And if both parties when they spoke of the Union had meant the same thing, which manifestly they did not, the phrase, “Union man,” would still have been ambiguous. In the debates of the delegates it came out clearly that there were two kinds of Union men in the Convention, conditional and unconditional. Mr. Sheeley of Independence said: “I admire this Union, and while perhaps I will stick in it as long as any man in the Convention, who is not an unconditional Union man,” thus openly announcing himself a conditional Union man. Mr. Vanbuskirk of Holt County, in an able speech, declared that on the part of some of the Convention, “the whole matter is brought to this point, that it is Union upon condition; that is, Union with the ‘buts’ and ‘ifs,’ or ‘under existing circumstances.’” Of course that kind of Unionism was a mockery. Only about six months before, the rabid secessionist, Yancey of Alabama, had proclaimed himself to be a pre-eminent Union man, but declared that if Abraham Lincoln should be elected to the Presidency, he would favor immediate secession. That was being a Calhoun Unionist, a Unionist according to a construction of the Constitution that was utterly at variance with John Marshall’s interpretation of it. In 1861, in Missouri, whenever a man said, “I am a Union man in the Constitution,” we knew for a certainty that his Unionism was conditional, and that he should probably be classed with the secessionists. Let us notice the conditions on which the loyalty of these “but” and “if” Unionists was based. First, they felt themselves to be under no obligation to sustain the Union unless the Federal government should guarantee to them their rights. They meant by this, their rights in slave property. The people of the Northern States must not obstruct by legislation, or in any other way, the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law; in fact must aid the Southern slaveholder in recapturing his fleeing property. In the second place, they demanded a compromise by which slavery south of 36° 30′ should be protected in the territories. In demanding no more than this, many of them thought that they were making very generous concessions to the North, since they believed that, under the Constitution, the Southern slaveholder had the undoubted right to go into any territory of the United States with his human chattels, and there be protected in both person and slave property.