Sir, there is no Christian nation, thus free to choose as we are, which would establish slavery.

There is a higher law than the Constitution.

I have learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less in their motives than in the policies they pursue.

But there is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same noble purposes.

The two systems slave and free-labor are incompatible. They have never permanently existed together in one country, and they never can.

I mean to say that Congress can hereafter decide whether any states, slave or free, can be framed out of Texas. If they should never be framed out of Texas, they never could be admitted.

Therefore, states are equal in natural rights.