only narrow his mind and give up to party what was meant for mankind, but he must recede as submissively as a blind horse in a bark mill to every perverted opinion which sits, whip in hand, on the revolving shaft, at the end of which he is harnessed. To be a diamond of the first water, he must stand in the Senate House of his country, and in the face of a forbearing people, glory in being a traitor and a rebel. He must solemnly proclaim the death of the nation to which he had sworn allegiance, and with the grave stolidity of an undertaker, invite its citizens to their own funeral. He must dwarf and local passion he thrives, to the country where he practises court, or to the city where he flaunts in all the meretricious dignity of a Doge of Venice. He can take an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, but he can enter with honor into a conspiracy to overthrow it. He can, under the sanctity of the same oath, advise the seizure of forts and arsenals, dockyards and ships, and money belonging to the Union, whose officer he is, and find a most loyal and convenient retreat in State authority and State allegiance. He was ready to laugh in their faces if they only told him that, before the time when he was "muling and puking in his nurse's arms," there lived a very obscure person named GEORGE WASHINGTON, who, before he died, became eminent by perpetrating the immortal joke of advising the people of the United States, that it was of infinite moment, that they should properly estimate the immense value of their national Union

and he would not therefore utter, even in a whisper, one word which might tend to bring down the impending avalanche upon the quiet homes of the people. He would at the same time speak as a Southern man, identified with all the interests of the South. He would speak as a Western Virginian, and as the custodian of those who were not old enough to know the perils to which they were exposed, by those who were now riding on the crest of the popular wave, but who were, nevertheless, destined to sink into the very trough of the sea to a depth so unfathomable that not a bubble would ever rise, to mark the spot where they went so ig-provincialize his patriotism to the State on whose nominiously down. Well might those who had inaugurated the revolution which was now stalking over the land, cry out with uplifted hands for peace, and deprecate the effusion of blood. It was the inventor of the guillotine who was its first victim, and the day was not far off when they would find among their own people, those who would have to rely upon the magnanimity of that population, whom they had most cruelly outraged and deceived. He had not the heart to enter into a detail of the arguments, or to express the indignant emotions, which rose to his lips for utterance. But before God, and in his inmost conscience he believed that Slavery would be crucified, should this unhappy controversy end in a dismemberment of the Union. If not crucified, it would carry the death-rattle in its throat. It remained to be seen whether treason could be carried out with the same facility with which it has been plotted. There was a holy courage among the minority of every State that might be for the time overwhelmed. Lazarus was not dead, but slept; and ere long the stone would be rolled away from the mouth of the tomb, and they would witness all the glories of a resurrection. It would not be forgotten, that among the clans of Scotland, beacon fires used to be lit by concerted signals from crag to crag, in living volumes of flame, yet expiring even in its own fierceness, and sinking into ashes as the fagots which fed them were consumed. To such a picture as that might be likened a rebellion such as political leaders sometimes excite for a brief hour; but the fires of rebellion burnt out with the fagots, and all was cold and dark again. There was a striking contrast between such a movement, between such a rebellion as he alluded to, and the uprising of the masses of the people in vindication of violated rights. As great a difference as there was between Snug, the joiner, and Bottom, the weaver, who "could roar you as fierce as a lion, or coo you as gently as a sucking-dove." One was the stage-trick of a political harlequin, the other was a living reality-the one was a livid and fitful flame, the other was a prairie on fire, finding in every step of its progress food for its all-ravening maw. In the present emergency, before this political conspiracy, it might be that he would stand alone with his colleague, (Mr. Wilson.) Let it be so. He sought no office. His political race was very nearly voluntarily run. History would record the proceeding of this turbulent period, and time-the gentle but infallible arbiter of all things earthly-would decide the truth. Upon that he would take his stand. They lived in an age of political paradoxes. Broad, expansive love of country had become a diseased sentimentality. Patriotism had become a starveling birdling, cling ing with unfledged wings around the nest of twigs where it was born. A statesman must now not

