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The Senator from Mississippi says that he has great aversion to speaking of political conven tions, and regrets that these things are dragged into the debates of the Senate, but that he is compelled to reply to me on that point. I desire the Senator to remember that he introduced that subject himself; he reviewed the action of the Charleston convention, and defended the se ceders. He condemned the action of the majority, and supported that of the minority, if I am not mistaken. In reply to him I was compelled to defend the regular organization, which he had dondemned, by defending the regulars against what he had said in defence, and justification of the seceders. But for that I should never have brought that particular subject into debate. I had no desire to refer to the action of that convention. What I said was in self-defence: What I have now to say on the point is also in selfdefence. The Senator has told us that the seven

these reasons: first, there was no Territorial Legislature in the record, nor any allusion to one; second, there was no territorial enactment before the court; third, there was no one fact in the case alluding to or connected with territorial legislation; and next, the counsel in the case never dreamed that there was any such question involved in it, and never argued it. Is it not a curious fact that a great question, concerning the fate of a great party, and in which the whole country were interested, should have been involved in the case, when the lawyers on neither side ever imagined it was there? Would not Reverdy Johnson have been able to find it out if it had been in the case? He tells you that it was not there; that nobody thought it was. It never was argued never alluded to. Nor do the court allude to it in their opinion; and yet that opinion is cited as a decision of the question. The question referred to the court, in the Kan sas-Nebraska bill, was the extent of the limitateen Democratic States were for the report which tions imposed by the Constitution on a Territorial Legislature. That was the question referred to the court, as stated by the Senator from Virginia [Mr. Hunter.] Stand by that one point, and you will never have an occasion for intervention. But the Senator said that within the last four years a new question has arisen. He did not tell us what it was. Cer tainly it was not this question of the extent of the power of the Territorial Legislature, for the debates all show that it was discussed in 1850 and 1854. What new question, then, has arisen since, to furnish even a pretext for this new article in the creed? ‛ } LL Ii

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was rejected, and that the minority of sixteen-
other States did not contain a certain democratie
State among them. Let us look at these Demo
cratic States that he speaks of. Do you call
Maryland one of them? along
Mr. DAVIS. She ought to be. si
Mr. DOUGLAS. Is she so? ja
Mr. DAVIS.I hope she will be so.
Mr. DOUGLAS.
tainty is another.
Maryland in 1856;
Mr. DAVIS.
majority.ward

Hope is one thing, and cor-
Mr. Buchanan hoped to have
but did he get her vote?
No; nor Illinois either, by

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Mr. DOUGLAS. You said you were talking of electoral votes; and we got the Illinois elec toral vote.

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The Senator from Mississippi has got one idea into his brain, and he has magnified it so much that it is expanding till, I am afraid, it will drive Mr. DAVIS. By a division of the Opposition. out almost all other ideas. It is that protection Mr. DOUGLAS. No matter. We got it over is the end of government. That is true, subject all enemies. Furthermore, you arraigned Illito certain limitations. By the "end" he means nois as not being a Democratic State, when she the object of all government. It is subject to never failed to give her electoral vote for the limitations. Protection to the extent and in the Democratic nominee. Can you say as much of way prescribed in the Constitution, is the object Mississippi?” articul of the government. I will give you protection to slave property, and every other species of property, to the fullest extent the Constitution authorizes and requires me. If the Senator does not want to carry his protection further than the Constitution goes, there is no difference be tween us. If he does, I cannot go with him beyond that point. .....'

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The Senator complains that in what is known as the Harper article, I placed him in a false position by the quotation I made on that point. I can only say to him that I never dreamed of placing him in a false position, and did not intend it. When he published his note afterwards, I did not reply to it, because then I did not comprehend what he meant; but his explanation to day shows that probably one extract, which I used for one purpose, may have put him in a false position on another point, which did not occur to my mind at the time. I am glad he has corrected it, for I never imagined that I had done so, and I would at any moment have cor rected it; for, sir, never will I do injustice to any gentleman, without seizing the earliest opportu

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by, after I discover the fact, to make reparation.

