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PROCEEDINGS OF CONGRESS CONTINUED. NINTH WEEK. COM-
PROMISE IMPOSSIBLE. IVERSON'S FAREWELL. VIRGINIA'S
POSITION. TEXAS SENTIMENT. VARIOUS PROPOSITIONS. THE
SPEECHES OF PRYOR, STEVENS, HARRIS,
WINSLOW, VAN WYCK,

CONKLING, LATHAM, HAMILTON, AND OTHERS. COCHRANE'S

IMPOST BILL. KELLOGG'S RESOLUTIONS, ETC., ETC.

Irreconcilable Differences.

so reasoned the masses of the party-so felt their leaders in Congress; and, so reasoning and feeling, to have compromised upon any plan offered, would have argued an abasement of which they could not be guilty. The South had raised the standard of revolution to force the concessions demanded; therefore she would not accept less. To have accepted less would have argued defeat, at once foreign to its spirit and its principles.

IF public interest in the | tutional clause to guarantee that recognition proceedings of Congress against any future legislation-it demanded did not become intensified the division of the unsettled domain, whereby as the session advanced, it was from weari-a due proportion should forever be debarred ness of debate and not from want of import- to freedom and consecrated to slavery. To ance in the doings of both Houses. The concede the claim-to accede to the demand week under consideration-the ninth of the were to confess the election of Mr. Lincoln session-witnessed efforts of great power and to be a wrong, the Republican party to be a significance from leading men; and, though dangerous political organization, the Conno advance was made towards the ardently stitution to be imperfect, and the principle wished-for peaceful adjustment of sectional of a majority rule to be a fiction. At least, differences, it was rather from the absolutely irreconcileable nature of those divisions than from a want of the spirit of kindness and conciliation. With very few exceptions, Congressmen not only felt kindly towards each other, but strove, in their very hearts, to accomplish the peace so congenial, so desirable to all. Outward things urged them to compromise; the prosperity of the country, the happiness of the people, the hopes of the future, all seemed to hang upon that word; while the truly self-sacrificing spirit of the mass of members plead with them on the floors and in the quiet of their chambers for peace. peace. That peace nor compromise grew out of their labors was owing solely to the gulf of principle which lay between the contestants. No subtle ingenuity of leaders could bridge it even with a frail tracery of meaningless words; its depths neither party would consent to fill up by the melting away of their own mountains of political and social antagonisms. The South stood ready and solicitous to treat; but it named as its terms what the Republicans could not yield without sacrificing the heart-principle of their party organization. It claimed a recog- Though upper-works and motive-power were nition of property in man-it exacted a consti- gone, if the hull were left unshattered, all

Hence, though Mr. Seward offered the olive-branch-though Mr. Adams poured oil upon the seething waters-though patriotic Southern men extended hands for fellowship, there swept beneath the outward sea of troubles a tide of feeling, a strength of purpose, which words were powerless to calm. The great ship of State staggered before the storm. Not even jurymasts of compromise would hold-not even staysails of resolutions would stand-not even the ponderous flukes of the Constitution anchor would grapple to make her fast. But, with a seemingly blind instinct, she drifted off the lee-shore and gained an offing, where to ride down the elements in comparative safety to her hull.

United States."

Mr. Iverson, of Georgia, having received of ficial notice of the secession of his State, passed the notice and the Ordinance of Secession up to the Secretary to be read from his desk. After the reading, the Senator announced his withdrawal from the Senate, in the following terms:

might be repaired, and the glorious creature | to Slavery than for discharging him as a freeman. once again go forth, vigorous with life and Surely the prayer of men of Massachusetts for such strength. The seemingly blind instinct that objects ought to be heeded by the Senate of the bore her from the shore, was the deep, resistless undercurrent of American Idea, which exists beneath the surface of our political organism, of our daily progress, of our conflicting popular processes, to bend all things to its superhuman agency, as if the hand of Destiny alone were the impressing power. The American Idea! Mysterious, silent, yet supreme; typified in Union and embodied in Democracy; potential against all forms, and impermeating the age with its humanizing influence: it was the generator of our political being the monitor of our ways, and must ever be the preserver of our distinctive and glorious Republic.

The Senate's session of Monday (January 28th) was marked by the reception of a number of petitions from the people, presented by Seward, Wilson and Crittenden, praying for the passage of compromise resolutions. Mr. Wilson, in presenting the petition of citizens of Newburyport, made some severe reflections on the petitioners, who prayed for the speedy adoption of the Crittenden resolutions. He said:

Wilson's Satire.

