PROCEEDINGS

O F THE

MONTGOMERY

CONGRESS

415

Proceedings of the

Congress.

twelve months after the passage of this act, to borrow, on the credit of the Confederate States, a sum not exceeding $15,000,000, or so much thereof as, in his opinion, the exigencies of the public service may require to be applied to the payment of appropriations mdea by law for the support of the Government, and for the defence of the Confederate States.

"SEC. 2. That the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby authorized, by the consent of the President of the Confederate States, to cause to be prepared certificates of stock or bonds, in such sums as are hereafter to be mentioned, for the amount to be bor

rowed as aforesaid, to be signed by the Register of

the Treasury, and sealed with the seal of the Treasury; and the said certificates of stock or bonds shail be made payable at the expiration of ten years from

the 1st day of September next; and the interest thereon shall be paid semi-annually, at the rate of three per cent. per annum, at the Treasury, and such other place as the Secretary of the Treasury may designate. And to the bonds which shall be issued as aforesaid shall be attached coupons for the semi-annual interest which shall accrue, which coupons may be signed by officers to be appointed for the purpose by the Secretary of the Treasury. And the faith of the Confederate States is hereby pledged for the due payment of the principal and interest of the said stock and bonds.

"SEC. 3. At the expiration of five years from the 1st day of September next, the Confederate States may pay up any portion of the bonds or stock, upon giving three months previous public notice at the seat of Government of the particular stock or bonds to be paid, and the time and place of payment; and from and after the time so appointed, no furher interest shall be paid on said stock or bonds.

"SKC. 4. The certificates of stock and bonds shall be issued in such form and for such amounts as may be determined by the Secretary of the Treasury,

and may be assigned or delivered under such regulations as he may establish. But most of them shall be for a less sum than $50; and he shall report to Congress, at its next session, a statement in detail of his proceedings, and the rate at which the loans may have been made, and all expenses attending the same.

Proceedings of the
Congress.

a sinking fund to carry into
effect the provisions of this sec-
tion: Provided, however, That
the interest coupons, issued under the second
section of this act, when due, shall be receivable in
payment of the export duty on cotton: Provided, also,
That when the debt and interest thereon, herein au-
thorized to be contracted, shall be extinguished, or
the sinking fund provided for that purpose shall be
adequate to that end, the said export duty shall
cease and determine.”

It was announced by the Southern press
quite generally that, so patriotic were the
masses, the loan was eagerly absorbed by the
people; that every man who could muster one
hundred dollars was investing in a bond.
This story served the purpose designed-of
inspiriting the Secessionists, and of dispirit-
ing the Unionists in the States of Tennessee,
Virginia, and North Carolina. To have con-
fessed the truth-that the credit of the new
Government was so low as to be unable to
obtain its first loan-would have been fatal
to the further progress of the revolution to
the North; hence, the usual resort was had
to deception. The loan went begging at the
banks, at the doors of planters, on the street;
and, up to July, it had been but about half
taken. Does the reader ask, How was it
possible for the Government to progress
without money? The curiosity-gatherer will
be able to answer when he collects a specimen
of each issue of Treasury notes, certificates,
cotton-deposit acknowledgments, &c., &c.,
by the Government, and of the utterly illimit
able issue of notes of every denomination, by
banks, corporate and stock companies, cities,
railways, individuals, and churches.
flood of promises-to-pay was only paralleled
by an Autumnal fall of leaves. As it was
dangerous for a person to demand the specie
on any of these issues, there was no want of
"currency," although there was a great want
of coin. The history of these paper issues
will form an amusing record, if it ever is
written.

The

The Act to provide for the "provisional” army of the Confederate States was as fol

"SEC. 5. From and after the 1st day of August, 1861, there shall be levied, collected, and paid, a duty of one-eighth of one per cent. per pound on all cotton in the raw state exported from the Confed-lows: erate States, which duty is hereby specially pledged to the due payment of interest and principal of the loan provided for in this act; and the Secretary of the Treasury is authorized and required to establish

"SECTION 1. The Congress of the Confederate States of America do enact, That to enable the Government of the Confederate States to maintain its jurisdiction over all questions of peace and war, and to provide

Paoceedings of the
Congress.

Proceedings of the
Congress.

for the public defence, the Pres | their newly-assumed titles ident be, and is hereby, author- of Commander-in-Chief, ized and directed to assume which they had freely sportcontrol of all military operations in every State, hav- ed. It was a short-lived "supremacy" the ing reference to a connection with questions between State enjoyed. The tyranny closing around the said States, or any of them, and powers foreign them like an overgrowth, was as sure to overto them. run their "palmetto" independence as the moss which trailed over their forests to festoon them with darkness. Under this act, Peter G. Beauregard, soon made BrigadierGeneral by commission of Mr. Davis, was sent to Charleston to assume ommand of the forces

"SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That the President is hereby authorized to receive from the

several States the arms and munitions of war which have been acquired from the United States, and which are now in the forts, arsenals, and navyyards of the said States, and all other arms and mu

nitions which they may desire to turn over and there, while General Bragg was placed in

make chargeable to this Government.

