it, for the purpose of putting into it certain institutions which
some of us disapprove, and that, too, whether the people inhabiting
that territory themselves approve of it or not?

I am almost inclined to believe that they who first contrived this
demand must have done so for the sake of presenting a condition
which they knew beforehand must be rejected, or which, if accepted,
must humiliate us in the dust forever. In point of fact, this
proposal covers no question of immediate moment which may not be
settled by another and less obnoxious one. Why is it, then,
persevered in, and the other rejected? The answer is obvious. You
want the Union dissolved. You want to make it impossible for
honorable men to become reconciled. If it be, indeed, so, then on
you, and you alone, shall rest the responsibility of what may
follow. If the Union be broken up, the reason why it happened shall
remain on record forever. It was because you rejected one form of
settling a question which might be offered and accepted with honor,
in order to insist upon another which you knew we could not accept
without disgrace. I answer for myself only when I say that, if the
alternative to the salvation of the Union be only that the people of
the United States shall, before the Christian nations of the earth,
print in broad letters upon the front of their charter of republican
government the dogma of slave propagandism over the remainder of the
countries of the world, I will not consent to brand myself with what
I deem such disgrace, let the consequences be what they may.

But it is said that this answer closes the door of reconciliation.
The slaveholding States will secede, and what then?

This brings me to the last point which I desire to touch today, the