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{"Mr. DAVIS Pretty much. it tedt 97
Mr. DOUGLAS. Can you quite as much?
Mr. DAVIS. If the Senator will allow me, I
will put him straight there. Mississippi has
once given a vote not for the Democratic candi-
date; but Illinois would have done so the last
time, but for the fact of there being three tickets
in the field, as was shown by the vote. Wriggle
out of that, if you can.

Mr. DOUGLAS. I do not wish to wriggle out of any thing. I take the records and the facts. In 1856 we gave the electoral vote of Illinois to James Buchanan by nine thousand majority over Fremont. Whether or not Fillmore's running hurt us or helped us is a disputed question; but the opinion of Governor Richardson, who was the standard-bearer at the time, was that Fillmore's running injured Buchanan and defeated him for Governor. My own opinion, at the opening of the canvass, was that Fillmore would help us; but I was convinced, before the election, that his running was an injury to us; and I think every Democratic candidate in the field' came to that conclusion Illinois has never failed the Democracy heretofore in any Presi

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dertial struggle. It is rather hard to taunt her with not being a Democratic State, and then to come in and claim Kentucky as a certain Democratic State. How many times has she voted Democratic in your lifetime and mine? She is a glorious State, and has produced as many eminent orators and statesmen as any other in the Union; the State of Henry Clay, who was the pride of the whole country; but still, when did she give her vote for the Democratic party, except at the last election and once for General Jackson? She has been pretty uniformly against the Democratic party.

very nearly balanced. New York was lost to the Democratic party except for the same cause. Pennsylvania has suffered in the same way. Ohio has always been carried, except when this question was bearing us down. We carried it even for Cass. Indiana has never failed us, I believe, since 1840. Every northern State has failed us at times except Illinois, and yet she is to be disfranchised and overruled because she is not "certain!"

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I should like to know how many States will be certain," if you repudiate the Cincinnati platform, strike away the flag-staff, pull down the Tennessee, too, is claimed as a certain Demo-old Democratic banner, and run up this new cratic State. How did she vote in 1852, when one; this Yancey flag of intervention by ConPresident Pierce was elected, and in 1844, when gress for slavery in the Territories in all cases Polk was elected? It strikes nie that she and where the people do not want it. How many do Kentucky both voted for Scott, against Pierce, you think you will get? You tell us, too, that and for Clay, against Polk. It strikes me, too, the South cannot be carried on the Charleston that Tennessee, now, out of ten members of Con- platform; at any rate, we are told so by others. 'gress, has seven against the Democratic party, If they cannot, then are those States not cerand only three for it. She is one of the "Demo-tainly Democratic. You want to change the cratic States!" One of the "certain States!" Kentucky, I believe, has exactly the same number of Opposition and Democratic members of Congress, provided one contested case should be decided right; and if not, I suppose the Opposition will have a majority of her delegation. North Carolina is another" certain Democratic State;" and how stand her Congressmen? How will her vote be cast if the election goes into the House of Representatives? I believe that certainly one-half of them are the opponents of the Democratic party. The Maryland delegation is also equally divided. In certain contingencies, the election may possibly go to the House of Representatives, and there you will fail to get the vote of Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky, these "certain Democratic States," that ought to overrule the others on the platform. I cannot admit that all these States are certain for the Democratic party, nor can I admit that the others are certain against us. How was it in 1852, when General Pierce was elected? He got every northern State but two, -Massachusetts and Vermont casting eighteen votes against him, and every southern State but Kentucky and Tennessee, casting, I believe, -twenty-six votes against him. The South gave more electoral votes against Pierce than the North did.

