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to this work.
What belongs to the faithful servant she will do in all things, and Providence shall determine the result.
In the early part of the speech, before entering on the main argument, he referred to the pro-slavery leadership of
Butler1 and
Douglas.
Before entering upon the argument, I must say something of a general character, particularly in response to what has fallen from senators who have raised themselves to eminence on tills floor in the championship of human wrong: I mean the senator from South Carolina [Mr. Butler] and the senator from Illinois [Mr. I Douglas], who, though unlike as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, yet, like this couple, sally forth together in the same adventure.
I regret much to miss the elder senator from his seat; hut the cause against which he has run a tilt, with such ebullition of animosity, demands that the opportunity of exposing him should not be lost; and it is for the cause that I speak.
The senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments ,of honor and courage.
Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight.
I mean the harlot Slavery.
For her his tongue is always profuse in words.
Let her be impeached in character, or any proposition be made to shut her out from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or hardihood of assertion is then too great for this senator.
The frenzy of Don Quixote in behalf of his wench, Dulcinea del Toboso, is all surpassed.
The asserted rights of slavery, which shock equality of all kinds, are cloaked by a fantastic claim of equality.
If the slave States cannot enjoy what, in mockery of the great fathers of the republic, he misnames equality under the Constitution,—in other words, the full power in the national territories to compel fellow-men to unpaid toil, to separate husband and wife, and to sell little children at the auction-block,— then, sir the chivalrie senator will conduct the State of South Carolina out of the Union!
Heroic knight!
exalted senator!
a second Moses come for a second exodus!
Not content with this poor menace, which we have been twice told was “measured,” the senator, in the unrestrained chivalry of his nature, has undertaken to apply opprobious words to those who differ from him on this floor.
He calls them “sectional and fanatical;” and resistance to the usurpation of Kansas he denounces as “an uncalculating fanaticism.”
To be sure, these charges lack all grace of originality and all sentiment of truth; but the adventurous sent or does not hesitate.
He is the uncompromising, unblushing representative in this floor of a flagrant sectionalism now domineering over the republic; and yet with a ludicrous ignorance of his own position, unable to see himself as others see him, or with an effrontery which even his white head ought not to protect from rebuke, he applies to those here who resist his
