MESSAGE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS.

DELIVERED AT RICHMOND JULY 20. Gentlemen of the Congress of the Confederate States of America :

My message addressed to you at the commencement of the last session contained such full information of the state of the Confederacy as to render it unnecessary that I should now do more than call your attention to such important facts as have occurred during the recess, and the matters connected with the public defence.

I have again to congratulate you on the accession of new members to our Confederation of free and equally sovereign States. Our loved and honored brethren of North Carolina and Tennessee have consummated the action foreseen and provided for at your last session, and I have had the gratification of announcing, by proclamation, in conformity with law, that these States were admitted into the Confederacy. The people of Virginia, also, by a majority previously unknown in our history, have ratified the action of her Convention uniting her fortunes with ours. The States of Arkansas, North Carolina, and Virginia have likewise adopted the permanent Constitution of the Confederate States, and no doubt is entertained of its adoption by Tennessee, at the election to be held early in next month.

I deemed it advisable to direct the removal of the several executive departments, with their archives, to this city, to which you have removed the seat of Government. Immediately after your adjournment, the aggressive movements of the enemy required prompt, energetic action. The accumulation of his forces on the Potomac sufficiently demonstrated that his efforts were to be directed against Virginia, and from no point could necessary measures for her defence and protection be so effectively decided, as from her own capital. The rapid progress of events, for the last few weeks, has fully sufficed to lift the veil, behind which the true policy and purposes of the Government of the United States had been previously concealed. Their odious features now stand fully revealed. The message of their President, and the action of their Congress during the present month, confess their intention of the subjugation of these States, by a war, by which it is impossible to attain the proposed result, while its dire calamities, not to be avoided by us, will fall with double severity on themselves.

Commencing in March last, with the affectation of ignoring the secession of seven States, which first organized this Government; persevering in April in the idle and absurd assumption of the existence of a riot, which was to be dispersed by a posse comitatus; continuing in successive months the false representation that these States intended an offensive war, in spite of conclusive evidence to the contrary, furnished as well by official action as by the very basis on which this Government is constituted,

the President of the United States and his advisers succeeded in deceiving the people of these States into the belief that the purpose of this Government was not peace at home, but conquest abroad; not defence of its own liberties, but subversion of those of the people of the United States. The series of manoeuvres by which this impression was created; the art with which they were devised, and the perfidy with which they were executed, were already known to you, but you could scarcely have supposed that they would be openly avowed, and their success made the subject of boast and self-laudation in an executive message. Fortunately for truth and history, however, the President of the United States details, with minuteness, the attempt to reinforce Fort Pickens, in violation of an armistice of which he confessed to have been informed, but only by rumors, too vague and uncertain to fix the attention of the hostile expedition despatched to supply Fort Sumter, admitted to have been undertaken with the knowledge that its success was impossible. The sending of a notice to the Governor of South Carolina of his intention to use force to accomplish his object, and then quoting from his inaugural address the assurance that "there could be no conflict unless these States were the aggressors," he proceeds to declare his conduct, as just related by himself, was the performance of a promise, so free from the power of ingenious sophistry as that the world should not be able to misunderstand it; and in defiance of his own statement that he gave notice of the approach of a hostile fleet, he charges these States with becoming the assailants of the United States, without a gun in sight, or in expectancy, to return their fire, save only a few in the fort. He is, indeed, fully justified in saying that the case is so free from the power of ingenious sophistry that the world will not be able to misunderstand it. Under cover of this unfounded pretence, that the Confederate States are the assailants, that high functionary, after expressing his concern that some foreign nations had so shaped their action as if they supposed the early destruction of the national Union probable, abandons all further disguise, and proposes to make this contest a short and decisive one, by placing at the control of the Government for the work at least four hundred thousand men, and four hundred millions of dollars. The Congress, concurring in the doubt thus intimated as to the sufficiency of the force demanded, has increased it to half a million of men.