that they should cherish a cordial, habitual and immovable attachment to it-that they should watch its preservation with jealous anxiety, discountenance whatever might suggest a suspicion that it could in any event be abandoned, and indignantly frown down the first dawning attempt to alienate any. portion of the country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which linked together its various parts. WASHINGTON saw into the future, and discovered that disastrous period in our history against which he warned his countrymen when he told them to "beware of geographical parties." These extreme parties, North and South, had at last met. Their differences had been created and carried on by systematic perversions of each other's aims and objects. In the North it had been represented that the South desired and intended to monopolize with slave territory all the public lands, and to drive therefrom free labor, to convert every free State into common ground for the recapture of colored persons as slaves who were free, and to put the Federal Government in all its departments under the control of a slave oligarchy. These and all other stratagems that could be resorted to aroused antagonistic feelings, which were welded with turbulent passions. As they planted so they reaped. Now that victory had been won by the Republican party, and the Government must be administered upon national policy; the fissures in the ground occupied by them became apparent, and hence there would necessarily be a large defection in its ranks among the more ultra of its adherents, who were, as a general thing, ideal, speculative, and not practical men. Out of actual power, a party was apt to be radical. Vest it with power, and it became conservative. This was the ordeal through which the Republican, like all other parties, was now passing, and he hoped for the peace of the country, and the triumph of practical, rather than ideal policy and measures. Herein consisted the

almost insuperable difficulty of coming to any feas- which appeared a few days after the secession of ible adjustment upon the existing discontents. The South Carolina, in which GARRISON said that "the bulk of politicians, North and South, were bound by last covenant with death was annulled, and the agree a past record and past professions. They were, in ment with hell broken, by the action of South Carofact, thinking all the while "what Mrs. Grundy would lina herself;" closing with an appeal to Massachusetts, say." The people themselves understood the cause ending with the words, "How stands Massachusetts of the difficulty, and if they but once interfered, the at this hour in reference to the Union?-in an atticountry would be saved. What was the difficulty tude of hostility." Mr. CLEMENS then quoted from a now? He appealed whether it was not that in the speech of WENdell Phillips, delivered in the Music hands of ultras, North and South, the slaveholder had Hall, at Boston, a few days ago, in which PHILLIPS been used as a shuttledore, who, for purposes utterly declared, "We are Disunionists, not for any love of dissimilar, had been banded from South Carolina to separate confederacies," &c., ending with a reference Massachusetts, and from Massachusetts back again to to South Carolina, "and Egypt will rejoice that she South Carolina, until now the last point of endurance has departed." The people had, therefore, arrayed had been reached? Every violent word uttered North against them these knights of a new crusade. The had been sent South, and the South had responded Constitution of the United States was the sanctified in the spirit. The abolitionist himself had been Jerusalem against which their deluded cohorts batgranted an audience in every Southern city, at every | tled. They contended that the only mode to overSouthern political meeting, and the most violent throw slavery was to overthrow the constitution. insulting, agrarian speeches repeated even in the These men claimed that their allegiance was only due hearing of the slaves themselves. Was it not hu- to the States wherein they lived. They claimed to miliating to confess, that the very people who would be States' rights men of the strictest sect, and they burn in effigy, if not at the stake, a postmaster who would wield the legislative power of the State for the would dare to distribute a copy of abolition speeches, extinction of slavery, as South Carolina professed to honor as among their chief defenders the candidates wield it for the perpetuation of slavery. In this crisis who could quote the most obnoxious passages from it was meet that Massachusetts, so largely partaking all who had made Southern politics a vast hot-bed of the common glory in the past-Massachusetts, for the propagation of abolition sentiments? The where the first blood for American liberty had been two great sections of the nation stood at that mo- shed-should rise superior to the convulsions of the ment towards each other like two encamped armies, hour, and give an earnest at least that the spirit of waiting the orders to engage. The patriot planned, conciliation, of inter-State comity, of fraternal affecdeplored, and appealed, but found little succor in the tion, was not yet wholly lost. As the worn traveller only quarter whence succor could come. The abo-in the midst of the snows of the Alps lingered with litionist revelled in the madness of the hour. He gaw the cracks in the iceberg at last. To him the desert and the battle-field were alike welcome. He had knelt down in the desert with the camels, for a speck in the far distance showed that the simoom was coming. He looked into the future as into a dark cloud in the morning, when nothing but the early lark was on the wing. But soon history, like the light of the eastern horizon, would curtain back that cloud, and paint in blood's ruddiest tints field and forest, hamlet and city, the very mountains to their pine-crowned tops, and the great ocean itself, as an ensanguined flood, where brother contending with brother should find a nameless sepulchre. No anaconda, with his filthy folds around the banyan tree, threw out the venomous tongue and yearned with fiercer passion for the crushed bone and the pulpy flesh than he, the abolitionist, now expectant of his prey, yearned for this long-proposed repast Well might he cry that the day of jubilee had come. Well might he marshal his hosts to the last great war of sections and of races. Defeated, stigmatized, insulted, scoffed at, ostracized and gibbeted by his countrymen, he now gloated over the most fearful of all retributions. His deadliest foes in the South had now struck hands in a solemn league of kindred designs, and with exultant tramp, stolidly marched, adorned, like a Roman ox, with the garlands of sacrifice, to their eternal doom. At this moment, when a sudden frenzy had struck blind the Southern people, this picture could not even be realized in all its horrors. When he looked at his country, and its present distracted and desolate condition, and its possible fate, he felt almost ready to close the quick accents of speech, and allow the heart to sink down voiceless in its despair. He would refer them to the words of LLOYD GARRISON, and demand what answer would be given to them. Mr. CLEMENS then referred to an article in the Liberator, |