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platform from what it was, because the South cannot be carried on the same issues upon which we triumphed in 1856! Then they are not "certainly Democratic States." If Mississippi will not go for a candidate on the same platform now that she did in 1856, I reckon that Mississippi is either not Democratic now, or she was not then. Alabama voted for Buchanan, in 1856, on the Cincinnati platform. All we ask is the same platform, and a candidate holding the same opinions. Will not Alabama stand by him now? She was a Democratie State in 1856; and if Democracy has not changed, she ought to be now. If she will not stand by the organization, by what right do you call her a Democratic State? So with Georgia so with South Carolina; so with every one of these States whose delegates seceded because we did not change the platform and repudiate our time-honored principles. Sir, I do not believe those people Kavu changed. I believe the people of every one of those States are now as much attached to the old principles of the party and its organization as they ever were. T believe they will repudiate the action of those men 'who are willing to divide and destroy the party merely because they cannot carry out their peculiar views.

The Senator has said that I got but eleven votes in the convention from the certain DemoMr. DAVIS. What has that to do with it? cratie States. He did not tell where I got them. - Mr. DOUGLAS. It has this much to do with I think I got that number in Illinois. She has it: that when we had a non-intervention plat-never failed yet to be Democratic, and she ought form, with no disturbing element leading to abuses such as there were in Kansas, the North was Democratic. That is what it has to do with it, and it is not fair to try to disfranchise or deny the equal rights to those northern States who were uniformly Democratie until they were borne down fighting your battles, to save you from an enemy.

to be considered certain until she has failed once; especially she ought not to be impeached by a State which acknowledges that she has swerved from the true path once at least. I think there were some votes given in some other States scattered around, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland. These States What converted New Hamp-were all claimed as certainly Democratic when shire, Pierce's own State, which had been so the committee men were voting on the platform. uniformly Démocratie, into an abolition State, But I will not discuss such a matter. except the battles which we fought against abo- enough for me that the convention decided that litionism and in defence of the principle of non- these new tests were anti-Democratic, and ought intervention? Maine has been swept by the not to be adopted kid board in the same way; and Rhode Island and "Connecticut, although now these two States are

It is

But the Senator hopes still that the party is going to be reunited. He says it is a very easy

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thing. If we will only acquiesce in letting the seceders make a nomination, we can all fight together and be reunited! Sir, let the Democratic Senators attend to their official duties, and leave the national conventions to make their own platforms, and the party will be united. Where does this trouble come from? From our own caucus chambers, a caucus of Senators dictating to the people what sort of platform they shall have. You have been told that no less than twelve southern Senators warned you in, the caucus against the consequences of trying to force senatorial caucus platforms on the party. Sir, I do not know when the people ever put it in a Senator's, commission that he is to get up platforms for the national conventions, on the supposition that the delegates who go there have not sense enough to do it themselves.

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Although the action of the caucus was heralded to the world to be, as was generally understood, for the purpose of operating on the Charleston convention, it did not have its effect. The resolutions were not incorporated into the platform. When it was proposed to postpone them here in the Senate, before the Charleston convention, I voted against the postponement, I wanted to give a chance for a vote on them before the party acted. I did not believe the party then would agree to the dictation. I do not think they would obey the order at Baltimore. Sir, the Charleston convention scorned it, and ratified the old platform. Is it supposed now that this discussion, or the votes that may be given in the Senate, are going to frighten the Democratic party at Baltimore into an abandonment of its principles? What other object can there be in pressing these resolutions at this time but that? Why should the public business be postponed? Why are the overland mail routes thrown aside? Why is the Pacific railroad almost abandoned? Why are all the great measures for the public good made to give place to the emergency of passing some abstract resolutions on the subject of politics, to reverse the Democratic platform, under the supposition that the representatives of the people are men of weak nerve, who are going to be frightened by the thunders of the Senate Chamber?

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that. Is it an assault on him to quote truly what he said? That carries an implication against the Vice-President that, I have never hinted. It can be no assault upon him to quote his speech, unless he has changed since, and I did not intimate that he had. But to treat it as an assault is an intimation by the Senator from Mississippi that the Vice-President's record of four years ago would not compare very well. with it now. I have made no such intimation. I have cast no such imputation. I said no word by which it could be inferred that he does not stand to-day where he did in 1856 and 1854 on this question.