"SEC. 3. Be it further enacted, That the President be authorized to receive into the service of this Government such forces now in the service of said States as may be tendered, or who may volunteer by consent of their State, in such numbers as he may require, for any time not less than twelve months, unless sooner discharged.

“SEC. 4. Be it further enacted, That such forces may be received, with their officers, by companies, battalions, or regiments, and, when so received, shall form a part of the provisional army of the Con

federate States, according to the terms of their en

listment, and the President shall appoint, by and

with the advice and consent of Congress, such general officer or officers, for said forces, as may be necessary for the service.

command at Pensacola.

The Act for the free navigation of the Mississippi, although it conceded the river a common highway, still assumed a jurisdiction which the States drained by the great river would resist to the last. Their rights to that highway was incontestible; to restrict their rights, by giving up the river to a foreign jurisdiction, was to injure the property and commerce of the great North-west to an incalculable degree. The fact that a battery had been placed on the banks of the river, at Memphis, to challenge all craft, and thus to obstruct navigation, showed to the twelve States, tributary to the stream, what might exist, at any moment, to their great detriment; and the Act for the navigation of the stream only served to call most especial attention to the matter. It soon became one of the things evident, that that highway never would be allowed to pass through the territory of a foreign power.

CHAPTER XXXII.

RESISTANCE TO TYRANNY IN THE SECEDED STATES. SOUTH CARO -
LINA
EVIDENCES OF DISSATISFACTION

DISSATISFIED.

GEORGIA, ALABAMA, AND MISSISSIPPI. THE UNION
IN THE BORDER SLAVE STATES.

IN

FEELING

South Carolina Repudiates the Confederacy.

THE Voice of the Cotton States, seemingly, the future Permanent Southern was unanimous for the new order of things. Constitution. For South CaroBut, so many evidences came of a stifled lina is about to be saddled with opinion which repelled the revolution and almost every grievance except Abolition, for which hoped for reaction, that we she long struggled, and just withdrawn from the late the subject briefly. As preliminary, it may United States Government. Surely McDuffie lived

advert to

be said that even the Secessionists did not

content.

harmonize in their views, Evidences of Dis- now that the hour had come to embody them. The element of revolution was not one to be calmed into peace at any voice. To say to South Carolina, "Peace! be still!" was as hopeless for peace as to bid the overcharged steam-chest from foaming. She must have vent, apparently, or an explosion would

ensue.

in vain, and Calhoun taught for naught, if we are

again to be plundered, and our commerce crippled,

destroyed, by tariffs-even discriminating tariffs. Yet this is the almost inevitable prospect. The fruit of the labors of thirty odd long years, in strife and bitterness, is about to slip through our fingers.

"But is this all we are about to be called on to enact and bear? It is only the beginning. "The three-fifths rule of representation for slaves was one of the many Yankee swindles put upon us in the formation of the old Constitution. It is a radical wrong. It most unfairly dwarfs the power of some of the States in any Federal representation. The proportion of her black to the white population is very much larger than that of any other. tion of representation was cut down upon all her Slave State. By the old swindle, her fair popula

The class of chronic mal-contents, in that State, was large-the class of well-contents small. The philosophy of Calhoun, and the "glittering generalities" of McDuffie, had resulted in a mental disorder, whose only proper expression seemed to find embodiment slaves in proportion as three to five. The black in the word nullification. This became ap- population, being in a majority in our State, twoparent at an early stage of the proceedings fifths of more than one-half of the people of the of the Confederate Congress, notwithstand-State are entirely unrepresented. And in just the ing the seal of secrecy. A correspondent of degree that the proportion of the black population the Charleston Mercury at Montgomery, writ-in South Carolina predominates over the proportion ing under date of February 14th-evidently of the blacks to the whites in any other State, is the a member of the Congress - uttered this swindle augmented and aggravated. South Carolina strong and distinctive protest to the too Fed- is small enough without again flinging away what eral nature of the new Government: legitimate power she possesses. That power is in her slaves-socially, politically, economically. The proposition of the three-fifths rule calls upon her not only to stultify herself, but to dwarf her powers.