The

delighted gaze upon the friendly light which peered
from the windows of the convent where from the
desolation of the storm around him he might at last
find repose, so did he hail the little gleam of hope in
the future. Mr. CLEMENS gave statistics of popula
tion and slavery in the Border States and in the Gulf
States, for the purpose of showing, as he said, that
there was an irreversible law of population governing
the question, and that the South wanted population
and capital rather than territory. If secession were
allowed to be carried out, he would show them a
Southern Confederacy from which every man would
turn back affrighted and pale, because it would be on
the bloody hand that his rights of property would
have to depend. Slavery cannot expand rapidly,
either within the Union or without the Union, so long
as slaves remained at their present high prices.
only mode by which slavery could ever expand, was
to reduce the price, and have a new source of supply.
That was, in fact, the real design of the coast States.
Mr. CLEMENS, in proof of this, referred to all the
Southern Conventions of late years, and cited the
admissions of Messrs. MILES, BONHAM, MCRAE, and
CRAWFORD, in the House, to show that the object was
the re-opening of the slave-trade. Suppose, said he,
that they do not get, out of the Union, this equality
which they now claim? That is a little problem in
the Rule of Three, which will be ciphered out if these
events are much longer pending. The Border Slave
States might as well be prepared first as last for the
realization of the truth. But where was slavery to
expand? If the South left the Union, she would
never get as much of the present territory as he
could grasp in his hand. A war of thirty years would
never get it back, nor could there ever be extorted
from the North a treaty giving the same guarantees
to slavery that it now had. Where was slavery to
expand? Not to Central America, for England exer

cised sovereignty over one-half her domain. Not to Mexico, for England had caused the abolition of slavery there also. Their retiring confederates ought not to forget the events of 1834, when GEORGE THOMPSON, the English abolitionist, was sent to enlighten the dead conscience of the American people. In this connection he cited a letter from THOMPSON to MURRELL, of Tennessee, in which was this sentence: "The dissolution of the Union is the object to be kept steadily in view." In the event of a Southern Confederacy, there will be, besides the African slave-trade, other elements of discord and agitation. Slavery was the great ruling interest of the extreme States, while the other States had other great interests which could not be lightly abandoned. It would be for the interest of the coast States to have free trade in manufactured goods; but how would that operate on the mechanical and manufacturing industry of Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware? There would be, therefore, in the proposed Union, an antagonism quite as great as there ever has been in this. But if manufactories were to be protected and encouraged in the Border Slave States, their white population would increase so fast that they would be but nominally Slave States, and would finally become Free States. He appealed to the North to guarantee by constitutional enactments the principle secured by the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case. Let us feel, he said, that we have a country to save instead of a geographical section to represent. Let us act as men, and not as partisans, and the old Constitution, now in the trough of the sea, with battered masts and sails, will weather the storm.

-Times, Jan. 23.