So with Mr. Buchanan. I quoted his letter
of acceptance, written in language so plain that
it could not be misunderstood; but to quote what
he said then is an attack. Why? It is not, un-
less he has changed since. It is a compliment,
if I quoted it truly and he still stands by it. If
I should quote one of the Senator's speeches,
and say, "Sir, I approve and endorse it," would
that be an attack? Certainly he would think
that I intended to do him justice by doing so,
unless he had changed since, and was, therefore,
a little tender about having his former opinions
known. So it is with every person that I have
alluded to. I quoted every one of them as
authority, without an intimation that one of
them had changed. If any of them has changed,
he will have to look into the speech of the Senator
from Mississippi, and not to mine, to find out the
fact; and then let them determine who has
assailed them, he or I. No, sir: I attack no
one. I have no interest in other men's records,
if they will let me alone; but I have proven,
beyond all controversy,-the Senate know it,
and the world will understand it, that the
Democratic party was pledged by its organiza-
tion and its platform for years to the same prin-
ciples enunciated by the party at Charleston.
The Senator, again, is anxious to get up a
definition of squatter sovereignty, He wanted
me to define it. It is his bantling; not mine. i

Mr. DAVIS. I asked the Senator from Illinois
to define what he meant by non-intervention.
Mr. DOUGLAS. I understood him distinctly
to ask me to define squatter sovereignty.

Mr. DAVIS. I said you treated non-interven-
tion as synonymous with squatter sovereignty,
and I asked you several times to define non-
intervention.

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I think the country understands this whole thing. If the matter had been left to the people without any interference from this body, you would not have heard a word from me on the subject. I am assailed and arraigned. If I Mr. DOUGLAS. I treated them as synonymdo not defend myself, I am taunted; and if I ous, merely because the Senator had used them do, my defence is tortured into an attack upon as convertible terms, and I replied in the samo others. I attacked nobody. The Senator from sense, and only in that. But, sir, in regard to Mississippi will admit that I did not attack him. this dogma of squatter sovereignty, that is a I conceded his consistency, and proved my own nickname that has been given in derision, not by it. Certainly that was no attack. I attacked by its friends. As first christened, so far as I no other man, not even the Presiding Officer, know the debates of this body, I should have as intimated by the Senator from Mississippi. no objection to it. When the people of Oregon It was necessary for me, in my vindication, to found themselves without any governmentprove that I stand now where I stood, and where when this Government failed to extend its laws the party stood, in 1856. To do that, it was over the Territory-they, on the principle of necessary to quote the platform, and to quote self-defence, erected a government of their own, the acceptances by the candidates on that plat-provisional, temporary in its character, and form. I quoted Mr. Buchanan for that reason, governed themselves for many years, wisely, and only for that reason.. I quoted Major justly, and well. Mr. Calhoun called that BRECKINRIDGE for that reason, and only for squatter sovereignty. He said those people

reignty, of which President Pierce spoke in his message; that is, to allow the people of an organized Territory to exercise all the rights c self-government according to the Constitution and no more. That is what I am for: that they shall be held in subordination to the Constitution, exercise the right of self-government consistent with the Constitution; and if they violate it, their act shall be declared null in the same way that the acts of a State Legislature are-by the courts. Then the unconstitutional acts, being so declared, are void without any repeal, and you want no intervention at all in that case.

were there without authority of law, without | am for the great principle of popular sove any title to the land, without any permission to go there; that they had set up a government without any authority from Congress under the Constitution. They went by squatter right, and held by squatter title, and enacted laws by squatter sovereignty. That was the origin of it. It was defended then only on the principle of self-defence, which principle the Senator to-day has recognized; and in the Oregon bill, to which he has referred, there was a provision, when we organized the territorial government, that the laws then in force in that Territory, by the authority of the provisional government formed by the people thereof, should remain in force for a certain time, unless altered or repealed by the Legislature.

One of those laws was a prohibition of slavery In the Territory.