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The paper which has just been read informs the Senate,

Iverson's Farewell.

which has already been an-
nounced to the public, that the State of Georgia, by
a solemn act of Sovereign Convention, has with-
drawn from the Federal Union. She is no longer
one of the United States of America, but has resum
ed all the powers granted by her to the Federal
Government, and asserted her independence as a
separate and sovereign State. In performing this
important and solemn act, she has been influenced
by the deliberate and firm convictions that her safe.
ty, her interest, and her honor demanded it. The
opinion of her people has been gradually tending to
this point for the last ten years, and recent events
have confirmed it; and an overwhelming majority
of the people have elected delegates to a Conven-
tion, and expressed in that election a determination
to withdraw from the Federal Union. And the Con-
vention, by a like decisive majority, has passed the

Ordinance of Secession.

"Georgia is one of six States which, in less than sixty days, have dissolved their connection with the Federal Union, and declared their separate independence. Steps are now in progsess to form a Confederacy of their own, and, in a few weeks at the furthest, a Provisional Government will be formed, giving them ample powers for their own defense, with power to enter into negotiations with other nations, to make war, to conclude peace, to form treaties, and do all other things which independent nations may of right do. Provision will be

"These men prayed for the adoption of the amendments to the Constitution proposed by the Senator from Kentucky, to wit: The recognition of Slavery and its protection South of latitude 30 deg. 30 min., not only in the existing Territory, but in Territory not yet conquered, purchased, or stolen; the denial of any power in Congress to abolish Slavery in the District of Columbia while it existed in Virginia, or to prohibit the transportation of slaves from one State to another, or to Territories recognizing Slavery; to pay the owner the full value of a fugitive slave when the Marshal was prevented from arresting him by intimidation, and to take from per-made for the admission of other States to the new sons of African race the right of suffrage which they have possessed in Massachusetts since the Constitution, passed by the Revolutionary fathers, was adopted in 1780, and acquire territory in Africa or South America, and send at the expense of the Federal Treasury, such free negroes as the States may wish to have removed from their limits. For the adoption of these honorable and humane provisions in the Constitution beyond the power of the people ever to change, the people of the Free States would secure the immense concession of making the fee of the Commissioner no greater for remanding a man

Union, and it is confidently believed that, within a few months, all the Southern States of the late Con. federacy will be formed into a Union far more homogeneous, and, therefore, far more stable than the one now broken up. I have only to say that this action of my own State, and of her Southern neigh bors and sisters, meets the approval of my well-considered and deliberate judgment, and as one of her native sons and subjects, I shall cheerfully cast my lot with her and them. And, sink or swim, live of die, I shall be of and with her and them to the last. By the secession of the Southern States, and the

66

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Iverson's Farewell.

THE VIRGINIA PEACE CONVENTION.

formation of a Southern Confederacy, two great and momentous alternatives will devolve on the Federal Government. You may acquiesce in the Revolution, and acknowledge the independence of a great Confederacy, or you may make war on the Seceding States, and attempt to force them back. If you acknowledge our independence, and treat us as one of the nations of the earth, you can have friendly relations and intercourse with us. You can have an equitable division of the public property, and of the existing public debt of the United States. But if you make war upon us, we will seize and hold all the public property in our borders, and in our reach, and we will never pay one dollar of the public debt, for the law of nations will extinguish all private and public obligations between the States. The first Federal gun that is fired upon the Seceding Statesthe first drop of blood of any of their people shed by the Federal troops-will cancel every public and private obligation of the South which may be due either to the Federal Government or to the Northern people. We care not in what shape or form, or under what pretext you undertake coercion. We shall consider all efforts to exercise authority over us as acts of war, and shall meet and resist them accordingly. You may send armies to invade us by land, or you may send ships to blockade our ports, and destroy our trade and commerce with other nations. You may abolish our ports of entry, and, by an act of Congress, attempt to collect the Federal revenues by ships of war. You may do all or any of these, or similar acts. They will be acts of war, and so understood and considered, and in whatever shape you make war we will fight you.

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'You boast of your superior numbers and strength, but remember that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.' You have one hundred thousand fighting men. So have we. And, fighting upon our own soil, and to preserve our rights, and vindicate our honor, and defend our homes, our firesides, our wives and children from the invader, we shall not be easily conquered. You may possibly overrun us, desolate our fields, burn our dwellings, lay our cities in ruins, murder our people, and reduce us to beggary, but you cannot subdue and subjugate us to your will. Your conquest, if you gain a victory over us, will amount to but little. You will have to keep a standing army of 100,000 men, costing millions of money, only to keep us in subjection. You may whip us, but we will not stay whipped. We will rise again and again to vindicate our rights and liberty, and to throw off your oppressive and accursed yoke, and we will never cease the strife until our whole white race is extinguished, and our fair land given over to desolation. You will have ships of war-we

297

Iverson's Farewell.

