Sumner, speaking a week later, declared that they were about to determine forever the character of a new empire. An effort was made on false assumptions of fact, in violation of solemn covenants and the principles of the fathers, to open this immense region to slavery. The measures of 1850 could not by any effort of interpretation, by any wand of power, by an perverse alchemy, be transmuted into a repeal of that prohibition of slavery. The pending proposition was to abolish freedom. When the conscience of mankind was at last aroused, they were about to open a new market to the traffickers in flesh who haunted the shambles of the South. They had as much right to repudiate the purchase of Louisiana as this compact. Despite the temporary success of their political maneuvers, let them not forget that the permanent and irresistible forces were all arrayed against them. The plough, the steam engine, the railroad, the telegraph, the book, were all waging war on slavery. Its opponents could bide the storm of vituperation and calmly await the judgment of the future. There was at no time the slightest doubt that the bill would pass, and the arguments against it were in the nature of protests against a wrong that could not be averted and appeals to the future to redress it. From the beginning it had a well organized majority. But, assailed by the invectives of Chase, Seward and Sumner, it could not stand before the world undefended. There was but one man enlisted in its support at all fit to measure swords with any of these great leaders; but he was undoubtedly more than a match for them all. At midnight on March 3rd Douglas rose to close the debate. The great arguments were delivered; a safe majority was assured. While numerous Senators still wanted to be heard in support of the bill, all conceded his right to close and yielded him the floor. The scenes of that wild night, while he charged upon his foes and stood for hours at bay like a gladiator, repelling their savage assaults, are among the most memorable in our congressional history. He laughed at the charge that his bill had reopened the slavery question against the will of both political parties, as expressed in their platforms, and had disturbed the country at a time of profound tranquility. These men, he declared, who where singing paeans of praise over the legislation of 1850, were the same men who had most bitterly opposed it and predicted dire results from it, just as they were prophesying evil from the pending measure which simply carried to its legitimate conclusion the beneficent principle of the former law. The substance of all the opposition speeches was contained in their manifesto published in January. Chase in his speech had exhausted the entire argument. The others merely followed in his tracks.