THE VIRGINIA STATE-RIGHTS" CONVENTION.

Previous to this, the more extreme and violent portion of the disorganizers had sent out a secret circular to their se

ham (brother-in-law to Mr. Baldwin), Campbell Tarr of Wheeling (and Treasurer of West Virginia), and three other gentlemen in company with Mr. Tarr (TARR), in almost the precise words testified to by me. Letters are before me to sustain this assertion, and, in every instance but one, voluntarily sent.

But all this having occurred in April, 1861, spoken of as it has been in social circles among the best friends of Mr. Baldwin at intervals throughout that period, why is it that no denial of its truth has ever reached my ear during the lifetime of Mr. Lincoln, or during the great struggle for life by the Southern Confederacy, whose ultimate independence for nearly four years Mr. Baldwin did not doubt, and, as he testifies, "expected to be hanged if it failed ?"

But I have said, when Mr. Lewis gave his testimony he did not believe in the possibility of a denial by authority of Mr. Baldwin, and still less that that denial would be made on oath by Mr. Baldwin himself, and, therefore, he was less circumspect and minute than he would otherwise have been. See, however, what he now says in a letter written on the 7th of April, 1866, now before me.

He says, "You and I know that Baldwin did acknowledge that Mr. Lincoln made the proposition to withdraw the troops from Sumter upon the condition that the Virginia Convention would adjourn without passing an ordinance of secession. Some of the Secesh have been trying to persuade me that there was only a mistake between Baldwin and myself. I have always answered, my statement of the matter is before the public. I am as certain of its truth as I am of my own existence. I am not mistaken. If my evidence is not correct, I am a perjured man. I can make no compromise."

Again, in a letter of the 14th, he says, "I have seen the report of your evidence, and I think it as nearly correct as it could be, unless you had written it out at the time the interview took place. Baldwin and myself talked over the matter going to and returning from your house, and it is almost impossible for me at this date to report what was said in your presence, and what was said in going to and from your house. That Bald

cession friends throughout the entire state, urging them all to assemble in Richmond on the 16th of April, and not only

win admitted to me before we got to your house, and to you after our getting to your house, that Mr. Lincoln did propose to him that, if the Convention would adjourn without passing an ordinance of secession, he would withdraw the troops from Fort Sumter, is as certain as that the sun rose this morning. I recollect the expression he used. He, Mr. Baldwin, said that Mr. Lincoln made the proposition, and that he asked, 'What! adjourn without a day?' (It was the first time in my life that I had heard the English for sine die, and, though I knew the general meaning of the term, I never knew the literal translation, and it made an impression that I have never forgotten. I am not a Latin scholar.) Baldwin said Lincoln replied, Certainly.' Baldwin then said the Convention would not entertain such a proposition for a moment. I have talked with Colonel Gray (Algernon S. Gray, a colleague of Mr. Lewis in the Convention, and a warm personal friend of Mr. Baldwin) several times about this during and since the war. He is not anxious to be a witness, etc. Colonel Gray and myself, as you know, boarded and roomed together. The morning after you informed me of the interview between Baldwin and Mr. Lincoln I commenced telling Gray about it, thinking he was as ignorant as myself, when, to my utter astonishment, he sprang up in the bed and asked, in the most excited manner, How, in the name of God, did you hear that?' I remarked that it was true such an interview had taken place. He replied, 'I thought there were only three men in Richmond who knew such an interview had taken place.' . . Gray is the only member of the Convention that I have met with who acknowledged that he knew any thing about the matter."

