"* * * We are not lacking for men in the United States, at the present time who want to make it appear that the United States have a right to lord it over the Territories, the same as the British government used to over their colonies. Thousands of you before me were citizens of the United States, where you came from. You had the right of franchise--had a right to say who should be your governor and who should be municipal and state officers. You came out here by thousands or by tens of thousands. _By what right or upon what principle are you disfranchised_? Can anybody tell me? Say some: 'You need not have come out here unless you had a mind to.' Of course not. But we had a mind to; we were American citizens before we came out, and we have transgressed no law in coming; and by what rule are we deprived of our citizenship. If we had a right then to vote for anything, we have a right now; and nobody has a right to crowd this or that man upon us without our consent,--much less have they a right to dragoon us into servility to their unconstitutional exactions. "* * * In the Declaration of Independence, it is stated [as one of the just causes of complaint against the English government] that the people had rulers placed over them, and they had no voice in their election. Read that instrument. It describes our wrongs as plainly as it did the wrongs the people then labored under and discarded. Our government is doing the very things against us that our fathers complained of--'They send armed mercenaries among us to subjugate us.' What is our government doing? The same thing." "As American citizens and patriots, and as sons of those venerable sires can we, without disgracing ourselves, our fathers and our nation, submit to these insults, and tamely bow to such tyranny? We cannot do it, and we will not do it. We will rally round the Constitution, and declare our rights as American citizens; and we will sustain them in the face of high heaven and the world. "No man need have any qualms of conscience that he is doing wrong. You are patriots, standing by your rights and opposing the wrong which affects all lovers of freedom as well as you; for those acts of aggression have a withering, deadly effect, and are gnawing like a canker worm at the very vitals of civil and religious liberty. You are standing by the Declaration of Independence, and sustaining the Constitution which was given by inspiration of God; and you are the only people in the United States at this time that are doing it. You dare do it, and you feel right about the matter. "* * * We are not taking any steps contrary to the laws and the Constitution of the United States, but in everything we are upholding and sustaining them. _Gentlemen, hands off_! We are free men; we possess equal rights with other men; and if you send your sealed orders [2] here, we may break the seal, and it shall be the opening of the first seal!"