“I will not reply to that part of the speech of the
honorable Senator from Massachusetts in which he denounced
slaveholders. My opinions on this subject are well known.
I think that slaveholders have certain rights under the
Constitution of the United States; and while I never
could be one myself, and have as deep a repugnance to any
law which authorizes the holding of slaves as any other
man, yet, while I am here under oath, I will respect
their constitutional rights to the fullest extent. We
are bound to legislate for them, and they are entitled
to the protection of the Constitution of the United
States as fully as if they were here, all of them, to
speak for themselves; and especially I do not think it
proper or courteous to use such language, applied to a
whole class of people, when Senators on this floor are
with us, associating with us, who are included by the
appellation ‘slaveholder,’ so obnoxious to the Senator from
Massachusetts. Certainly I cannot characterize so harshly
any one who is a member of the same body with myself.”[66]
He then said that he intended “to put the proposition to tax
cotton and the proposition to tax slaves against each other,”
and that he would “propose to amend the amendment of the
Senator from Massachusetts by substituting a modified tax on
cotton,”--that “they are connected together, and the Senator
cannot disconnect them.” He then spoke of slave-masters again.
“The slaveholders of the Revolution were men of the highest
purity, of the greatest patriotism. At that time Slavery
was admitted to be an evil. They were men of gentleness, of
courtesy, of kindness, good hearts and good heads, nearly
all of them; and so are the great body of the slaveholders
with whom you are brought in contact in the Border States,
men of gentleness and kindness and courtesy.… Many of the
most gentlemanly, courteous, kind, and patriotic men that I
ever met in the world were slaveholders; and I think, that,
taken as a class, the slaveholders of the Border States
are men who are deserving of our commiseration, of our
kindness, rather than of our reproaches.… I do not choose
to select that class of men from among all the population
of the Southern States and tax them, and then to apply to
them opprobrious epithets.”[67]