Notwithstanding that irrefutable answer to the charge, it has been reiterated, and, as before, located in the year 1852.  It is known to you all that our discussions were in 1851.  I then favored a convention of the Southern States, that we might take counsel together, as to the future which was to be anticipated, from the legislation of 1850.  The decision of the State was to acquiesce in the legislation of that year, with a series of resolutions in relation to future encroachments.  I submitted to the decision of the people, and have in good faith adhered to the line of conduct which it imposed.  Therefore in 1852 there is no record from which to disprove any allegation, but you know the charge to be utterly unfounded, and charity alone can suppose its reiteration was innocently made.  Neither in that year nor in any other, have I ever advocated a dissolution of the Union, or the separation of the State of Mississippi from the Union, except as the last alternative, and have not considered the remedies which lie within that extreme as exhausted, or ever been entirely hopeless of their success.  I hold now, as announced on former occasions, that whilst occupying a seat in the Senate, I am bound to maintain the Government of the Constitution, and in no manner to work for its destruction; that the obligation of the oath of office, Mississippi’s honor and my own, require that, as a Senator of the United States, there should be no want of loyalty to the Constitutional Union.  Whenever Mississippi shall resolve to separate from the Confederacy, I will expect her to withdraw her representatives from the General Government, to which they are accredited.  If I should ever, whilst a Senator, deem it my duty to assume an attitude of hostility to the Union, I should, immediately thereupon, feel bound to resign the office, and return to my constituency to inform them of the fact.  It was this view of the obligations of my position, which caused me, on various occasions, to repel, with such indignation, the accusation of being a disunionist, while holding the office of Senator of the United States.

I have been represented as having, advocated “Squatter Sovereignty” in a speech made at Bangor, in the State of Maine, A paragraph has been published purporting to be an extract from that speech, and vituperative criticism, and forced construction have exhausted themselves upon it, with deductions which are considered authorized, because they are not denied in the paragraph published.

In this case, as in that of the charge in relation to my position in 1852, there is no record with which to answer.  I never made a speech at Bangor.  And a fair mind would have sought for the speech to see how far the general context explained the paragraph, before indulging in hostile criticism.

Senator Douglas, in a speech at Alton, adopting the paragraph published, and evidently drawing his opinion from the unfair construction which had been put upon it, claims to quote from a speech made by me at Bangor, to sustain the position taken by him at Freeport.  He says: