The weight of his remarks was directed to showing that the complaint of Northern attacks on slavery as existing in the Southern States, or of Northern schemes to compel the abolition of slavery, was utterly groundless and fallacious.

At the same time he pointed out the way in which slavery was continually used to unite the South against the North.
"This feeling," he said, "always carefully kept alive, and maintained at too intense a heat to admit discrimination or reflection, is a lever of great power in our political machine.
There is not and never has been a disposition in the North to interfere with these interests of the South.

Such interference has never been supposed to be within the power of government; nor has it been in any way attempted.

The slavery of the South has always been regarded as a matter of domestic policy left with the States themselves, and with which the Federal government had nothing to do.

Certainly, sir, I am and ever have been of that opinion.