South Carolina Repu
diates the Confed-
eracy.
Reconstruction is dead.
tion is established; and the Southern Confederacy
is a fixed thing. But what sort of a Confederacy?
Here the Convention is at sea, and vague dreads of
the future and terrors of the people, and in some
degree a want of statesmanship, paralyze all useful
and essential reform, and weaken men into inaction.
Let your people prepare their minds for a failure in

"Upon one point there appears
to be a fixed determination and
straightforward action here.
A Southern Confedera-

53

"Is this all? It is not. She is probably to be called upon to brand herself and her institutions.

"The old Constitution of the United States merely grants to the Congress the power to prohibit by law the further introduction of slaves from Africa or elsewhere outside of the United States. Terrorism here is about to make its perpetual prohibition a fundamental provision of the Constitution itself. A stigma

South Carolina Repudiates the Confed

eracy.

is thus broadly stamped upon the whole institution before the whole world, and sealed by ourselves. That Congress should have power to prohibit the trade is a legitimate provision. I should not object to such a provision. It is a matter of trade, business, and general economy. There may or may not be a sufficient supply of African labor now in America. Of this it is for the peoples of the several States to decide, through their representatives in the General Congress. But to brand it by a fundamental article of the Constitution itself, is to cast an infamous slur upon the whole institution-the lives and the properties of every slaveholder in the land.

For what have we cast off the North as a rotten incubus, if we are thus to reenact all their swindles, outrages, and insolences upon ourselves? To be plundered and manacled with discriminating tariffsto stultify ourselves with a half-way representation-

have to fight Lincoln instead of Buchanan. And
who are to do the fighting? South Carolinians, and
none but South Carolinians. The fort will, of course,
be reenforced if it is in the power of man to do it.
Will nobody tell me how lives have been saved by
this policy? The attitude of our State has been in a
large measure demoralized-I will not say dis-
graced-by the course pursued; the political atti-
tude of the whole Southern Confederation has been
embarrassed and complicated; and what is gained?
Nothing, that I can see, but the spilling of much more
valuable blood than was at all necessary."

We have, in this, representative South Car-
olina opinion - opinion which, so long as
South Carolina has existence as a State, she
will struggle to force upon whatever govern-
ment is over her. The only normal condi-
tion of such a State is that of perfect iso-

and to indorse all the slanders and insolence of the lation, under the rule of an aristocracy.

Northern States?

"All this is not encouraging to our hopes. But there remains two methods of retrieving ourselves. The first is, in our Convention. We may have to follow the example of 1788. The second is, by providing in the Constitution, for the present, an easy way of amendment; and South Carolina may insist upon amendments upon these points being made. Doubtless public spirit will advance. Many men here want information. They are ignorant and unpracticed in this matter. There is still room for much hope in the end-with the exercise on our part of much firmness.

"It is greatly to be regretted that the debates upon the Constitution will probably not be public. It seems to me that they will be very important as guides in the future, whereby we may be enabled to comprehend its meaning- the proper interpretation of its language.

"To change the subject-a nice pickle South Carolina has been placed in with regard to Fort Sumter! Three weeks ago it was feared by many that any assault upon that fort was to be postponed until the 4th of February, and then to be turned over to the action of the Southern Congress. Such has proved the fact. What has been gained? President Davis will not be inaugurated until Saturday evening, the 16th of February. This is the earliest period possible. Circumstances will still further delay it. The Monday two weeks following, Lincoln is to be inaugurated at Washington. What opportunity is there between these two dates for Mr. Davis to make preparations for attack-to make his demand upon Mr. Buchanan for its surrentler, and to receive an answer before the 4th of March? None whatever. We will have to fight, and we will

A Georgia Protest.

The Augusta (Georgia)
Sentinel became extremely
irascible under the secret
reign of the new Congress. That paper thus
commented on secret legislation and on the
reported veto of the Slave-Trade act:

We believe there is no truth in the rumor.
Should it be true, however, it shows that we live
under a very singular system of government, in
which laws are not only enacted in secret, but are
vetoed in secret, after the people suppose them to
have gone into force. It is time that the people
knew, not only what laws they live under, but who
are responsible for their passage. If it is necessary
to exclude the public from the deliberations of Con-
gress to prevent confusion, that is no reason for de-
priving the press of the privilege of publishing the
proceedings of our rulers."

The Natchez (Mississippi)
Courier did not look for A Mississippi Protest.
prosperity under the rule

of the new President. It characterized his
success as the result of a ten years' struggle
for a Presidency. While it admired the in-
genuity by which he had, at length, succeed-
ed to the accomplishment of his ambitious
schemes, it despised the tricks by which he
crawled to the place. Of the Confederacy
and its usurpations, it thus gave its opinion:

"There was no sound of rejoicing here at Natchez,
either on account of the formation of such a South-
ern Confederacy, or the appointment of such rulers.
The words sprang too often from one to another,

Are we to have no showing? Are the people to have no choice? Can a Convention alter constitu