Sir, I will never submit to this degradation. If the right is conceded to any State to secede from the Union, without the consent of the other States, I am for immediate dissolution; and if the State which I have the honor in part to represent will not follow that advice, I, for one, upon my own responsibility and alone, will resign my seat in this body, and leave this government, so soon as I can prepare the small matters I shall have to arrange, _for emigration to some country where they have a government_. I would rather join the Comanches; _I will never live under a government that has not the power to enforce its laws_.... I see before me some of those men who have been fighting this corrupt organization (the Democratic party) for the last twenty years, who now turn about in dismay at the threatened disruption of the government. Why are they terror-stricken? Why do they not stand firm and denounce you as infamously connected with a plundered treasury instead of cowering before your threats? This thing has gone far enough.... Sir, this Union is to stand; it will stand when your great-grandchildren and mine shall have grown gray--aye, when they shall have gone to their last account, and their great-grandchildren shall have grown gray. But the traitors who are to-day plotting against this Union are to die. I do not say, literally, that they are all to die personally and absolutely; but they are soon to pass from the stage, and better and purer men are to take their places. God grant that that consummation, "so devoutly to be wished," may be early accomplished!... For the Union-loving men of this nation, for the true patriots of the land, there is no reasonable concession that I would not most cheerfully make; but for those men who profess to be Union men and who are Union men with an "if"; who will take all the concessions we will give them--all that they demand--and then turn about and say "your Union is dissolved," I have no respect; and for them I will do nothing. For the men who love this Union, who are prepared to march to the support of the Union, who will stand up in defense of the old flag under which their fathers fought and gloriously triumphed, I have not only the most profound respect, but to their demands I can scarce conceive anything that I would not yield. But, sir, when traitorous States come here and say, unless you yield this or that established principle or right, we will dissolve the Union, I would answer in brief words--no concession, no compromise; aye, give us strife even to blood before yielding to the demands of traitorous insolence.