But when you

may have none. You may blockade our ports and lock up our commerce. We can live, if need be, without commerce. shut up our commerce from the looms of Europe, we shall see whether other nations will not have something to say, and something to do, upon that subject. Cotton is King,' and will oblige you to raise your blockade and draw off your ships.

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"I know that great hopes are raised, and great efforts made to retain the Border States in the Union. But, let coercive measures be commenced against the Southern Confederacy, or any of the Seceding States, and all such hopes will vanish into thin air. The first act of Federal legislation looking to coercion, the first Federal gun fired, the first Federal ship which takes its station off a Southern port, will bring all the Southern States, including Maryland, laggard as she seems to be in the vindication of a sound independence, into obedience and alliance with their Southern sisters. And thus united, they will resist and defy all your efforts. There are also those who, surrendering all hope of preventing the destruction of the Union, recognizing the existing state of facts, yet hope to see it reconstructed. Sir, a war between the two sections will forever close the door to any such project.

"I will not say that the Southern States, if let alone, even after they have formed a Southern Confederacy, will not listen to propositions of reconcili ation. Let the North make them, and we will consider them. The Southern people have heretofore cherished a firm and sincere reverence and attachment to the Union, and nothing but stern necessity could have convinced them of the propriety of leav ing it, or could have driven them to the alternative of separation from it; and when they shall see, if it be not too long delayed, a fraternal sense of justice and good feeling returning to the Northern mind and heart, and when they can find sufficient and reliable guarantees for their rights and equality in the Union, they may, perhaps, reconsider their action, and rejoin their former confederates.

"For myself, I am free to declare that, unless my opinion shall be greatly changed, I shall never agree to a reconstruction of the Federal Union. The Rubicon is passed, and it shall never, with my consent, be recrossed. But, in this sentiment, I may be overruled. I may safely say that nothing will satisty them, except the recognition of equality, the safety of the institution of domestic Slavery, and the protection of their constitutional rights, for which they have been so long contending in the Union, and the denial of which has forced them to their present attitude of self-defense.

"It remains for me now only to express my grate

ful acknowledgments and thanks for the uniform courtesy and kindness with which I have been treated by those Senators with whom I have had official and social intercourse. And in thus wishing them each a long life of prosperity and peace, I bid

them farewell."

the peace of the continent should be preserved; and if the present Union is beyond hope, we should still see if some means cannot be devised by reconstruction or otherwise. Such was the appeal of the great State of Virginia. If there be any Senator who indulges the belief that an attempt to force any State

This rather defiant good-bye embodied the will not lead to war, there never was a man more

true spirit of secession:-brimming with the pride of arrogance, its very insolence rendered it representative; while the declaration that, if not allowed to go in peace, the revolutionists would still further seize, plunder and confiscate property, and outrage the Federal Government, shows what a mean estimate the conspirators placed upon the still loyal people and States. Iverson was a man of more than ordinary abilities. He would have adorned any society had his education and associations been more truly Christian. He paled before the greater greatness of Mr. Toombs, and was but an echo. He was only his equal in the sense of the proverb-Faci nus quos inquinat æquat.

The Virginia Peace
Convention.

A message from the President, communicating the Virginia Peace Congress' resolutions, [see page 300,] called up Mr. Mason, whose avowals were of interest, considering the fact that he was an avowed Secessionist, had signed the inflamatory and treasonable "Address," [see page 247,] advising the people of Virginia to hasten into Convention, &c., and that he, generally, had colluded with Toombs, Floyd, Cobb and others to excite the Southern mind to the point of revolution. After moving that the message be printed, he said:

deluded. He had said so before, and he repeated it now. We have evidence from the section which had separated, that though they had found it

necessary to take possession of the forts and arms, they had done so simply as a measure of precaution, and there was not one, if she should be restored to the Union, or if peace should be restored to the Union, or if peace follow, who would not account for every dollar of the public property. He had seen nothing but an earnest desire to keep the peace, nor had they been actuated by anything like fear. He believed those States were actuated by a desire to keep the peace, and the State of Virginia invokes

Dissembling Patri otism.

like feeling from the Government. This was the
only course to avert the evils which threaten us."
Mr. Mason found in the
design of that Congress a
hope of restraining the
Government and Congress from acts of coer-
cion. It would, first, afford the President an
excuse for delay. That he would avail him-
self of the pretext was only too evident. This
was a very important point, indeed; for, the
very day fixed upon for the meeting of Com-
missioners at Washington was also the ini-
tial day of the Confederate Congress. Two
or three weeks' suspense at the Federal Cap
ital, in waiting upon the discussions of the
Commissioners, would suffice to inaugurate
and consolidate the Slave Confederacy, so as
to enable it to meet any steps which might
be taken toward their "coercion." Mr. Ma-
son wisely befriended "the cause," in seem-

