We want you to join us permanently by the adoption of the permanent Constitution, which will go into operation next winter, and of course it will be important to you in regard to the elections, that you change your fundamental law so far as relates to the election of members to the Southern Congress under that Constitution.

I will barely add, by way of recapitulation, the main object, then, I had in view in coming before you today, was simply to announce that our Government hailed with joy the news of your secession from the old Government, and a desire on your part to form an alliance with us.

It is the fanatics of the North, who are warring against the decrees of God Almighty, in their attempts to make things equal which he made unequal.

Most of that fanatical spirit at the North on this subject, which in its zeal without knowledge, would upturn our society and lay waste our fair country, springs from this false reasoning.

The great truth, I repeat, upon which our system rests, is the inferiority of the African.

He is not his equal by nature, and cannot be made so by human laws or human institutions. Our system, therefore, so far as regards this inferior race, rests upon this great immutable law of nature.

That the negroes with us, under masters who care for, provide for and protect them, are better off, and enjoy more of the blessings of good government than their race does in any other part of the world, statistics abundantly prove.

One good and wise feature in our new or revised Constitution is, that we have put to rest the vexed question of slavery forever, so far as the Confederate legislative halls are concerned.

They have but slender conceptions of limited powers. Their ideas run into consolidation.

They do not understand Constitutional liberty.

The honor and glory of the Western Republic, to which the eyes of the world has been directed for years, was the work mainly of Southern men, and my judgment is, if you will pardon its expression, that just so soon as the South is entirely separated from the North, and the government at Washington has no longer the advice and counsel of your statesmen and the men of the South,

The tariff question is also settled.

The people of Virginia may have been attached to the Union; but they are much more attached to their homes, their firesides and all that is dear to freemen —Constitutional liberty.

Even an extension of the Missouri line, which was offered by prominent Southern men, was sullenly rejected. Every indication of Northern sentiment on the part of the dominant party there, since the election last fall, shows that they were and are bent upon carrying out their aggressive and destructive policy against us.

The cause of Georgia was the cause of us all; and so I trust it will be in Virginia.

is by your alliance with those who have rescued, restored, and re-established them in the Constitution of the Confederate States—there is no hope in the States North.

I was not insensible of the fact that several of the Northern States had openly repudiated their Constitutional obligations, and that if the principles of the present dominant party should be carried out, ultimate separation was inevitable.

We have rescued the Constitution from utter annihilation. This is our conviction, and we believe history will so record the fact.

On this point indulge me a moment. Under the latitudinarian construction of the Constitution which prevails at the North, the general idea is maintained that the will of the majority is supreme; and as to Constitutional checks or restraints, they have no just conception of them.

Secession from the old Union on the part of the Confederate States was founded upon the conviction that the time-honored Constitution of our fathers was about to be utterly undermined and destroyed, and that if the present administration at Washington had been permitted to rule over us, in less than four years, perhaps, this inestimable inheritance of liberty, regulated and protected by fundamental law, would have been forever lost.

We want it because your people are our people—your interests are our interests; nay, more: because of the very prestige of the name of the old commonwealth.

In the State of Georgia, before we entered into an alliance with the other States, apprehensions were felt as to our available means.

Kentucky, also, has a large body of men, who will be mustered into our service should the exigency arise. It may be that some of those troops may be discharged, and their places supplied by others; but 100,000 men will perhaps be in the field in less than three months. That is not counting Virginia. You, of course, will have a large force. All these forces should co-operate to be efficient; and while I don’t claim to be a military man, it seems to me to be clear, on general rational principles, that all the forces—those of the Confederate States, those of Virginia, as well as those of the border States that are not yet out of the Union—should be under one head, as also all the military operations of the country directed to the same ends. It is generally admitted that, in the execution of laws, it is essential that there should be one head; but more important than in the usual execution of laws is it that military operations should be under one head. In physical economy all the parts and functions in each organism, to be efficient, are under the control of one head, one animating, moving spirit, with one sensorium, one mind, one directing will. In military matters, looking to the same ends and objects, there should be one head. It is probable Virginia will be the main theatre, to a great extent, of the pending conflict. Maryland may be, perhaps—we don’t know; but the line of Virginia, your great waters on the North, necessarily make you, in this conflict, the theatre of large and extensive military operations, if not the scene of the bloodiest conflicts that this continent has ever yet witnessed. You will, necessarily, therefore, look to the Southern confederacy immediately for aid, even whether you become a member of it or not. I will state here, however, before passing any further, that we are looking to this, your ultimate union with us, as a fixed fact; and the unanimous desire of every branch of our government is, that, just as speedily as possible, you will thus link your fortunes with ours. Your cause is ours, your future will be ours; and your destiny must be ours.