It may well be imagined that the American people have been taken by surprise, both by the suddenness and violence of the outcry for secession, and by the ready concessions of the President. From the day the message appeared it was evident that South Carolina no longer formed part of the Union. The State had, by every organ which it possessed-by its Senators, its Representatives, by the voice of the Press, of the great slaveowners, and of the multitude-declared its resolution to secede. Only courage like that of General Jackson could have quelled the "Gamecock State," as we perceive some of its admirers call it. But there was a middle path between civil war and such an instant recognition as Mr. Buchanan thought advisable. As one charged with the duty of upholding the Federal power, he might have easily used the authority vested in him to delay the movement, and give the Union and South Carolina itself time for reflection. Mr. Cass would, probably, deprecate holding a State by force, but he still declined to remain in the cabinet of the statesman who would not reinforce Fort Moultrie, and assert, during the short remainder of his term of office, the supremacy of the constitution. But as things went the action of South Carolina was predetermined. On the 20th of December that State seceded from the Union by an unanimous vote, and by this time has probably gained possession of all the Federal property within its borders, and established a post-office and customhouse of its own. The instruments which the Carolinians drew up on this occasion are singular and almost amusing. The philosophy and phraseology of the Declaration of Independence of 1776 are imitated. Whole paragraphs are copied from that famous document. The thoughts and style of Jefferson were evidently influenced by the great writers of his age, and we may trace Montesquieu and Rousseau in every line of his composition. It is rather interesting to see his language, which denounced King George's violation of the social compact, used by a conclave of frantic negro-drivers to stigmatize the conduct of those who will not allow a Southern gentleman to bring his "body servant" into their territory. South Carolina, however, has shown wisdom in thus taking high ground. People are gen

selves, and Carolina does right to play the part of outraged patience and indignant virtue. She has declared, in the language of the Fathers of the Republic, that the Federal Union no longer answers the ends of its foundation by insuring the happiness and prosperity of South Carolina, and that the conduct of several States having been a violation of the compact made by all, South Carolina resumes her rights as a sovereign community, and will make war or peace, conclude treaties, or establish commerce, independently of the Government at Washington.

Doc. 25.-THE DISUNION MOVEMENT. Never for many years can the United States be to the world what they have been. Mr. Buchanan's message has been a greater blow to the American people than all the rants of the Georgian Governor or the "ordinances" of the Charleston Convention. The President has dissipated the idea that the States which elected him constitute one people. We had thought that the Federation was of the na-erally taken at the value which they set on themture of a nationality; we find it is nothing more than a partnership. If any State may, on grounds satisfactory to a local convention, dissolve the union between itself and its fellows; if discontent with the election of a President, or the passing of an obnoxious law by another State, or, it may be, a restrictive tariff, gives a State the "right of revolution," and permits it to withdraw itself from the community, then the position of the American people with respect to foreign Powers is completely altered. It is strange that a race whose patriotic captiousness when in the society of Europeans is so remarkable, should be so ready to divide and to give up the ties of fellow-citizenship for a cause which strangers are unable to appreciate. Still stranger is it that a chief magistrate, who would have plunged the world in war rather than a suspicious craft should be boarded by English officers after it had displayed the Stars and Stripes, or would have done battle against despots for any naturalized refugee from Continental Europe, should, without scruple, and against the advice of his own Secretary of State, declare the Federal Union dissolved whenever a refractory State chooses to secede.

This bold course has its natural effect on the exciteable slaveowners. The secession of South Carolina has been received everywhere with enthusiasm. It may, perhaps, be said that the other States have feigned an approbation which they do not feel, in order to bring the North to terms by the menace of a Southern Republic. But, whether from feeling or policy, the secession cry was just at its loudest at the close of the year. It was looked upon as certain that six or seven States would separate from the Union in the first days of 1861. Georgia leads the van. The ordinance of secession was looked upon as already passed. The North Carolina Leg

islature had read a second time the bill for arming | of his most intimate friends have given their adhe the State. Alabama had voted, by a large majority, in favor of secession. In Virginia, the oldest, the most conservative, and the most cautious of the Slave States, we are told that the secession feeling was gaining ground. State conventions are to meet in Florida on the 3d of January, in Alabama on the 7th, in Texas on the 8th, in Georgia on the 9th, and in Louisiana on the 23d; and our correspondent believes that "there will be a majority in each of them in favor of immediate and separate secession." Hence in a few days more the United States of America, as the world has hitherto known them, will cease to exist.

we also recognize the right of the ingress and egress | the credit of said officers respectively: Provided, of the mouths of the Mississippi by all friendly That no draft shall be paid except out of the balance States and Powers, and hereby declare our willing-standing to the credit of the officer drawing the ness to enter into stipulations to guarantee the exer- same: And, provided, further, That the aggregate cise of those rights." amount of drafts hereby authorized to be paid shall not exceed the sum of $306,592 80.

