I have listened to the complaints on the other side patiently, and with an ardent desire to ascertain what was the particular difficulty under which they were laboring.  Many of those who have supposed themselves aggrieved have spoken; but I confess that I am now totally unable to understand precisely what it is of which they complain.  Why, sir, the party which lately elected their President, and are prospectively to come into power, have never held an executive office under the General Government, nor has any individual of them.  It is most manifest, therefore, that the party to which I belong have as yet committed no act of which anybody can complain.  If they have fears as to the course that we may hereafter pursue, they are mere apprehensions—­a bare suspicion; arising, I fear, out of their unwarrantable prejudices, and nothing else.

I wish to ascertain at the outset whether we are right; for I tell gentlemen that, if they can convince me that I am holding any political principle that is not warranted by the Constitution under which we live, or that trenches upon their rights, they need not ask me to compromise it.  I will be ever ready to grant redress, and to right myself whenever I am wrong.  No man need approach me with a threat that the Government under which I live is to be destroyed; because I hope I have now, and ever shall have, such a sense of justice that, when any man shows me that I am wrong, I shall be ready to right it without price or compromise.

Now, sir, what is it of which gentlemen complain?  When I left my home in the West to come to this place, all was calm, cheerful, and contented.  I heard of no discontent.  I apprehended that there was nothing to interrupt the harmonious course of our legislation.  I did not learn that, since we adjourned from this place at the end of the last session, there had been any new fact intervening that should at all disturb the public mind.  I do not know that there has been any encroachment upon the rights of any section of the country since that time; I came here, therefore, expecting to have a very harmonious session.  It is very true, sir, that the great Republican party which has been organized ever since you repealed the Missouri Compromise, and who gave you, four years ago, full warning that their growing strength would probably result as it has resulted, have carried the late election; but I did not suppose that would disturb the equanimity of this body.  I did suppose that every man who was observant of the signs of the times might well see that things would result as they have resulted.  Nor do I understand now that anything growing out of that election is the cause of the present excitement that pervades the country.