The cause of Virginia, and I will go further, the cause of Maryland, and even the cause of Delaware, and of all the States with institutions similar to ours, is the cause of the Confederate States—the cause of each, the interests of each, the safety of each is the same; and the destiny of each, if they could all but be brought to realize the dancers, would be the same.

when the Northern States refused to fulfill their obligations under the Constitution, it was no longer binding upon the Southern States.

With those States we were united under a compact known as the Constitution, that imposed obligations upon all the States. These obligations, on the part of the Southern States, have been faithfully performed, while on the part of a large number of the Northern States, they were openly and avowedly disregarded.

we should not forget, are in the hands of the Great Sovereign of the universe. In Him and the justice of our cause, and our own exertions, our trust and confidence of success should be placed.

When the communication was received that Virginia had seceded, and wished a conference with our government, there was not the slightest hesitation.

Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent

poison, that your hearthstones might be violated and your wives and little ones tortured and murdered.

It is from under such dominion that South Carolina respectfully invites you to unite in forming a Government with a homogeneous people, identical in interest with you, and whose effort it will be to perpetuate the institutions of our fathers.

the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once,

And also to tender to you the sincere sympathy of the people of South Carolina in the great and momentous movement in which we are all engaged, and in which our interests are identical and our honor is alike involved.

and allow all our constitutional rights of property to be taken away by a construction of the Constitution which originates in hostility and hatred, or shall we, as men who know their rights, bestir ourselves, and by a firm, united and cordial “co-operation,” fortify and strengthen them, that they may be transmitted unimpaired to our children, and our children’s children, throughout all generations. Wisdom dictates that all the questions arising out of the institution of slavery, should be settled now and settled forever.

it will be perverted into an engine for the destruction of our domestic institutions, and the subjugation of our people.

Not only have a majority of the non-slaveholding States rendered all legislation for our protection nugatory and inoperative by State enactments, but on the 6th of November last, a majority of the people of all the free States endorsed a platform of principles in direct conflict with the Constitution and the decisions of the Supreme Court, and thus the will of a numerical majority — a majority trained from infancy to hate our people and institutions, are to be substituted in their stead.

One destiny, however, awaits all the slave-holding States of this Union, and fate has indissolubly linked their fortunes together:

The antagonism of opinion, upon the questions growing out of the recognition by the Constitution of the right of property in slaves, so long and angrily discussed, has at last culminated, in the adoption, by a majority of the Northern people of the doctrine of the “Irrepressible Conflict.”

aggravated by the recent election of a President upon principles of hostility to the States of the South,

Therefore, the people of South Carolina contend that justice has required of them a resort to arms, in the protection of a principle of right.

the Church, has already, and is daily keeping her arm bare for this conflict. Already her drawn sword is flashing in the twilight of fanaticism, and the world knows that where that sword cuts asunder, no human surgery can re-unite the wound. But, gentlemen, we cannot conceal it from ourselves one moment longer-there is not a Christian man, a slaveholder, in this assembly who does not feel in his inmost heart as a Christian, that the point of this sword of the church is at this moment dripping with the last blood of sympathy which bound him to his Christian brethren of the North. They set the lamb of God between our seed and their seed.

Now, gentlemen, there is another which we regard as of more weight, more potential, by far, than either territorial or geographical segregation-that of political and social diversity; and that comes of the profound sentiment, the moral and religious sentiment,

That Government has threatened with immenent peril, if not with instant destruction, parts and sections of the parties to it, and the people and the States North are at this moment consulting together whether, by the mere power of numbers, they shall not subjugate parties to this Government.

That Government has unduly taxed a section of the parties.

that Government has limited a section of the parties territorially.

African slavery cannot exist at the North. The South cannot exist without African slavery. [Applause.] None but an equal race can labor at the North; none but a subject race will labor at the South.

