this election, it is worthy of note that the large slaveholding counties of the District gave majorities for Mr. JUDGE, notwithstanding the newspapers charged him with want of fealty to the institution of slavery in voting at the Nashville Convention to accept the Compromise of 1850, and in publishing the card relative to the right of secession, to which reference has already been made in a preceding chapter. The charge of disloyalty to the South thus preferred against Mr. JUDGE by the Montgomery Advertiser and other Democratic newspapers, did not prevent the people from casting for him 6,666 votes, against 6,880 votes for Mr. CLOPTON, his competitor. The counties most largely interested in slavery, and possibly in the extension of slavery to Kansas and Nebraska, voted for Mr. JUDGE. He was defeated by the votes of those counties which were the least interested in that subject. Thus firm and unbroken was the 'front maintained against the Democratic party around the home of YANCEY and the cradle of the Confederacy. Such was the conflict, not of principle, but of sentiment and temper, in one of the largest slave-holding Districts of the South, inhabited by a population wealthy, high-spirited, and intelligent-a conflict which would, by nicely balancing the power of the disputants, have preserved the Union for an indefinite period when suddenly occurred a series of events which paralyzed the labors of men like WATTS, JUDGE, LANGDON, and CLANTON, and struck the South with such alarm and indignation as to add intensity to the secession movement which had now once more assumed definite shape.

These events were: 1. The announcement by Senator SEWARD, the leader of the Republican party, that an

irrepressible conflict existed between the North and South, a conflict which must eventually give free labor to the South; 2. The endorsement by Mr. GREELEY, Mr. SEWARD, and all the Republican leaders, of a book published by a charlatan, entitled "Impending Crisis," which advised the opponents of slavery" to land military "forces in the Southern States who shall raise the "standard of freedom and call the slaves to it," and to "teach the slaves to burn their masters' buildings, to "kill their cattle and hogs, to conceal and destroy farming utensils, to abandon labor in seed-time and "harvest and let the crops perish "; 3. The invasion of Virginia and the emeute at Harper's Ferry by JOHN BROWN and his Abolition force.

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Cotemporaneously with these events, which did more to fire the Southern heart than all the speeches of States-Rights leaders, was the meeting of the Southern Commercial Convention at Montgomery, and the organization of Leagues of united Southerners to take the place of the old States-Rights Associations.

A Southern Commercial Convention held at Knoxville, in August, 1857, had appointed a committee, of which L. W. SPRATT, of S. C., was chairman, to prepare business for the next meeting, covering these questions: 1. The African slave trade; 2. The political relations of the South to the Union; and, 3. The foreign policy the South should advocate.

The next meeting of the Convention was held at Montgomery, May 10, 1858. The welcoming address was made by Mr. YANCEY on behalf of the Mayor and Council of Montgomery. He said:

"I must be allowed, at least on my own behalf, to "welcome you, too, as but the foreshadowing of that

"far more important body, important as you evidently "will be, that, if injustice and wrong shall still continue "to rule the hour and councils of the dominant section "of this country, must, ere long, assemble upon "Southern soil, for the purpose of devising some "measures by which not only your industrial, but your "social and your political relations shall be placed upon "the basis of an independent sovereignty, which will "have within itself a unity of climate, a unity of soil, a "unity of production, and a unity of social relations; “that unity which alone can be the basis of a successful "and permanent government." [Loud applause.]

Among the members of the Convention were men whose names had been long familiar to the public, some of the leading intellects of the South. There were CALHOUN and HAYNE, of S. C., able representatives of their distinguished kinsmen who had passed away ; PRESTON and PRYOR, of Va.; HILL and LAMAR, of Ga.; BRECKINRIDGE and WHITE, of La.; MCRAE and DUNN, of Miss.; CHASE and BREVARD, of Fla. From Alabama were seen the faces of YANCEY, HILLIARD, CLANTON, COCHRAN, LEA, WALKER, BELSER, BETHEA, and many others of distinction. A. P. CALHOUN, of S. C., was elected President. Mr. SPRATT submitted to the Convention an elaborate report touching the questions submitted at the last session of the Convention, and recommended the adoption of the following resolutions :

"1. That slavery is right, and that being right, there "can be no wrong in the natural means to its formation. "2. That it is expedient and proper the Foreign "Slave Trade should be re-opened, and that this Con"vention will lend its influence to any legitimate 66 measure to that end.

"3. That a committee, consisting of one from each

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"slave State, be appointed to consider of the means, "consistent with the duty and obligations of these States, for re-opening the Foreign Slave Trade, and "that they report their plan to the next meeting of "this Convention."

Mr. ROGER A. PRYOR, of Virginia, stated that although a member of the committee from whence this report purports to come, yet he had not seen it, nor had he heard any of its arguments or conclusions until it was read to the convention. He therefore hoped the convention would indulge him by giving him an opportunity to prepare and present to the convention the arguments founded upon considerations of high State policy, of eminently high Southern policy, which would forbid this convention, which purports to represent the interests of the South, from embarking in so serious an enterprise as that of proclaiming before Christendom that they now intend to insist upon re-opening the trade in African slaves.

Mr. YANCEY, of Alabama, said he, also was a member of the committee from which this report comes, and from circumstances beyond his control, he had not seen it. But from what he had heard of it, as it was read, he was free to confess that he gave it his most hearty concurrence. There might be some things in it to which he could not give his consent.

The question recurring on the following day, Mr. PRYOR addressed the convention at length. He differed from the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) in his argument that the diffusion of slavery strengthened it. Diffusion is not strength; but, on the contrary, concentration is strength. It was not the opinion of Thomas Jefferson that diffusing slavery

strengthened it. While he admired the genius and patriotism of Jefferson, he must, at the same time, confess, with humiliation and shame, that he was the most intelligent adversary of slavery that the world has ever produced. But he offered the Missouri restriction because, by using his own words, "by diffusing the "institution of slavery you weakened it." Look at Missouri, where slavery is very much diffused, and then at South Carolina, where it is more concentrated than in any other State in this Confederacy, and then say where the institution of slavery has the most strength.

The policy advocated in this report is and ought to be impracticable. We are committed by the action of our forefathers to give the Federal Government unconditional and absolute control over the African slave trade. The gentleman from South Carolina cannot expect to get the Federal Government to open that trade. No sensible man here believes that that will ever be done under any circumstances, for the North has complete control of the legislative and executive departments of the Government. Does the gentleman propose to open the trade by action of the several Southern States? That would be an act of bad faith, for we have agreed to the Constitution of this country, and as long as we remain in the Union, we must uphold that Constitution. It is what we require of others, and let us, like honorable men, do the same thing ourselves.

Another objection to the agitation of this subject, said Mr. PRYOR, is that by committing ourselves to this policy we sacrifice our friends at the North, and the National Democratic party in the North. It was that