Mr. ALLEN:—I wish to ask the attention of the Conference for only one moment to the true aspect of the question now before us. We are asked if we will suffer the Union to be destroyed on account of the Territory of New Mexico. Let me ask these gentlemen who it is that proposes to break up and destroy the Union? It is the South—it is not the North. But all that I pass by.
If it were merely a question of who should have the beneficial possession of our present unoccupied territory, we would give that up at once to the South. But it is not a question of possession at all. It is the question which shall control and give direction to the policy of the country—the institutions of Slavery or the institutions of Freedom! You ask for a provision in the Constitution which will place that policy under the control of the institutions of slavery. This we cannot grant you.
We of the North stand where our fathers did, who resisted the Stamp Act; who threw overboard the tea in Boston harbor. We have been taught to resist the smallest beginnings of evil; that this is the true policy. Obsta principii was the motto of our fathers. It is ours. The debates of this Conference, and those of the Convention of 1787, will stand in a strange contrast to each other.
Mr. BALDWIN:—I now offer the minority report of the committee, with the accompanying resolutions as an amendment to—
The PRESIDENT:—The gentleman from Connecticut is not in order.
The vote was then taken by States, upon the amendment offered by Mr. Curtis, to the substitute proposed by Mr. Franklin, for the first article of the section reported by the General Committee, with the following result:
Ayes.—Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, and New York—6.
Noes.—New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio—12.
And the amendment was lost.
Mr. CORNING:—I dissent from the vote of New York.