I cannot permit this bill to pass without protest. It was conceived and executed in fraud.... It is one of the series of aggressions on the part of the slave power which, if permitted to be consummated, must end in the subversion of the constitution and the Union.... It strikes a death-blow at State sovereignty and popular rights.... When Missouri applied for admission as a slave State ... the North objected. They declared it was agreed to that no more slave States should be admitted into the Union.... Agitation ran high. The South then as now threatened a dissolution of the Union. The North then as now denied her power to dissolve it.... During this excitement the hearts of brave men quailed.... A new compromise was made.... As a part of this compromise slavery was forever prohibited north of 36° 30'.... The compromise was acquiesced in.... Peace again reigned through the land, ... and this peace continued until the discovery of the new doctrine of popular sovereignty.... This is called a new compromise.... We are told we must accept it because the Union is in danger.... But that set of people who have been in labor and suffering and trial for so long a time on account of the Union have passed off the stage. In their places are men who love this glorious Union and love it as it was made by the fathers; men who will not whine "danger to the Union," but brave men who will fight for this Union to the death.... The old women of the North who have been in the habit of crying out "the Union is in danger" have passed off the stage. They are dead. Their places will never be supplied, but in their stead we have a race of men who are devoted to this Union and devoted to it as Jefferson and the fathers made it and bequeathed it to us. Any aggression upon the constitution has been submitted to by the race who have gone off the stage. They were ready to compromise any principle, any thing. The men of the present day are a different race. They will compromise nothing; they are Union-loving men; they love all portions of the Union; and they will sacrifice anything but principle to save it. They will, however, make no sacrifice of principle. Never! Never! No more compromises will ever be submitted to to save the Union! If it is worth saving, it will be saved; but if you sap and undermine its foundations it must topple. It will be the legitimate result of your own action. The only way that we ever shall save this Union and make it as permanent as the everlasting hills will be by restoring it to the original foundations upon which the fathers placed it....