Here, then, is proof conclusive on this head. I need only say that a more scrupulous, conscientious, and truthful Christian gentleman does not live than John F. Lewis, and that there is not a man in this state, friend or foe, who will say otherwise; and if any Copperhead at the North or traitor at the South shall hereafter charge that Abraham Lincoln made unnecessary war upon the South, or that he came into office under a pledge to war upon Southern institutions, his friends may exultingly point to this record for a refutation of the slander, and to show what great personal sacrifices that generous-hearted and patriotic man was prepared to make to avert the heavy calamities of a civil war, and to throw the responsibility where it properly belongs.

to bring every secessionist of their respective, but of neighboring counties, the object of which was to exercise an outside influence by giving it the appearance of a great uprising of the people of the state from every part, demanding, in their sovereign capacity, the immediate passage of an ordinance of secession; and if that could not be obtained by peaceable means, then to inaugurate a revolution, the first step in which was to depose the governor, who was at that time supposed to be as strongly in favor of the Union as he now declares himself to be inveterate in his hostility to it, to turn the legitimate Convention out of doors, and establish a provisional government of their own.

THE REBELLION INAUGURATED.

Of all this, of course, there is no record proof, for the purpose was not divulged until after the passage of the ordinance, when many of the leaky vessels did not hesitate to avow this to have been the design, which before had been suspected, from the time the secret circular first came to light, and from the general tone and feeling manifested by the party.

On Wednesday night, the 10th of April, Mr. Roger A. Pryor, who was supposed to have been deputed by his coadjutors in Richmond, as otherwise he would scarcely have ventured to take such a responsibility upon himself, made a speech in Charleston, in which he gave the most solemn assurance and sacred pledges that if they would begin the war by firing upon Fort Sumter, the Virginia Convention would immediately pass an ordinance of secession, notwithstanding the vote that had just been taken, which stood 45 for secession and 90 against it. But upon this assurance from Mr. Pryor the state determined to act; they did not wait for the arrival of Mr. Lincoln's cargo of bread. The next day

they commenced the attack on Fort Sumter, and an old gray-haired octogenarian from this state, who had been preaching secession for a number of years, claiming and proclaiming every where that it was his mission to break up the government at Washington by dissolving the Union, was permitted the high privilege of firing the first gun, but who was the first to take to his heels when the enemy, at a subsequent period, made their appearance in his own vicinity, and has taken good care never to be near enough to them to fire a gun since.

This attack of the 11th resulted in the lowering of the flag of the United States. News of the capitulation reached Washington on the evening of the 13th; then, as I have already said, threats became current and unconcealed of the contemplated attack on Washington by an armed mob collected together from the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Alexandria, Richmond, Norfolk, etc., which was so confidently looked for, that before I left the city (where I happened to be) on the 15th, many of the windows of the Treasury building had been already barricaded as before mentioned. The Secretary of War at Montgomery, as I have also already said, declared in a speech on the night of the surrender of the fort that in thirty days the Southern flag should float over the Capitol at Washington; and then it was, and these the circumstances under which Mr. Lincoln issued his proclamation on the 15th of April calling for seventy-five thousand men for the protection of the Capitol of the nation, which afforded the pretext to the Virginia Convention to pass an ordinance declaring the connection of this state with the government of the United States as dissolved.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S PROCLAMATION IN 1861.

I do not question either the propriety or the duty which devolved on Mr. Lincoln for making a call for troops under the circumstances that existed and that were patent to all men's minds. Whether it was for the protection of the Capitol, or for the enforcement of the laws in the revolted states, or for the recovery of the property, which, if taken by individuals, would have constituted a felony-and yet I consider that proclamation in many respects as the most unfortunate state paper that ever issued from any Executive since the establishment of the government. It was unfortunate in this: first, that while it was manifest to any reflecting man that Mr. Lincoln could not have called for so small a body of troops with any calculation of overrunning or subduing the seven states that had already virtually declared war against the government, yet it failed to state what was the object of the call, and thereby it was left in the power of the demagogues with which the land was filled to make any and every misrepresentation of its purpose that was best adapted to excite the apprehensions and resentment of the South. General Jackson under similar circumstances, in the height of his popularity and power, did not venture to take the step he did without an address and an appeal to the patriotism of the people to stand by and sustain him in a determination to save the Union from the hands of traitors who aimed at its destruction. How much more important, then, was it that Mr. Lincoln, against whom such a storm of prejudice had been raised as to his purpose of striking a deadly blow at the institutions of the South, should have declared his views on this subject in the most distinct and emphatic form! when he would have kept himself beyond the reach of the demagogues and de