laughter and applause.]

Thus it is that the peace of the Union is destroyed; thus it is that
brother is arrayed against brother; thus it is that the people come to
consider--not how they can promote each other's interests, but how
they may successfully war upon them. And the political agitator like
the vampire fans the victim to which he clings but to destroy.

Among culprits there is none more odious to my mind than a public
officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution--the compact
between the States binding each for the common defence and general
welfare of the other--yet retains to himself a mental reservation that
he will war upon the principles he has sworn to maintain, and upon the
property rights the protection of which are part of the compact of the
Union. [Applause.]

It is a crime too low to be named before this assembly: It is one
which no man with self-respect would ever commit. To swear that he
will support the Constitution--to take an office which belongs in many
of its relations to all the States; and to use it as a means of
injuring a portion of the States of whom he is thus the
representative; is treason to every thing honorable in man. It is the
base and cowardly attack of him who gains the confidence of another,
in order that he may wound him. [Applause.]

But we have heard it argued--have seen it published--a petition has
been circulated for signers, announcing that there was an
incompatibility between the sections; that the Union had been tried
long enough, and that it had proved to be necessary to separate from
those sections of the Union in which the curse of slavery existed. Ah!