But that God, gentlemen, cares for his people-cares for liberty, and right, and justice-and we are no longer alone. Very soon our own children from Florida and Alabama answer back to the maternal call, and our great sister, Georgia, marshaled forth her giant offspring; and from the grave of the gallant Quitman, on the banks of the Mississippi,

here rose up one voice, one voice only, from the people of South Carolina, who shouted back resistance to the death. Their Legislature then in session, caught that spirit, and with one voice, and one voice only, proclaimed resistance to the death. The people of the State again in their sovereign capacity, as you are, with one voice, and one voice only, ordained resistance to the death.

even when hordes of their people, under the sanction of these regulations, robbed us of our property and murdered our citizens, and bands of wild fanatics, under the same sanction, invaded slave territory and proclaimed the destruction of slavery by the annihilation of the slaveholder

Even when a number of our confederate States refused to carry out the provisions of the Constitution, vital to our interests,

Even when a long series of unjust, partial and oppressive taxation was grinding us into the very dust of poverty,

curse them with a triumph which may plunge this continent into civil war, and destroy, perhaps forever, the fairest forms of liberty that ever human philosophy grafted upon the institutions of men.

For half the period of its existence, from the days of the younger Adams to this hour, the untiring and unflinching purpose of the Northern representation in our federal legislation, and of the people of the Northern States, has been first to restrict and restrain the people of the Southern States within the limitations which they have prescribed, then to subsidise, then to destroy.

hese 300,000 whites depend for their whole system of civilization on these 400,000 slaves.

Finally, acting upon the impulse of their duties of self-protection and self-preservation, majorities, large majorities throughout the whole of these 17 States have placed the executive power of the Federal Government in the hands of those who are bound by the most sacred obligations, by their obligations to God, by their obligations to the social institutions of man, by their obligations of self-protection and self-preservation, to place the system of slavery as it exists in the Southern States upon a course of certain and final extinction. Twenty millions of people, having in their hands one of the strongest Governments on earth, and impelled by a perfect recognition of the most powerful obligations which fall upon man, have declared that the vital interests of eight millions of people shall be exterminated. In other words, the decree, the result of this cumulation which I have endeavored to show you, was inaugurated on the 6th of November last, so far as the institution of slavery is concerned, in the confederates of the Northern non-slaveholding States. That decree is annihilation, and you can make nothing shorter of it.

Third. The citizens of not less than five of our confederates of the North have invaded the territory of their confederates of the slaveholding States, and proclaimed the intention of abolishing slavery by the annihilation of the slaveholders; and two of these States have refused to surrender the convicted felons to the demand of the invaded States; and one of these-one of the most influential-one, perhaps, recognized as the representative of what is called American sentiment and civilization, has, in its highest solemn form, approved of that invasion; and numbers of people, scattered throughout the whole extent of these seventeen States, have made votive offerings to the memory of the invaders.

have become now necessary to the protection of an industry which furnishes to the commerce of the Republic $250,000,000 per annum, and on which the very existence of twelve millions of people depends. In not one of these seventeen States can a citizen of one of the fifteen States claim his main property, and in many of them the persons of the citizens of these States have been violated, and in numerous cases the violence has resulted in murder.

Secondly, then, in pursuance of the same purpose that I have indicated, a large majority of the States of the Confederation have refused to carry out those provisions of the Constitution which are absolutely necessary to the existence of the slave States, and many of them have stringent laws to prevent the execution of those provisions; and eight of these States have made it criminal, even in their citizens to execute these provisions of the Constitution of the United States,

So that as my distinguished colleague [judge Benning], stated to you on yesterday, the decree goes forth that there are to be no more slave States admitted into the Union.

Now, strange as it may seem, it is nevertheless true, that while they were thus building up their wealth and their power from these sources, step by step, we will see latterly that, with this aggregation of wealth was growing up a determined purpose to destroy the very sources from which it was drawn. I pretend not ta explain this; I refer to it merely as history.

In addition to this, it may be stated, that at a very early period of the existence of this Government, the Northern people, from a variety of causes, entered upon the industries of manufacture and of commerce, but of agriculture scarcely to the extent of self support. This may have arisen from a variety of causes; among them, perhaps, an uncongenial climate, a barren soil, but an alluring sea coast adapted to commerce, besides an inherent tendency upon the part of the people of these latitudes to the arts of manucraft and traffic; and while, therefore, it was important that all the sources of the revenue should be kept up to meet the increasing expenses of the Government, it also manifestly became of great importance that these articles of manufacture in which they have been engaged should be subject to the purchase of their confederates. They, therefore, invented a system of duties partial and discriminating, by which the whole burden of the revenue from this extraordinary system fell upon those who produced the articles of exports which purchased the articles of imports, and which articles of import were consumed mainly, or to a great extent, by those who produced the exports.

