This Union is dear to me as a Union of fraternal states. It would lose its value to me if I had to regard it as a Union held together by physical force. I would be happy to know that every state now felt that fraternity which made this Union possible; and if that evidence could go out, if evidence satisfactory to the people of the South could be given, that _that_ feeling existed in the hearts of the Northern people, you might burn your statute books and we would cling to the Union still. But it is because of their conviction that hostility and not fraternity now exists in the hearts of the Northern people, that they are looking to their reserved rights and to their independent powers for their own protection. If there be any good, then, which we can do, it is by sending evidence to them of that which I fear does not exist--the purpose in your constituents to fulfill in the spirit of justice and fraternity all their constitutional obligations. If you can submit to them that evidence, I feel confidence that with the evidence that aggression is henceforth to cease, will terminate all the measures for defense. Upon you of the majority section it depends to restore peace and perpetuate the Union of equal states; upon us of the minority section rests the duty to maintain our equality and community rights; and the means in one case or the other must be such as each can control.[40]
This was the explicit confirmation of what Lincoln had said, in his Cooper Institute speech a year earlier, was the chief difficulty of the North: "We must not only let them (the South) alone, but we must somehow convince them that we do let them alone."
The best speech made on the Republican side of the chamber during this momentous session of Congress was made by Trumbull on the night of March 2. It was a speech adverse to the Crittenden Compromise, and was a reply to Crittenden's final speech in support of it. This measure was a joint resolution proposing certain amendments to the Constitution, the first of which proposed to apply the old Missouri Compromise line, of 36° 30' north latitude, to all the remaining territory of the United States, so that in all territory north of it, then owned or thereafter acquired, slavery should be prohibited, and that in all south of it, then owned or thereafter acquired, slavery should be recognized as existing, and that the right of property in slaves there should be protected by Federal law. It was offered on the 18th of December, 1860, and debated till the 2d of March following, when it was defeated by yeas 19, nays 20, all the Republicans voting against it except Seward, who did not vote and was not paired.[41]