"These resolutions were passed by the State of
Virginia and transmitted directly to the President, to
Inform him that Virginia had undertaken the officeing to approve of the resolutions.
of mediator between the States. The next object
of the resolutions was to induce the President to re-
frain from any act to produce a collision, with the
knowledge that if a collision once occurs, it will be
beyond the power of any mortal arm to remedy the
evils to follow. It was a great effort Virginia was
thus making to save the country. Virginia had also
called a Convention to meet on the 13th of Feb-
ruary. But the great object of her mission now
was to prevent any further complication, so as to
place the difficulty beyond remedy. He trusted the
noble effort of Virginia would be successful, at least
for the time being. If it should result that the ques-
tions are of a character to admit of no solution, still

It would, secondly, in event of a failure to produce a plan of settlement-as was inevitable, and apparent from the very first conception of the Convention-throw the responsibility of a failure upon the North, and thus so strengthen the secession sentiment in Virginia and North Carolina as to give both States to the revolutionists. All of which Messrs. Mason and Hunter so well realised, that they doubtless regarded the "Peace Con gress" as a most happy conception.

The Message of the President so delighted Clingman, of North Carolina, that he moved

Texas Logic.

THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.

The Boston Petition.

299

The Southern of Boston, praying for a
peaceful adjusment of the
national difficulties. Ed-
ward Everett was chairman of the Committee
deputized by Boston for its submission to
Congress. The petition was presented by
Mr. Rice, (Rep.) It was wrapped in the
American flag, and was ordered to be printed,
amid much applause.

to print an extra number. leaders showed more sagacity in the matter than their opponents would have credited. Hemphill, (Dem.,) of Texas, addressed the Senate. His logic was quite consistent with Texas morals. He claimed that, not only was the State sovereign, but the people in it were sovereign, and could ordain a new Government at will-could leave the

Union, with or without cause. Texas had not found safety in the Union; therefore, it would not be surprising if she should seek safety out of it. Coercion against a State could not be exercised under the Constitution. The annexation of Texas was necessary, he averred, to the United States, and Texas was not responsible for the Mexican war. Texas had not received many benefits from her connection with the Union, and, in his judgment, she would be constrained to withdraw, and resume again, her glorious independence!

[Texas never had any "glorious independence" until the army of General Taylor gave it to her; she never had any secured right to soil and boundaries until the Federal Government conquered it for her; all her prosperity grew out of the protection given her by the United States forts and troops; the United States paid her money (ten millions) for a quitclaim on Territory she never had possessed; the United States surveyed her vast domain, garrisoned her vast frontier, opened her roads, located her harbor channels, and fixed the lights and buoys along her lagune coast; the United States purchased Arizona, to give the Texas-Pacific railway the right of way across the Continent; the United States built her Custom-houses, Court-houses, Postoffices, &c.; the United States sustained her mails at an immense annual deficit in receipts. In return for these innumerable and costly benefits the United States had received-what? The privilege of having such men as Wigfall and Hemphill in her Senate Chamber, to preach treason, to contemn the Constitution, and to sow the seeds of sedition.]

The House proceedings, Monday, (January 28th), were opened by the presentation of a petition from fourteen thousand citizens

John Cochrane, (Dem.,)

Resolutions,

of New York, introduced Propositions and State Mr. Bigler's propositions, providing for taking the sense of the people of the States on certain amendments of the Constitution. Referred to the Special Committee of Five; as also was a joint resolution by Florence, (Dem.,) of Pennsylvania, proposing amendments to the Constitution.

Craige, (Dem.,) of North Carolina, asked, but did not obtain leave, to introduce a resolution inquiring of the Secretary of War how many troops have been ordered here since December last, whence they came, their nature and character, and for what purpose they are concentrated here in a time of profound peace.

Campbell, (Rep.,) of Pennsylvania, presented the resolutions of the Pennsylvania Legislature, expressing ardent attachment to the Constitution and Union, and repugnance to Secession, and pledging the support of that State in such a manner, and to such an extent as may be required for the maintenance of the laws, &c. Mr. Campbell said the resolutions express the sentiment of the people of Pennsylvania.

Quarles, (Am.,) of Tennessee, presented resolutions of the Tennessee Legislature, proposing a Convention of Delegates from the Slaveholding States, at Nashville, on the 4th of February, with a view to the settlement of the difficulties on the basis submitted. The last resolution concludes with a recommendation that, if no compromises were made, then all the Slaveholding States will unite under the Constitution of the United States, with such amendments as their safety and welfare may suggest. This, and the Pennsylvania resolutions, were laid on the table and ordered to be printed.

Vandever, (Rep.,) of Iowa, offered a declaratory joint resolution, that Congress has no

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