Besides this, I would state. as preliminary, that a large portion of the revenue of the government of the United States has always been drawn from duties on imports. Now, the products that have been necessary to purchase these imports, were at one time almost exclusively, and have always mainly been the result of slave labor, and therefore the burden of the revenue duties upon imports purchased by these exports must fall upon the producer who happens also to be the consumer of the imports.

As preliminary to this statement, I would say, that as early as the year 1820, the manifest tendency of the legislation of the general government was to restrict the territorial expansion of the slaveholding States. That is very evident in all the contests of that period; and had they been successful to the extent that some hoped, even then, the line that cut off the purchase from France might have been projected eastward to the bottom of the Chesapeake and sent Virginia and half of Tennessee and all of Kentucky, Virginia proper, after she had given to non-slavery her northwestern empire, to the non-slavery section. That might be the line. The policy, however, has been pushed so far as to deprive this Southern section of that line of at least seven-tenths of the valuable acquisitions of the government.

Will the South be better prepared to meet the emergency when the North shall be strengthened by the admission of the new territories of Kansas, Nebraska, Washington, Jefferson, Nevada, Idaho, Chippewa, and Arizonia, as non-slaveholding States, as we are warned from high sources will be done within the next four years, under the administration of Mr. Lincoln?

is about to pass into the hands of a party pledged for the destruction, not only of their rights and property, but the equality of the States ordained by the Constitution, and the heaven-ordained superiority of the white over the black race.

The Federal Government has failed to protect the rights and property of the citizens of the South,

The dark pall of barbarism must soon gather over our sunny land,

an institution alike beneficial to both races, ameliorating the moral, physical and intellectual condition of the one, and giving wealth and happiness to the other.

We can clothe the world with our staple, give wings to her commerce, and supply with bread the starving operative in other lands,

but they are utterly powerless, as the late Presidential election unequivocally shows, to breast the tide of fanaticism that threatens to roll over and crush us.

Who can look upon such a picture without a shudder? What Southern man, be he slave-holder or non-slave-holder, can without indignation and horror contemplate the triumph of negro equality, and see his own sons and daughters, in the not distant future, associating with free negroes upon terms of political and social equality, and the white man stripped, by the Heaven-daring hand of fanaticism of that title to superiority over the black race which God himself has bestowed? In the Northern States, where free negroes are so few as to form no appreciable part of the community, in spite of all the legislation for their protection, they still remain a degraded caste, excluded by the ban of society from social association with all but the lowest and most degraded of the white race. But in the South, where in many places the African race largely predominates, and, as a consequence, the two races would be continually pressing together, amalgamation, or the extermination of the one or the other, would be inevitable. Can Southern men submit to such degradation and ruin? God forbid that they should.

an eternal war of races, desolating the land with blood, and utterly wasting and destroying all the resources of the country.

The slave-holder and non-slave-holder must ultimately share the same fate — all be degraded to a position of equality with free negroes, stand side by side with them at the polls, and fraternize in all the social relations of life;

Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republican party, the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as a change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new principles, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions — nothing less than an open declaration of war — for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans. Especially is this true in the cotton-growing States, where, in many localities, the slave outnumbers the white population ten to one.

He claims for free negroes the right of suffrage, and an equal voice in the Government– in a word, all the rights of citizenship, although the Federal Constitution, as construed by the highest judicial tribunal in the world, does not recognize Africans imported into this country as slaves, or their descendants, whether free or slaves, as citizens.

proposes that the opponents of slavery shall arrest its further expansion, and by Congressional Legislation exclude it from the common Territories of the Federal Government, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction.

As the last and crowning act of insult and outrage upon the people of the South, the citizens of the Northern States, by overwhelming majorities, on the 6th day of November last, elected Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, President and Vice President of the United States. Whilst it may be admitted that the mere election of any man to the Presidency, is not, per se, a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; yet, when the issues upon, and circumstances under which he was elected, are properly appreciated and understood, the question arises whether a due regard to the interest, honor, and safety of their citizens, in view of this and all the other antecedent wrongs and outrages, do not render it the imperative duty of the Southern States to resume the powers they have delegated to the Federal Government, and interpose their sovereignty for the protection of their citizens.

