be done with safety and honor to the state; and when these can no longer be retained in the Union, then let us go out like men, and, asserting the broad right of revolution, let us all be united, and shrink from no consequences that may follow.

I am respectfully yours,

JOIN M. BOTTS.

I must confess here to an error in my calculation. As no instance in history could be found in which a gigantic war was carried on for any length of time without a dollar of money, and without credit in any market in the world, so I never dreamed that it could be done here to the extent it has been. I had no conception then that the government was to issue its hundreds of thousands of millions of Treasury-notes, payable six months, and two years after the happening of an event which was sure never to take place, and that any respectable portion of the people could be made to believe it was as good, or better than gold, and that the few who had wisdom enough to know that it could never be worth a farthing, and refused to take it in exchange for their labor or produce, would have their property seized by the government for its own use, and the party thrown into prison for disloyalty. But all this I have seen now, and shall be better posted hereafter if another rebellion and civil war shall come in my time, which I hardly expect to sec, for I think the present generation and several others that will follow it will be satisfied with tho experience they have had in this; but it may be of somo servico to futuro generations to know what may happen under the administration of those who go into rebellion simply for the purpose, as Mr. Jefferson Davis acknowledged in his interview with the two quasi-commissioners of peace, Messrs. Jacques and Kirke, as published in Mr. Davis's organ and other Richmond papers without denial or contradiction, solely to "get rid of majorities;" or, in other words, that the minority, or to come exactly at what he meant, that the selfish politicians and greedy office-holders should rule and control the people with the iron hand of a detestable despotism. My next effort was an appeal to the moderation, forbearance, and magnanimity of the North, made under a conviction of the truth of the old proverb, that "it is better to humor a fool than encounter his wrath;" for I found the whole South getting to be, not simply foolish, but insane upon this question of secession; and, in reply to an invitation to a dinner at the Astor House, New York, given by the "New England Society" in commemoration of the landing of the New England Pilgrims, I made this appeal; but those to whom it was addressed unfortunately did not look at

the question in all its magnitude—they did not attach sufficient importance to the events then in progress. Perhaps they would have thought and acted otherwise if they had been located where I was, and could have foreseen what has followed, as I thought I did at the time.

MR. BOTTS'S NOMINATION FOR THE STATE CONVENTION

A convention was called by the State Legislature, which itself had been convened in extra session by Governor Letcher. Richmond was entitled to three representatives. A number of the Union men called on me in person to become a candidate, to which I gave my assent. They asked who I could recommend to be associated with me. I named Mr. William H. M'Farland, with whom I was not then on speaking terms, and Mr. Marmaduke Johnson, not so much because he was my friend as that he and Mr. M'Farland had, at the dinner given to the Presidential Electors a short time before, given, as I thought, the most unmistakable evidence of a steadfast and reliable devotion to the Union and the platform upon which we had carried the state for John Bell. Accordingly a card was addressed to the three gentlemen thus indicated, and I extract the following from my response. The other two gentlemen simply accepted. I was defeated; to accomplish which, very large sums of money were said to have been and, no doubt, were subscribed. Mr. George W. Randolph, late Secretary of War, beat me, I think, some two hundred and odd votes, his friends swapping off votes with the peculiar friends of Messrs. M'Farland and Johnson. All this is of no other consequence now than to show how matters wero worked to bring about my defeat. Mr. M'Farland and Mr. Johnson wero elected, as I have said, and both afterward voted for the Ordinance of Secession.

The following is from my card in the Richmond Whig of January 25, 1861:

"The absence of all right on the part of one state to separate herself from the other thirty-two, when no pretense is set up that there is a correlative right on the part of the thirty-two to separate themselves from the one, is, to my mind, an incomprehensible logical absurdity, that I have already argued in your presence during the late canvass, and which need not be repeated here.

"That the time has arrived when the public voice and, indeed, the public welfare, demands that there shall be a satisfactory and final adjustment of all questions of discord between the two sections of the country, in order that we may live in peace hereafter, no one will dispute. The ques

tion is, what ought to be satisfactory to us, the Southern section, constituting as we do the complaining party in the case?

"For myself, I am prepared to insist upon every jot or tittle of right that the security or the honor of Virginia will entitle her to claim under the Constitution as it is. I am willing to vote for and take as much more as the North may be disposed to yield. If I have not heretofore claimed as much as others, it was not becauso I was unwilling they should obtain and enjoy it, but because I did not believe that it would be granted, or that we were entitled to demand it as of right, and therefore I never have, and never will consent to make the existence or the destruction of this government dependent upon any abstract or impracticable question that may or may not arise outside of the Constitution, such as is now proposed, of guaranteeing slavery by constitutional amendment in all territories hereafter to be acquired south of 36° 30', whether in Mexico, South America, or the Sandwich Islands.

