In both capacities I owed duties to my constituents, to the government, to the people.

I might interpret these duties narrowly or broadly.

I might say: Perish the government, perish the Union, perish this people, rather than that I should soil my hands! Or I might say, as I did, and as I would say again: Be my fate what it may, this glorious Union, the last hope of suffering humanity, shall be preserved." Here he paused, and seeing that Mrs.Lee, after looking for a time at him, was now regarding the fire, lost in meditation over the strange vagaries of the senatorial mind, he resumed, in another line of argument.

He rightly judged that there must be some moral defect in his last remarks, although he could not see it, which made persistence in that direction useless.
"You ought not to blame me--you cannot blame me justly.

It is to your sense of justice I appeal.