Now about these propositions. I do not see any thing alarming in them. I have not set to work to pick flaws in them. Leave that to the lawyers. I don't care much about them, nor does the North care about them. If the South will take them and be satisfied—if they will stop this clamor about slavery and slavery extension, I think she had better have them. For one, I am sick of the whole subject.
Let us then go about the work like sensible men; let us stop making long speeches and picking flaws in each other. It is a matter of business, and pretty important business. Let us consider it as such, and from this moment let us throw aside all feeling, and set about coming to some understanding. We can do it to-day as well as next week. I do not know that these propositions are the best that can be made; but if they are not, let us talk the matter over like good Union men, and see what is best. When we can find that out, let us agree. If we stay here and make speeches until doomsday, we shall be no better off. I am for action, and coming to an immediate decision.
Mr. COALTER:—If the vote of Missouri is to be taken as an evidence of her devotion to the Union, it must also be understood with this qualification: Her interests and her sympathies unite her closely with the South. She feels, in common with others, her share of anxiety for the future. She is devoted to the Union, and at the same time she insists that it is fair and right that these guarantees should be given.
It has been distinctly avowed on this floor that the people of certain sections of the North abhor slavery. Ought we not to be distrustful when a party entertaining such sentiments comes into supreme power? If Massachusetts abhors slavery, how long will it be before she will abhor slaveholders?
Ignorance is the source of all our difficulties. The people of the North know little of the condition of the negro in a state of slavery. We know that the four millions of blacks in the South are better off in all respects than any similar number of laborers anywhere.
But I rise only to correct a false impression in regard to Missouri. I have only besides to express my full conviction that if the North will not give us these guarantees, we are henceforth a divided people.
Mr. GOODRICH:—Mr. President, the object of this Convention, assembled on the call or invitation of Virginia, is, as set forth in the preamble and resolutions of her General Assembly,
"To restore the Union and Constitution in the spirit in which they were established by the fathers of the Republic;" or, as otherwise expressed, "to adjust the present unhappy controversies in the spirit in which the Constitution was originally made, and consistently with its principles."
This agrees, in substance, with the purpose of the Republican party, which, in the words of the Philadelphia platform, is declared to be that of "restoring the action of the Federal Government to the principles of Washington and Jefferson."
Virginia announces to the other States that she "is desirous of employing every reasonable means," and is "willing to unite" with them "in an earnest effort" for the accomplishment of this common end and object of that State and the Republican party; and she is moved to make this her "final effort," by "the deliberate opinion of her General Assembly, that unless the unhappy controversy which now divides the States of this Confederacy shall be satisfactorily adjusted, a permanent dissolution of the Union is inevitable," and by a desire to "avert so dire a calamity."