"There is nothing that I CAN do that I will not do to avert the utter desolation that will assuredly follow in the train of disunion, rebellion, and civil war. I will go as far as any man alive will or can go to settle, by compromise and conciliation, every question of disturbance in our national councils. I am even free to say that there is no compromise that has been or can be proposed that will prove satisfactory to the North and South and restoro harmony to the country, that will not meet with my cordial support, and, except as a matter of curiosity, I would agree never to inquire what compromise had been adopted, for I have no interests in this government that are not identified with those around me, and whatever will satisfy them will satisfy me. I do not set myself up as a maker of laws or a maker of constitutions, to which all others must bend and yield; nevertheless, I am not without my own views as to the proper mode of adjustment of all questions of constitutional interpretation, which could be done by making a case on cach disputed point for the immediate decision of the Supreme Court, which is the tribunal established by the Constitution for that purpose, and then we could see what party it is that is not willing to live under the present form of government fairly and properly administered.

"I do not believe that, since the world was in a state of chaos, thero ever was, or that there ever will be again so general and universal an upheaving of society, so ruinous and desolating a disturbance of all the social, moral, political, and industrial clements of a people for such slight and insufficient causo as this country now exhibits to the gaze of the as

tounded nations of the earth, every one of which causes, by prudence, discretion, and forbearance, if taken out of the hands of selfish and aspiring or disappointed politicians, and intrusted to the people at the polls, as is now proposed by the Crittenden and Bigler resolutions, may be settled amicably, harmoniously, and satisfactorily in the Union, and under the Constitution, within the next sixty days; while there is not one that will not bo a thousand-fold aggravated when we go out of the Union, leaving the Constitution, the laws, the whole organization of the government, the army, the navy, the Treasury, the public lands in all the states as well as all the territories, in the full possession of the Republican party, from whose apprehended designs the secessionists are for running off, and leaving behind them all they claim.

"After the events of the John Brown affair, just one year ago, and the scenes through which we are now passing, let us never again have a word to say about the excitability of the French, who, compared with us, are an immovable and unimpressible race of people.

"Now, I believe I constitute a fair type or specimen of what is the actual condition of every man in the Southern States, in a legal, political, and constitutional sense; and I find myself in the full, free, and perfect exercise of every blessing and of every right of a personal nature that I have enjoyed since I came into the world. I am also in the possession and enjoyment of whatever property I may own, and nobody, as far as I know, proposes to disturb or dispossess me of it; nor can any human being thus dispossess me except by due course of law. How long this state of things may continue Omniscience only can tell. But is there any one, in these particulars, in a worso condition than I am? If there is—if the instance can be presented of any one man, out of the ten millions of the white population in the Southern States, who is laboring under any oppression, wrong, injustice, or grievance, that can not be redressed in the Union, and which can be redressed out of the Union, then I will pledge myself to vote for disunion whenever the question comes up; but if no such person can be found, I will never consent to give up this government, the work of men whose like we ne'er shall look upon again,' for any other government which the destroyers of this are likely to substitute in its stead. I will not destroy the house in which I live, and which protects me from the blasts and storms of winter, when not one brick is burned nor a stick of timber cut with which to erect another. I will not tear down the works of Washington, of Madison, of Franklin, of Carroll, of Morris, and of Pinckney, to take upon trust the clumsy machinery

of Yancey, and Rhett, and Pickens, and Toombs, and of Davis. I will not surrender this government until I know that a better one has been provided for me.

"When I see in the distance the frightful and appalling consequences of disunion and civil war, which many will not see until the reality is brought to their own firesides and hearth-stones, where our wives, and our daughters, and all that is cherished on carth is clustered, I can not but persuade myself that both parties will shudder and recoil at its approach, and come to honorable terms of settlement. For one I shall never despair of the republic.

"When I see that upon the secession of any or all the Southern States, the President is left no alternative and no discretion, but is solemnly sworn before his God to PRESERVE, protect, and defend the Constitution, and that that Constitution declares the laws of the United States to bo the supreme law of the land,' which he 'shall take care to see faithfully executed,' and places the army and navy of the United States under his control, and provides for calling forth the militia to enable him 'to execute the laws and suppress insurrections,' I can not doubt that the declaration of secession, however much it may be deplored, will necessarily impose upon the government the obligation of resorting to such measures as will enable him to sco the laws faithfully executed; the right to do which was too firmly established in the days of President Jackson by the legislation of 1882, ever to be overthrown while the government endures. I only speak of this as an existing fact, which is not likely and hardly possible to be changed. If it can be avoided, I shall be rejoiced to see it, and, while I can not doubt the power, would, as your representative in Convention, cheerfully unite in any recommendation or remonstrance against the exercise of the power.

"When I see too, that, without the power to strike a blow in resistance or defense, without the means to vindicate herself, the state may be humbled and subdued (and all the gasconade and bravado of light-headed and flippant would-be patriots can not prevent it); when I sco that a single ship of war stationed at the Capes of Virginia will as effectually block up and destroy the entire commerce of Virginia and Maryland as if they were surrounded by icebergs in the Arctic Ocean, while we have no naval force with which to dislodge or remove the blockade; when I see that the commerce of every other Southern state may be cut off in the same way, and by the same means, by sending one or more warsteamers to block up the several ports of Charleston, Cape Fear River,