be a separated and divided people in six months from this time.  That is my firm conviction.  There is no man here who deplores it more than I do; but it is my sad and melancholy conviction that that will be the consequence.  I wish you to realize fully the danger.  I wish you to realize fully the consequences which are to follow.  You can give increased stability to this Union; you can give it an existence, a glorious existence, for great and glorious centuries to come, by now setting it upon a permanent basis, recognizing what the South considers as its rights; and this is the greatest of them all; it is that you should divide the territory by this line, and allow the people south of it to have slavery when they are admitted into the Union as States, and to have it during the existence of the territorial government.  That is all.  Is it not the cheapest price at which such a blessing as this Union was ever purchased?  You think, perhaps, or some of you, that there is no danger, that it will but thunder and pass away.  Do not entertain such a fatal delusion.  I tell you it is not so.  I tell you that as sure as we stand here disunion will progress.  I fear it may swallow up even old Kentucky in its vortex—­as true a State to the Union as yet exists in the whole Confederacy—­unless something be done; but that you will have disunion, that anarchy and war will follow it, that all this will take place in six months, I believe as confidently as I believe in your presence.  I want to satisfy you of the fact.

* * * * *

The present exasperation; the present feeling of disunion, is the result of a long-continued controversy on the subject of slavery and of territory.  I shall not attempt to trace that controversy; it is unnecessary to the occasion, and might be harmful.  In relation to such controversies, I will say, though, that all the wrong is never on one side, or all the right on the other.  Right and wrong, in this world, and in all such controversies, are mingled together.  I forbear now any discussion or any reference to the right or wrong of the controversy, the mere party controversy; but in the progress of party, we now come to a point where party ceases to deserve consideration, and the preservation of the Union demands our highest and our greatest exertions.  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.