destruction; that the obligation of the oath of office, Mississippi's
honor and my own, require that, as a Senator of the United States,
there should be no want of loyalty to the Constitutional Union.
Whenever Mississippi shall resolve to separate from the Confederacy, I
will expect her to withdraw her representatives from the General
Government, to which they are accredited. If I should ever, whilst a
Senator, deem it my duty to assume an attitude of hostility to the
Union, I should, immediately thereupon, feel bound to resign the
office, and return to my constituency to inform them of the fact. It
was this view of the obligations of my position, which caused me, on
various occasions, to repel, with such indignation, the accusation of
being a disunionist, while holding the office of Senator of the United
States.

I have been represented as having, advocated "Squatter Sovereignty" in
a speech made at Bangor, in the State of Maine, A paragraph has been
published purporting to be an extract from that speech, and
vituperative criticism, and forced construction have exhausted
themselves upon it, with deductions which are considered authorized,
because they are not denied in the paragraph published.

In this case, as in that of the charge in relation to my position in
1852, there is no record with which to answer. I never made a speech
at Bangor. And a fair mind would have sought for the speech to see how
far the general context explained the paragraph, before indulging in
hostile criticism.

Senator Douglas, in a speech at Alton, adopting the paragraph
published, and evidently drawing his opinion from the unfair
construction which had been put upon it, claims to quote from a speech