These enormous preparations in men and money, for the conduct of the war, on a scale more grand than any which the new world ever witnessed, is a distinct avowal, in the eyes of civilized man, that the United States are engaged in a conflict with a great and powerful nation. They are at last compelled to abandon the pretence of being engaged in dispersing rioters and suppressing insurrections, and are driven to the acknowledgment that the ancient

been a State of the Union, this view of the constitutional relations between the States and the General Government is a fitting introduction to another assertion of the message, that the executive possesses power of suspending the writ of habeas corpus, and of delegating that power to military commanders at their discretion. And both these propositions claim a respect equal to that which is felt for the additional statement of opinion in the same paper, that it is proper, in order to execute the laws, that some single law, made in such extreme tenderness of citizens' liberty that practically it relieves more of the guilty than the innocent, should to a very limited extent be violated. We may well rejoice that we have forever severed our connection with a Government that thus trampled on all principles of constitutional liberty, and with a people in whose presence such avowals could be hazarded. The operations in the field will be greatly extended by reason of the policy which heretofore has been secretly entertained, and is now avowed and acted on by us. The forces hitherto raised provide amply for the defence of seven States which originally organized in the Confederacy, as is evidently the fact, since, with the exception of three fortified islands, whose defence is efficiently aided by a preponderating naval force, the enemy has been driven completely out of these stations; and now, at the expiration of five months from the formation of the Government, not a single hostile foot presses their soil. These forces, however, must necessarily prove inadequate to repel invasion by the half million of men now proposed by the enemy, and a corresponding increase of our forces will become necessary. The recommendations for the raising of this additional force will be contained in the communication of the Secretary of War, to which I need scarcely invite your earnest attention.

mulated in this Confederacy of agriculturists, could not be more strongly displayed than in the large revenues which, with eagerness, they have contributed at the call of their country. In the single article of cotton, the subscriptions to the loan proposed by the Government, cannot fall short of fifty millions of dollars, and will probably exceed that sum; and scarcely an article required for the consumption of our army is provided otherwise than by subscription to the produce loan, so happily devised by your wisdom. The Secretary of the Treasury, in his report submitted to you, will give you the amplest details connected with that branch of the public service; but it is not alone in their prompt pecuniary contributions that the noble race of freemen who inhabit these States evidence how worthy they are of those liberties which they so well know how to defend. In numbers far exceeding those authorized by your laws, they have pressed the tender of their services against the enemy. Their attitude of calm and sublime devotion to their country, the cool and confidant courage with which they are already preparing to meet the invasion, in whatever proportions it may assume; the assurance that their sacrifices and their services will be renewed from year to year with unfailing purpose, until they have made good to the uttermost their rights to selfgovernment; the generous and almost unequivocal confidence which they display in their Government during the pending struggle, all combine to present a spectacle, such as the world has rarely, if ever, seen. To speak of subjugating such a people, so united and determined, is to speak in a language incomprehensible to them; to resist attack on their rights or their liberties is with them an instinct. Whether this war shall last one, or three, or five years, is a problem they leave to be solved by the enemy alone. It will last till the enemy shall have withdrawn from their borders; till their political rights, their altars, and their homes are freed from invasion. Then, and then only, will they rest from this struggle, to enjoy, in peace, the blessings which, with the favor of Providence, they have secured by the aid of their own strong hearts and steady arms. JEFFERSON DAVIS.

It is the more gratifying to be able to give you this, because, in need of large and increased expenditure, in support of our army, elevated and purified by a sacred cause, they maintain that our fellow-citizens, of every condition of life, exhibit most self-sacrificing devotion. They manifest a laudable pride of upholding their independence, unaided by any resources other than their own, and the immense wealth which a fertilized and genial climate has accu

Doc. 110.

A LETTER FROM L. W. SPRATT.

