Another portion say that, if a Republican President is elected, they will secede from the confederacy, and organize a separate and independent Confed… - Benjamin Stanton

We are now, probably for the first time in our history, entering a new aspect of national politics.

I take it for granted there can be no controversy about what that resistance amounts to. It can only be done by levying war against the United States. The thing threatened is treason against the United States. There can be no controversy about that.

Mr. Chairman, I desire to state, in a few words, what I regard as the real question in controversy between the political parties of the country. The Republican Party holds that African slavery is a local institution, created and sustained by State laws and usages that cannot exist beyond the limits of the State, by virtue of whose laws it is established and sustained. The Democratic Party holds that African slavery is a national institution, recognized and sustained by the Constitution of the United States throughout the entire territorial limits, where not prohibited by State constitutions and State laws... All other questions about which we differ grow out of this, and are dependent upon it.