Doc. 28.-THE CUTTER MCCLELLAND.

derived from an official source:

Be it further ordained, That the State depositary aforesaid be, and he is hereby authorized to pay all outstanding drafts drawn by the United States prior The following statement in relation to the sur-to the passage of the ordinance of secession, against render of the revenue cutter Robert McClelland, is the funds heretofore deposited in the Sub-Treasury of the United States at New Orleans, to the credit On the 19th of January, four days after Secretary of the public revenue of the United States, ProDix took charge of the Treasury Department, he vided, that the aggregate amount of said drafts shall sent Mr. Wm. Hemphill Jones, Chief Clerk in the not exceed the sum of $146,226 74; but no transFirst Comptroller's Office, to New Orleans and Mo-fer drafts on the bullion fund shall be recognized or bile, to save, if possible, the two cutters on service there. Captain Morrison, a Georgian, in command Be it further ordained, That the sum of $31,164 of the Lewis Cass at Mobile, must have surrendered her before Mr. Jones' arrival. On the 29th of 44, standing to the credit of the Post Office DepartJanuary, the Secretary received, in relation to the United States, at New Orleans, is hereby held subother, the following telegraphic dispatch from Mr.ject to draft of the United States, in payment of postal services, until otherwise ordered by this convention or the General Assembly of the State.

Jones:

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 29, 1861.

paid.

ment on the books of the late Sub-Treasurer of the

Hon. J. A. DIx, Secretary of Treasury: Capt. Breshwood has refused positively in writing, to obey any instructions of the Department. In this I am sure he is sustained by the Collector, and be- Doc. 30.-THE TEXAS ORDINANCE OF SECESlieve acts by his advice. What must I do?

W. H. JONES, Special Agent.

To this dispatch Secretary Dix immediately returned the following answer, before published:

TREASURY DEPARTMENT, Jan. 29, 1861.

W. HEMPHILL JONES, New Orleans: Tell Lieut. Caldwell to arrest Capt. Breshwood, assume command of the cutter, and obey the order through you. If Capt. Breshwood, after arrest, undertakes to interfere with the command of the cutter, tell Lieut. Caldwell, to consider him as a mutineer, and treat him accordingly. If any one attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot.

JOHN A. DIX, Secretary of the Treasury. This dispatch must have been intercepted both at Montgomery and New Orleans, and withheld from Mr. Jones, and the treason of Captain Breshwood was consummated by means of a complicity on the part of the telegraph line within the States of Alabama and Louisiana. (See Doc. 31.)

-N. Y. Times, February 8,

Doc. 29.-THE MINT AT NEW ORLEANS. The Louisiana Convention, after having taken possession of the United States Sub-Treasury at New Orleans, passed the subjoined ordinance, authorizing the payment therefrom of certain Government drafts:

Whereas, The State of Louisiana has taken under its control the funds deposited in the late Sub-Treasury of the United States at New Orleans, but consider ing it just that certain drafts drawn against the same should be paid;

Therefore, be it ordained by the people of the State of Louisiana in convention assembled, That the State depositary of said funds be, and he is authorized to pay all drafts drawn in the legitimate course of disbursement by the disbursing officers of the United States on the funds heretofore deposited in the SubTreasury of the United States at New Orleans, to Doc.-13

SION.

AN ORDINANCE TO DISSOLVE THE UNION BETWEEN
THE STATE OF TEXAS AND THE OTHER STATES UN-
DER THE COMPACT STYLED "THE CONSTITUTION OF
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA."

Sec. 1. Whereas, the Federal Government has failed to accomplish the purposes of the compact of union between these States, in giving protection either to the persons of our people upon an exposed frontier, or to the property of our citizens; and whereas, the action of the Northern States is violative of the compact between the States and the guarantees of the Constitution; and, whereas, the recent developments in federal affairs make it evident that the power of the Federal Government is sought to be made a weapon with which to strike down the interests and property of the people of Texas and her sister slaveholding States, instead of permitting it to be, as was intended-our shield against outrage and aggression-therefore, "We, the people of the State of Texas, by delegates in the Convention assembled, do declare and ordain that the ordinance adopted by our Convention of delegates on the fourth (4th) day of July, A.D. 1845, and afterwards ratified by us, under which the Republic of Texas was admitted into the Union with other States, and became a party to the compact styled The Constitution of the United States of America' be, and is hereby repealed and annulled."

That all the powers which, by the said compact, were delegated by Texas to the Federal Government are resumed. That Texas is of right absolved from all restraints and obligations incurred by said compact, and is a separate sovereign State, and that her citizens and people are absolved from all allegance to the United States or the Government thereof.

Sec. 2 The ordinance shall be submitted to the people of Texas for their ratification or rejection, by the qualified voters, on the 23d day of February, 1861; and unless rejected by a majority of the votes cast, shall take effect and be in force on and