What, then are the circumstances under which, and the issues upon which he was elected? His own declarations, and the current history of the times, but too plainly indicate he was elected by a Northern sectional vote, against the most solemn warnings and protestations of the whole South. He stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white and black.

not a law has been passed by Congress, or an arm raised by the Federal Government, to protect the slave property of citizens from the Southern States upon the soil of Kansas — the common Territory and common property of the citizens of all the States — purchased alike by their common treasure, and held by the Federal Government, as declared by the Supreme Court of the United States, as the trustee for all their citizens; but, upon the contrary, a Territorial Government, created by Congress, and supported out of the common treasury, under the influence and control of Emigrant Aid Societies and Abolition emissaries, is permitted to pass laws excluding and destroying all that species of property within her limits– thus ignoring, on the part of the Federal Government, one of the fundamental principles of all good Governments, the duty to protect the property of the citizen, and wholly refusing to maintain the equal rights of the States and the citizens of the States upon their common Territories.

where, in many places, the tragic death of John Brown, the leader of the raid upon Virginia, who died upon the gallows a condemned felon, is celebrated with public honors, and his name canonized as a martyr to liberty; and many, even of the more conservative papers of the Black Republican school, were accustomed to speak of his murderous attack upon the lives of the unsuspecting citizens of Virginia, in a half-sneering and half-apologetic tone.

Recent events, however, have not justified their hopes; the more daring and restless fanatics have banded themselves together, have put in practice the terrible lessons taught by the timid, by making an armed incursion upon the sovereign State of Virginia, slaughtering her citizens, for the purpose of exciting a servile insurrection among her slave population, and arming them for the destruction of their own masters.

and the State authorities, instead of aiding in the enforcement of this law, refuse the use of their jails, and by every means which unprincipled fanaticism can devise, give countenance to the mob, and aid the fugitive to escape. Thus, there are annually large amounts of property actually stolen away from the Southern States, harbored and protected in Northern States, and by their citizens. And when a requisition is made for the thief by the Governor of a Southern State upon the Executive of a Northern State, in pursuance of the express conditions of the Federal Constitution, he is insultingly told that the felon has committed no crime

The law of Congress for the rendition of fugitive slaves, passed in pursuance of an express provision of the Constitution, remains almost a dead letter upon the Statute Book. A majority of the Northern States, through their legislative enactments, have openly nullified it, and impose heavy fines and penalties upon all persons who aid in enforcing this law; and some of those States declare the Southern slave-holder, who goes within their jurisdiction to assert his legal rights under the Constitution, guilty of a high crime, and affix imprisonment in the penitentiary as the penalty.

discriminating tariffs,

African Slavery has not only become one of the fixed domestic institutions of the Southern States, but forms an important element of their political power, and constitutes the most valuable species of their property– worth, according to recent estimates, not less than four thousand millions of dollars; forming, in fact, the basis upon which rests the prosperity and wealth of most of these States, and supplying the commerce of the world with its richest freights, and furnishing the manufactories of two continents with the raw material, and their operatives with bread.

Under the influences of climate, and other causes, slavery has been banished from the Northern States,

3. The Federal Government results from a Compact entered into between separate sovereign and independent States, call the Constitution of the United States, and Amendments thereto, by which these sovereign States delegated certain specific powers to be used by that Government, for the common defense and general welfare of all the States and their citizens; and when these powers are abused, or used for the destruction of the rights of any State or its citizens, each State has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of the violations and infractions of that instrument, as of the mode and measure of redress; and if the interest or safety of her citizens demands it, may resume the powers she had delegated, without let or hindrance from the Federal Government, or any other power on earth.

2. The equality of all the States of this Confederacy, as well as the equality of rights of all the citizens of the respective States under the Federal Constitution, is a fundamental principle in the scheme of the Federal Government. The Union of these States under the Constitution, was formed “to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to her citizens and their posterity;” and when it is perverted to the destruction of the equality of the States, or substantially fails to accomplish these ends, it fails to achieve the purposes of its creation, and ought to be dissolved.

1. The people are the source of all political power; and the primary object of all good Governments is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property; and whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the inalienable right, and the duty of the people to alter or abolish it.

In the name of my State and for myself individually,

she has adopted her ordinance of secession, and she invites all slaveholding States to unite with her, and among them the State of Missouri–to unite with her in forming a Southern Confederacy

that slavery might ultimately be put in a course of ultimate extinction

and enunciated the doctrine that Congress had the power to exclude the Southern man from going into the Territories with his property.

an organization against the formation of which, the Father of his Country warned the American people, met in Convention at the city of Chicago,

Within that time, gentlemen, we have seen the Governor of a non-slaveholding State refusing to deliver a fugitive from justice upon the demand of the Governor of the State of Kentucky, for the reason, as they hold, that it is no crime to entice your slaves to leave you.

