Mr. Butler, of South Carohna, "Would, before God, warn gentlemen, if the South was to be regarded and treated with inequality, they would tear up the instrument (the Constitution) to which they had subscribed in good faith."
Mr. KauffxMAn, of Texas, declared " Should the proposed amendment be adopted, all hopes of acquiring ter- ritory in that quarter are gone for ever. The South would never consent, under such a state of things, to add any territory to what we now possess."
Mr. Thompson, of Mississippi, denouncing the proviso, affirmed that its passage would be the dissolution of THE Union.
Mr. Mangu?!, of North Carohna : " There are now three millions of slaves penned up in the slave States, and they are an increasing population, increasing faster than the whites. And are the slaves to be always confined to their prison States V Thus we find from their own avowals that the acquisition of SLAVE TERRITORY was the Sine qua non on which the slaveholders would continue the war ; and that for such acquisition they were ready, if necessary, to dissolve the Union. Hence, the honor of the nation, the griev- ances of the claimants, the shedding of American blood upon American soil, were hollow, and false pretexts for the war, its true and sole object being the extension of human bondage.
To the confessions of the slaveholders may be added the following decisive testimony of General Cass, then a member of the Senate, given in a private letter of 19th February, 1847, but Which found its way into the news- papers : " The Wilmot Proviso will not pass the Senate.
It would be death to the war death to all hopes of get- ting an acre of territory—death to the Administration, and death to the Democratic party."