Hon. John Perkins, Delegate from Louisiana:

FROM the abstract of the Constitution for the Provisional Government, published in the papers of this morning, it appears that the slave trade, except with the Slave States of North America, shall be prohibited. The Congress, therefore, not content with the laws of the late United States against it, which, it is to be presumed, were re-adopted, have unalterably fixed the subject by a provision of the Constitution.

therefore, in theory at least, labor is voluntary; in the other, involuntary; in the labor of the one there is the elective franchise, in the other there is not; and, as labor is always in excess of direction, in the one the power of government is only with the lower classes; in the other the upper. In the one, therefore, the reins of government come from the heels, in the other from the head of the society; in the one it is guided by the worst, in the other by the best intelligence; in the one it is from those who have the least, in the other from those who have the greatest stake in the continuance of existing order. In the one the pauper laborer has the power to rise and appropriate by law the goods protected by the State when pressure comes, as come it must, there will be the motive to exert it—and thus the ship of State turns bottom upwards. In the other there is no pauper labor with power of rising; the ship of State has the ballast of a disfranchised class; there is no possibility of political upheaval, therefore, and it is reasonably certain that so steadied, it will sail erect and onward to an indefinitely distant period.

Such are some of the more obvious differences in form and constitution between these two societies which had come into contact within the limits of the recent Union. And perhaps it is not the least remarkable, in this connection, that while the one, a shapeless, organless, mere mass of social elements in no definite relation to each other, is loved and eulogized, and stands the ideal of the age, the other, comely and proportioned with labor and direction, mind and matter in just relation to each other, presenting analogy to the very highest developments in animated nature, is condemned and reprobated. Even we ourselves have hardly ventured to affirm it-while the cock crows, in fact, are ready to deny it; and if it shall not perish on the cross of human judgment, it must be for the reason that the Great Eternal has not purposed that still another agent of his will shall come to such excess of human ignominy.

Such are the two forms of society which had come to contest within the structure of the recent Union. And the contest for existence was inevitable. Neither could concur in the requisitions of the other; neither could expand within the forms of a single government without encroachment on the other. Like twin lobsters in a single shell, if such a thing were possible, the natural expansion of the one must be inconsistent with the existence of the other; or, like an eagle and a fish, joined by an indissoluble bond, which for no reason of its propriety could act together, where the eagle could not share the fluid suited to the fish and live, where the fish could not share the fluid suited to the bird and live, and where one must perish that the other may survive, unless the unnatural union shall be severed-so these societies could not, if they would, concur. The principle that races are unequal, and that among unequals inequality is right, would have been destructive to the

form of pure democracy at the North. The principle that all men are equal and equally right, would have been destructive of slavery at the South. Each required the element suited to its social nature. Each must strive to make the government expressive of its social nature. The natural expansion of the one must become encroachment on the other, and so the contest was inevitable. Seward and Lincoln, in theory at least, whatever be their aim, are right. I realized the fact and so declared the conflict irrepressible years before either ventured to advance that proposition. Upon that declaration I have always acted, and the recent experience of my country has not induced me to question the correctness of that first conception.

Nor is indignation at such leaders becoming the statesmen at the South. The tendency of social action was against us. The speaker to be heard must speak against slavery; the preacher to retain his charge, must preach against slavery; the author, to be read, must write against slavery; the candidate, to attain office, must pledge himself against slavery; the office-holder, to continue, must redeem the pledges of the candidate. They did not originate the policy, but they pandered to it; they did not start the current, but they floated. on it; and were as powerless as drift-wood to control its course. The great tendency to social conflict pre-existed; it was in the heart of the North-it was in the very structure of Northern society. It was not a matter of choice but of necessity that such society should disaffirm a society in contradiction of it. It was not a matter of choice but of necessity that it should approve of acts against it. In possession of power, it flowed to political action on the South, as fluids flow to lower levels. The acts of individuals were unimportant. If I had possessed the power to change the mind of every Republican in Congress, I would not have been at pains to do so. They would but have fallen before an indignant constituency, and men would have been sent to their places whose minds could never change. Nor, in fact, have they been without their use. As the conflict was irrepressible; as they were urged on by an inexorable power, it was important we should know it. Our own political leaders refused to realize the fact. The zealots of the North alone could force the recognition; and I am bound to own that Giddings, and Greeley, and Seward, and Lincoln, parasites as they are, panderers to popular taste as they are, the instruments, and the mere instruments, of aggression, have done more to rouse us to the vindication of our rights than the bravest and the best among us.

Such, then, was the nature of this contest. It was inevitable. It was inaugurated with the Government. It began at the beginning, and almost at the start the chances of the game were turned against us. If the foreign slave trade had never been suppressed, slave society