made these struggles here, in the national councils, with the old flag--the
true American flag, the Eagle and the Stars and Stripes--waving over the
chamber in which we sit. He now tells us, however, that he marches off
under the State-rights banner!

Let him go. I remain. I am, where I ever have been, and ever mean to be.
Here, standing on the platform of the general Constitution,--a platform
broad enough, and firm enough, to uphold every interest of the whole
country,--I shall still be found. Intrusted with some part in the
administration of that Constitution, I intend to act in its spirit, and in
the spirit of those who framed it. Yes, sir. I would act as if our fathers,
who formed it for us, and who bequeathed it to us, were looking on me,--as
if I could see their venerable forms, bending down to behold us from the
abodes above! I would act, too, as if the eye of posterity was gazing on
me.

Standing thus, as in the full gaze of our ancestors and our posterity,
having received this inheritance from the former to be transmitted to the
latter, and feeling that, if I am born for any good, in my day and
generation, it is for the good of the whole country,--no local policy, no
local feeling, no temporary impulse, shall induce me to yield my foothold
on the Constitution and the Union. I move off under no banner not known to
the whole American People, and to their Constitution and laws. No, sir!
these walls, these columns,

"shall fly
From their firm base as soon as I."

I came into public life, sir, in the service of the United States. On that
broad altar my earliest and all my public vows have been made. I propose to