"Thus it appears that in a common struggle for the benefit of our whole country, the senator was calculating upon the party advantages which would result from success. He quit us because he apprehended that he and his party would be absorbed by us. Well, what is to be their fate in his new alliance? Is there no absorption there? Is there no danger that the senator and his party will be absorbed by the administration party? Or does he hope to absorb that? Another motive avowed in the letter, for his desertion of us, is, that 'it would also give us the chance of effecting what is still more important to us, the union of the entire South.' What sort of an union of the South does the senator wish? Is not the South already united as a part of the common confederacy? Does he want any other union of it? I wish he would explicitly state. I should be glad, also, if he would define what he means by the South. He sometimes talks of the plantation or staple States. Maryland is partly a staple State. Virginia and North Carolina more so. And Kentucky and Tennessee have also staple productions. Are all these States parts of _his_ South? I fear, Mr. President, that the political geography of the senator comprehends a much larger South than that South which is the object of his particular solicitude; and that, to find the latter, we should have to go to South Carolina; and, upon our arrival there, trace him to Fort Hill. This is the disinterested senator from South Carolina! "But he has left no party, and joined no party! No! None. With the daily evidences before us of his frequent association, counselling and acting with the other party, he would tax our credulity too much to require us to believe that he has formed no connection with it. He may stand upon his reserved rights; but they must be mentally reserved, for they are not obvious to the senses. Abandoned no party? Why this letter proclaims his having quitted us, and assigns his reasons for doing it; one of which is, that we are in favor of that national bank which the senator himself has sustained about twenty-four years of the twenty-seven that he has been in public life. Whatever impression the senator may endeavor to make without the Senate upon the country at large, no man within the Senate, who has eyes to see, or ears to hear, can mistake his present position and party connection. If, in the speech which I addressed to the Senate on a former day, there had been a single fact stated which was not perfectly true, or an inference drawn which was not fully warranted, or any description of his situation which was incorrect, no man would enjoy greater pleasure than I should do in rectifying the error. If, in the picture which I portrayed of the senator and his course, there be any thing which can justly give him dissatisfaction, he must look to the original and not to the painter. The conduct of an eminent public man is a fair subject for exposure and animadversion.