resistance be entirely crushed out. I have expressed that opinion, and I
entertain it to-night. It is denied that there is any tendency to the
nationalization of slavery in these States.

Mr. Brooks, of South Carolina, in one of his speeches, when they were
presenting him canes, silver plate, gold pitchers, and the like, for
assaulting Senator Sumner, distinctly affirmed his opinion that when this
Constitution was formed it was the belief of no man that slavery would
last to the present day. He said, what I think, that the framers of our
Constitution placed the institution of slavery where the public mind
rested in the hope that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. But
he went on to say that the men of the present age, by their experience,
have become wiser than the framers of the Constitution, and the invention
of the cotton gin had made the perpetuity of slavery a necessity in this
country.

As another piece of evidence tending to this same point: Quite recently
in Virginia, a man--the owner of slaves--made a will providing that after
his death certain of his slaves should have their freedom if they should
so choose, and go to Liberia, rather than remain in slavery. They chose
to be liberated. But the persons to whom they would descend as property
claimed them as slaves. A suit was instituted, which finally came to the
Supreme Court of Virginia, and was therein decided against the slaves
upon the ground that a negro cannot make a choice; that they had no legal
power to choose, could not perform the condition upon which their freedom
depended.

I do not mention this with any purpose of criticizing it, but to connect
it with the arguments as affording additional evidence of the change of
sentiment upon this question of slavery in the direction of making it