Territories of the country for no other object than to exclude the men of Georgia and men of Missouri

They began to preach their doctrines from the pulpit, and but a few years elapsed before this anti-slavery feeling had so far overcome and taken possession of the religious mind of the North

On the 19th day of January, a Convention of the people of the State of Georgia adopted an ordinance of secession,

The isolation of any one of them from the others would make her a theatre for abolition emissaries from the North and from Europe.

to preserve African slavery.

The Federal Government would mock at her calamity in accepting the recent bribes in the army bill and Pacific railroad bill, and with abolition treachery would leave her unprotected frontier to the murderous inroads of hostile savages. Experience justifies these expectations. A professedly friendly federal administration gave Texas no substantial protection against the Indians or abolitionists, and what must she look for from an administration avowedly inimical and supported by no vote within her borders.

If she remains in the union the abolitionists would continue their work of incendiarism and murder.

both States have large areas of fertile, uncultivated lands, peculiarly adapted to slave labor; and they are both so deeply interested in African slavery that it may be said to be absolutely necessary to their existence, and is the keystone to the arch of their prosperity.

As her neighbor and sister State, she desires the hearty co-operation of Texas in the formation of a Southern Confederacy.

Insulted by the denial of her constitutional equality by the non-slaveholding States,

shall Mississippi follow in the footsteps of Georgia,

his new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes,

And yet these laws have been continually nullified, and the solemn pledge of the Compromise of 1850, by which the North came under renewed obligations to enforce them, has been faithlessly disregarded, and the government and its officers set at defiance.

Our Constitution, in unmistakable language, guarantees the return of our fugitive slaves.

This equality has been denied us in the South for years in the common territories, while the North has virtually distributed them as bounties to abolition fanatics and foreigners, for their brigand service in aiding in our exclusion.

only awaits the 4th of March for the inauguration of the new government, the new principles, and the new policy,

They have demanded, and now demand, equality between the white and negro races, under our Constitution; equality in representation, equality in the right of suffrage, equality in the honors and emoluments of office, equality in the social circle, equality in the rights of matrimony. The cry has been, and now is, “that slavery must cease, or American liberty must perish,” that “the success of Black Republicanism is the triumph of anti-slavery,” “a revolution in the tendencies of the government that must be carried out.”

The North pledged anew her faith to yield to us our constitutional rights in relation to slave property.

aggravated by the recent election of a President, upon principles of hostility to the States of the South;

to refer you to the action of Mississippi

In conclusion, gentlemen, let me renew to you the invitation of my State and people, to unite and co-operate with your Southern sisters who are already in the field, in defence of their rights.

But, so far were the Northern people from being warned bv these sad prophetic words, that at each renewal of the struggle the sentiment of hostility has acquired additional strength and intensity. The passions enlisted in it have become more bitter, the disregard of constitutional obligations more marked, and the purpose to destroy our institutions more fixed and definite.

a band of conspirators and traitors from the Northern States, whose purpose was to light up the fires of a servile insurrection, and to give your dwellings to the torch of the incendiary and your wives and children to the knives of assassins. The disgraceful attempt, it is true, ended in ignominious failure.

“It is my opinion,” says Mr. Lincoln, “that the slavery agitation will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the house to fall, but I expect it to cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all another. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest its further spread and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States-old as well as new, North as well as South.”

Having thus placed the institution of slavery, upon which rests not only the whole wealth of the Southern people, but their very social and political existence,

In the meantime it proposed to disregard the decisions of that august tribunal, and by the exertion of bare-faced power, to exclude slavery from the public Territory, the common property of all the States, and to abolish the internal slave trade between the States acknowledging the legality of that institution.

By a corrupt exercise of the power of appointment to office, they proposed to pervert the judicial power from its true end and purpose, that of defending and preserving the Constitution. to be the willing instrument of its purposes of wrong and oppression.

This action of the Convention of Mississippi, gentlemen of the Convention, was the inevitable result of the position which she, with other slaveholding States, had already taken, in view of the anticipated result of the recent Presidential election, and must have been foreseen by every intelligent observer of the progress of events.

“Whereas, they (the people of the non-slaveholding States) have elected a majority of electors for President and Vice-President, on the ground that there exists an irreconcilable conflict between the two sections of the Confederacy, in reference to their respective systems of labor, and in pursuance of their hostility to us and our institutions, have thus declared to the civilized world that the powers of the government are to be used for the dishonor and overthrow of the Southern section of this great Confederacy.

since the fatal day when that sectional Northern party triumphed over the Constitution and the Union at the recent election, and afterwards to the causes which have induced the action of my State.

By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South.

while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.

they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States.

