To preserve the Constitution of the country is the highest
duty of the Senate, the highest duty of Congress--to preserve it and to
perpetuate it, that we may hand down the glories which we have received
to our children and to our posterity, and to generations far beyond us.
We are, Senators, in positions where history is to take notice of the
course we pursue.
History is to record us. Is it to record that when the destruction of
the Union was imminent; when we saw it tottering to its fall; when we
saw brothers arming their hands for hostility with one another, we stood
quarrelling about points of party politics; about questions which we
attempted to sanctify and to consecrate by appealing to our conscience
as the source of them? Are we to allow such fearful catastrophes to
occur while we stand trifling away our time? While we stand thus,
showing our inferiority to the great and mighty dead, showing our
inferiority to the high positions which we occupy, the country may be
destroyed and ruined; and to the amazement of all the world, the great
Republic may fall prostrate and in ruins, carrying with it the very hope
of that liberty which we have heretofore enjoyed; carrying with it, in
place of the peace we have enjoyed, nothing but revolution and havoc and
anarchy.
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