There was the idea of a squatter government under squatter authority excluding slavery. It existed by the same authority as a provisional government now exists in Dakota; the same authority as one exists now at Pike's Peak; the same authority as one now exists in Nevada; and exercises unlimited squatter sovereignty over every thing because there are no courts there to appeal to by which their legislation can be annulled. If you are opposed to that squatter sovereignty, why do you not bring in your bills to organize regular Territories, abolish these squatter governments, and institute regular governments in their places? You have not an excuse that the chairman of the Committee on Territories does not represent your views. If these squatter governments be such bad things, why do you not correct them? I called the attention of the Senate to it several weeks, if not months, ago. Every man in Pike's Peak is there in violation of law; every man of them has incurred the penalty of $1000 fine and six months' imprisonment for going in violation of the Indian-intercourse law, and seizing, without authority, upon land to which the Indian title is not extinguished. The Government looks on and sees the laws violated, these people taking possession in violation of treaty and law, establishing a squatter government, setting up a Legislature and a Governor of their own, passing laws for laying out towns, selling town lots, taxing property, and selling it for the non-payment of taxes, before the Indian title is extinguished. There you have got squatter sovereignty. Why do you not correct it? I have been calling your attention to it all the winter in the hope of getting it corrected, but cannot do it.

Besides, the squatter government at Pike's Peak is there in actual rebellion against the regularly constituted territorial government of Kansas. A squatter government has been set up inside of the territorial limits of Kansas, in defiance of the authority of Congress. A Legislature has been sitting there in defiance of the Territorial Legislature, and the people there have superseded the authority of Governor Medary, whom you sent, by Governor Steele, whom they elected in his place. There is squatter sovereignty. I am against all that. I

The Senator has referred to one of the compromise measures of 1850, which provided for the abolition of the slave trade in this District, and calls that intervention.

Mr. DAVIS. Will you describe the act? Mr. DOUGLAS. I describe it according to my recollection, and I think I recollect it distinctly. The act makes it unlawful to bring any slave into this District, from any State, for sale; and the penalty for the violation of the act is the forfeiture of the title-the freedom of the slave. Mr. DAVIS. I suppose the Senator, of course, has forgotten the character of the act. That is not at all the thing, and

Mr. DOUGLAS. I will hear the Senator's statement; and perhaps I shall accept his statement of it.

Mr. DAVIS. If it will save any time, I have no objection at all to tell him that the act is to prohibit the introduction of a slave into the District with a view to his removal and sale at some other place and time--not in the same place.

Mr. DOUGLAS. No matter. I accept it in that way. The act is that it shall be unlawful to bring a slave into this District with a view to remove him to some other place for sale. The Senator regards that as unconstitutional. He regards it as an abominable law. He told us so the other day. He expects the Supreme Court so to declare. Yet that act was one of the compromise measures of 1850; one of those measures endorsed by the Baltimore platform of 1852, when they said they endorsed and would carry out those compromise measures, the fugitive slave law included-showing that they alluded to all of them. I do not say that Senator is not a good Democrat because he denies the validity of one of the very compromise measures that formed the basis of the party in 1852, and the endorsement of which was reaffirmed at Cincinnati, and the party pledged to stand by them.

This shows that the Democratic party have not sympathized in the opinions of the Senator from Mississippi on these questions. The Democratic party does not hold that you can pass a law to divest title in slaves in this District. It does not hold that you can confiscate any property anywhere. Divesting title is one thing, and the police power of regulation is a different thing. It seems these measures were deemed constitutional by the great men who passed them, and the small men added. I do not pre

tend to say whether they are or not; I am not | Southern League explains Yancey's whole plan going to argue that. I do not care what your that our motto shall be, A southern confedeopinion is, or what is the opinion of any other Senator. You may have an opinion one way, and I another. If the courts shall decide in your favor, it will only prove that you are a better lawyer than I am; not that you are a better Democrat. It is a difference on a point of law, not a difference in politics. I am for leaving all these questions to the courts, where the platform of the party has left them.

