union, they had stipulated for a government for certain general purposes, and not one to regulate their domestic affairs; and they claimed that the government should be confined to the purposes for which it was instituted. That government had in no way acted so as to strengthen slavery, and it had not been able to comply with the express stipulation for the return of fugitive slaves. Slavery had been excluded from an immense territory by the action of the government, but it had not been carried to one foot of territory by that action. All of the new states east of the Mississippi, except Florida, had been formed out of territory originally belonging to the slave states, and they had been admitted into the Union under that provision of the Constitution which declared that such states should be admitted upon the same footing in every respect with the original states and to add to this obligation not to interfere with their domestic institutions, the states ceding the territory had expressly stipulated that there should be no interference with slavery.