They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against ruthless savages, for the sole reason that she is a slave-holding State.

They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance.

They have, through the mails and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir up servile insurrection and bring blood and carnage to our firesides. They have sent hired emissaries among us to burn our towns and distribute arms and poison to our slaves for the same purpose.

They have invaded Southern soil and murdered unoffending citizens, and through the press their leading men and a fanatical pulpit have bestowed praise upon the actors and assassins in these crimes, while the governors of several of their States have refused to deliver parties implicated and indicted for participation in such offenses, upon the legal demands of the States aggrieved.

They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our slaves and prevent their recapture, and have repeatedly murdered Southern citizens while lawfully seeking their rendition.

By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments. They have proclaimed, and at the ballot box sustained, the revolutionary doctrine that there is a ‘higher law’ than the constitution and laws of our Federal Union, and virtually that they will disregard their oaths and trample upon our rights.

For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.

They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men,

The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions– a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.

The Federal Government, while but partially under the control of these our unnatural and sectional enemies, has for years almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the people of Texas against the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State government has expended large amounts for such purpose, the Federal Government has refuse reimbursement therefor, thus rendering our condition more insecure and harassing than it was during the existence of the Republic of Texas.

By the disloyalty of the Northern States and their citizens and the imbecility of the Federal Government, infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in those States and the common territory of Kansas to trample upon the federal laws, to war upon the lives and property of Southern citizens in that territory, and finally, by violence and mob law, to usurp the possession of the same as exclusively the property of the Northern States.

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.

Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association.

a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.

that she should enjoy these blessings.

to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people.

And as it is the desire and purpose of the people of Alabama to meet the slaveholding States of the South, who may approve such purpose, in order to frame a provisional as well as a permanent Government upon the principles of the Constitution of the United States,

preceded by many and dangerous infractions of the Constitution of the United States by many of the States and people of the northern section,

WHEREAS, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States of America, by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama,

We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property.

It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.

It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.

It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives.

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice. It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically,

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.

The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory. The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.

There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.

Why, we would be soon drowned in a black pool, we would be literally overwhelmed with a black population.

They will hate you and your institutions as much as they do now, and treat you accordingly.

As regards the Territorial evil, I will show that the remedy for that too, is in separation.

We are the same in our social and religious attributes. We have a common Bible; we kneel at the game altar, break bread together, and there can be no difficulty between us on this score.

It is not from a love for the black man that they receive him now; but it is from a hatred to slavery. and from a hatred to the owners of slaves.

If we were separated from the North, the escape of a fugitive slave into their territory would be but the addition of one savage to the number they have already. [Laughter.]

Mr. BFNNING then referred to the drain in the matter of fugitive slaves, and proceeded to ask what would Virginia gain by joining the Southern Confederacy?

It is difficult to find out how much tribute she pays in this form, but, from a rough estimate which I have made out myself, putting the amount of goods consumed by the South at $250,000,000 annually, though a Northern gentleman puts it at $300,000,000; but putting it at $250,000,000, the tribute which the South pays to the North annually, according to the present tariff [20 per cent] amounts to $50,000,000. Then there are the navigation laws which give the North a monopoly of the coasting trade. The consequence of this monopoly is that it raises freights, and to that extent enhances the price of goods upon us. There is the indirect carrying trade, in which they also have a monopoly. Instead of our goods coming to us direct, they now come by New York, Philadelphia or Boston. Last year the amount of goods that came to the South by this indirect route was about $72,000,000 which were not carried at a less cost than $5,000,000, which, of course, had to be paid by us. In the matter of expenditures we have not more than one fifth allotted to us, whereas we ought to have one-third. In 1860 the expenditures were $80,000,000, and the proportion of this which is lost to us by an unjust system of discrimination amounts to nearly $20,000,000. This is a perpetual drain upon us.

As things now stand, there is a great drain of wealth from the South to the North. The operation of the tariff, which at present averages about 20 per cent, is to enhance the prices of foreign goods upon us to that extent; and not only foreign goods, but domestic goods,

Because manufacturing has now been brought to such perfection by the invention of new machinery. The result will be the immigration of the best men of the North; skilled artizans and men of capital will come here and establish works among you. You have the advantage of longer days and shorter winters, and of being nearer to the raw material of a very important article of manufacture. I have no idea that the duties will be as low as 10 per cent. My own opinion is that we shall have as high duty as is now charged by the General Government at Washington. If that matter is regarded as important by this Convention, why the door is open for negotiation with us. We have but a provisional and temporary government so far. If it be found that Virginia requires more protection than this upon any particular article of manufacture let her come in the spirit of a sister, to our Congress and say, we want more protection upon this or that article, and she will, I have no doubt, receive it.

