Senate in 1850, to present the whole in this connected form; to the
end that the case may be fairly before those by whose judgment I am
willing to stand or fall.

Jefferson Davis.



Extracts From Speeches in U.S. Senate.


In the Senate of the United States, May 8, 1850, in presenting the
Resolutions of the Legislature of Mississippi:

It is my opinion that justice will not be done to the South, unless
from other promptings than are about us here--that we shall have no
substantial consideration offered to us for the surrender of an equal
claim to California. No security against future harassment by Congress
will probably be given. The rain-bow which some have seen, I fear was
set before the termination of the storm. If this be so, those who have
been first to hope, to relax their energies, to trust in compromise
promises, will often be the first to sound the alarm when danger again
approaches. Therefore I say, if a reckless and self-sustaining
majority shall trample upon her rights, if the Constitutional equality
of the States is to be overthrown by force, private and political
rights to be borne down by force of numbers, then, sir, when that
victory over Constitutional rights is achieved, the shout of triumph
which announces it, before it is half uttered, will be checked by the
united, the determined action of the South, and every breeze will
bring to the marauding destroyers of those rights, the warning: woe,