It was reserved for the latter half of the nineteenth century, and for the Congress of a Republic of free men, to witness the willing abnegation of all power, save that of exacting tribute.  What Imperial Britain, with the haughtiest pretensions of unlimited power over dependent colonies, could not even attempt without the vehement protest of her greatest statesmen, is to be enforced in aggravated form, if you can enforce it, against independent States.

Good God, sir! since when has the necessity arisen of recalling to American legislators the lessons of freedom taught in lisping childhood by loving mothers; that pervade the atmosphere we have breathed from infancy; that so form part of our very being, that in their absence we would lose the consciousness of our own identity?  Heaven be praised that not all have forgotten them; that when we shall have left these familiar halls, and when force bills, blockades, armies, navies, and all the accustomed coercive appliances of despots shall be proposed and advocated, voices shall be heard from this side of the chamber that will make its very roof resound with the indignant clamor of outraged freedom.  Methinks I still hear ringing in my ears the appeal of the eloquent Representative [Hon. George H. Pendleton, of Ohio], whose Northern home looks down on Kentucky’s fertile borders:  “Armies, money, blood cannot maintain this Union; justice, reason, peace may.”

And now to you, Mr. President, and to my brother Senators, on all sides of this chamber, I bid a respectful farewell; with many of those from whom I have been radically separated in political sentiment, my personal relations have been kindly, and have inspired me with a respect and esteem that I shall not willingly forget; with those around me from the Southern States I part as men part from brothers on the eve of a temporary absence, with a cordial pressure of the hand and a smiling assurance of the speedy renewal of sweet intercourse around the family hearth.  But to you, noble and generous friends, who, born beneath other skies, possess hearts that beat in sympathy with ours; to you, who, solicited and assailed by motives the most powerful that could appeal to selfish natures, have nobly spurned them all; to you, who, in our behalf, have bared your breasts to the fierce beatings of the storm, and made willing sacrifice of life’s most glittering prizes in your devotion to constitutional liberty; to you, who have made our cause your cause, and from many of whom I feel I part forever, what shall I, can I say?  Naught, I know and feel, is needed for myself; but this I will say for the people in whose name I speak to-day:  whether prosperous or adverse fortunes await you, one priceless treasure is yours—­ the assurance that an entire people honor your names, and hold them in grateful and affectionate memory.  But with still sweeter and more touching return shall your unselfish devotion be rewarded.  When, in after days, the story of the present shall be written,