Mr. President, I have but a few words more to say in reply to the Senator from Mississippi. I have not attempted to follow him in all the points he has made, but merely to touch on those salient points that I thought required allusion to. The Senator from Mississippi was under the impression that I had done injustice 'to Mr. Yancey, by referring to a private letter which had improperly got into the newspapers, and then quoting it upon him. I will say to that Senator, that no nian living has more disgust for such a mean act as using a private letter for any political purpose. If that were the state of the fact, I should not have used it. When I used Mr. Yancey's letter to Mr. Slaughter, I stated these facts, which I am sure the Senator from Mississippi did not understand, or did not hear: that Mr. Yancey had written that letter to Slaughter as a private letter, in haste, in the freedom of private confidence and friendship; that he never expected to see it published; but that, after its publication, a criticism was made upon it by Mr. Pryor, of the Richmond South; and Mr. Yancey replied to Mr. Pryor, wrote to the public a communication, avowing the letter and explaining it; and I read from his explanation.

Mr. DAVIS. I did the Senator injustice in that, then.

Mr., DOUGLAS. I knew the Senator did not understand me, or he would not have made that comment. Sir, I would not have used the private letter, although I found it in the newspapers, if it had not been avowed by Mr. Yancey, and a construction given to it by himself, nor without accompanying it with that construction. It will be recollected that, in that letter of Mr. Yancey, in which he spoke of waiting and biding the time to precipitate the cotton States into revolution, he spoke of societies being formed called the Southern League, and he looked upon those societies to remedy all the evils of which the South complained. In his explanation to Mr. Pryor, he also refers to these societies, and says they form a well-matured plan for, at the proper time, carrying out a southern policy. I have a newspaper here the Nashville Patriot of 1858 in which I find the constitution of the Southern League, which Mr. Yancey endorses as the plan he was carrying out. I will ask my friend from Ohio to read the first article of the League.

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racy. Mr. Yancey's plan was to remain in the organization of the Democratic party; form the Southern League, bound by secrecy for a southern confederacy-involving disunion, of course, wait in the Democratic party until the proper moment came; and then, by a sudden movement, disrupt the party and plunge the cotton States into revolution. The proof is here clear that disunion was Mr. Yancey's object. separate southern confederacy was his whole end, He believed the South could not find safety anywhere else. His plan was to keep in the Democratic party until the proper moment came for revolution; then plunge the cotton States into it, break up the party, and with the party the Confederacy. Sir, I cannot doubt but that this was Mr. Yancey's plan. I submit to the Senate and the country whether "the proper moment" selected by him was not the Charleston convention; and whether the secession of these same States at Charleston was not in obedience to that plan. I do not mean to say, nor do I believe, that all the men who approved or defended that secession were disunionists; but I do believe that disunion was the prompting motive that broke up that convention. It is a disunion, movement, and intervention is a disunion platform. Congressional intervention South for slavery, congressional intervention North against slavery, brings the two sections into hostile array, renders a conflict inevitable, and forces them either to a collision or a separation; for neither party can back out with honor. This action has been taken, by some at least, solemnly,, deliberately, seeking to make this new test a sine qua non at the risk of disrupting or destroying the only political party in exist ence that can save the Union.

I submit, then, whether this new change of platform does not carry with it not only a dissolution of the party, but a disruption of all those ties which bind the country together. I fear that it does. I believe that my friend from Mississippi is himself following a mere phantom in trying to get a recognition of the right of Congress to intervene for the protection of slavery in the Territories when the people do not want it. He, in effect, confesses that it is a mere phantom, an abstract theory, without results, without fruits; and why? He says that he admits that slavery cannot be forced on a hostile people. He says he has always regarded it as a question of soil and climate and political economy. I so regard it.

Mr. DAVIS. I say we have a constitutional right to try it.

Mr. DOUGLAS. He says they have a consti tutional right to try it,just such a right as he says the soldier had when he was going to Concord, who declared he had a right to go, and he was going because he had the right. Statesmen do not always act on the principle that they will do whatever they have a right to do. A man has a right to do a great many silly things; a statesman has a right to perpetuate acts of consummate folly; but I do not know that it is Mr. DOUGLAS. That first article of the man's duty to do all that he may have a right to

Mr. PUGH read, as follows:

"First. The members of this organization shall be known as "The League of the South,' and our motto shall be, A Southern Republic is our only safety.'"

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