We have merely adopted the revenue system of the United States so far, and are now collecting the revenue under an old law. Our Constitution has said that Congress should have the power to lay duties for revenue, to pay debts and to carry on the government, and therefore there is a limit to the extent that this protection can go, and within that the South can give protection that will be sufficient to enable you to compete with the North.

They have now got the whole market by virtue of the tariff which we have laid on foreign importation.

The election of Lincoln in itself is not a violation of the letter of the Constitution, though it violates it in spirit. The Constitution was formed with a view to ensure domestic peace and to establish Justice among all, and this act of Lincoln’s election by a sectional majority, was calculated to disregard all these obligations, and inasmuch as the act utterly ignores our rights in the government, and in fact disfranchises us, we had a full right to take the steps that we have taken.

You perceive, then, that out of one article we have two hundred millions of dollars. This is surplus, and a prospect of an indefinite increase in the future. Then, we have sugar worth from fifteen to twenty millions of dollars, increasing every year at a pretty rapid rate. Then, we have rice, and naval stores, and plank, and live oak and various other articles which make a few more millions. You may set down that these States yield a surplus of $270,000,000 with a prospect of increase. These we turn into money and with that we buy manufactured goods, iron, cotton and woolen manufactures ready made and many other descriptions of goods necessary for consumption. Then we buy flour, and wheat, and bacon, and pork, and we buy mules and negroes; very little of this money is consumed at home; we lay it out this way.

These personal liberty bills were unconstitutional; they were deliberate infractions of the Constitution of the United States; and being so, they give to us a right to say that we would no longer be bound by the Constitution of the United States, if we choose.

My next proposition is that the North is in the course of acquiring this power to abolish slavery.

election of Lincoln by a sectional majority,

the personal liberty bills,

the territorial evil.

the fugitive slave evil

The next reason is this, the North entertains upon the subject of the Constitution the idea that this a consolidated Government, that the people are one nation, not a Confederation of States, and that being a consolidated Government the numerical majority is sovereign.

The first is that the North regards every such stipulation as void under the higher law. The North entertains the opinion that slavery is a sin and a crime. I mean, when I say the North, the Republican party, and that is the North; and they say that any stipulation in the Constitution or laws in favor of slavery, is an agreement with death and a covenant with hell; and that it is absolutely a religious merit to violate it.

the land will be left in the possession of the blacks, and then it will go back into a wilderness and become another Africa or St. Domingo.

Is it to be supposed that the white race will stand that? It is not a supposable case. Although not half so numerous, we may readily assume that war will break out everywhere like hidden fire from the earth, and it is probable that the white race, being superior in every respect, may push the other back.

the North is acquiring that power by two processes, one of which is operating with great rapidity-that is by the admission of new States. The public territory is capable of forming from twenty to thirty States of larger size than the average of the States now in the Union. The public territory is peculiarly Northern territory, and every State that comes into the Union will be a free State.

By the time the North shall have attained the power, the black race will be in a large majority, and then we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything.

When that time comes, the time will have arrived when the North will have the power to amend the Constitution, and say that slavery shall be abolished, and if the master refuses to yield to this policy, he shall doubtless be hung for his disobedience.

They make raids into your territory with a view to raise insurrection, with a view to destroy and murder indiscriminately all classes, ages and sexes, and when the base perpetrators are caught and brought to punishment, condign punishment, half the north go into mourning. If some of the perpetrators escape, they are shielded by the authorities of these Northern States-not by an irresponsible mob, but ,by the regularly organized authorities of the States.

They have endeavored to put the Wilmot Proviso upon all the other territories of the Union, and they succeeded in putting it upon the territories of Oregon and Washington. They have taken from slavery all the conquests of the Mexican war, and appropriated it all to anti-slavery purposes; and if one of our fugitives escapes into the territories, they do all they can to make a free man of him; they maltreat his pursuers, and sometimes murder them.

What is the feeling of the rest of the Northern people upon this subject? Can you trust them? They all say that slavery is a moral, social and political evil. Then the result of that feeling must be hatred to the institution; and if that is not entertained, it must be the consequence of something artificial or temporary-some interest, some thirst for office, or some confidence in immediate advancement.

It is true that the Republican party hates slavery, and that it is to be the permanent, dominant party at the North; and the majority being equivalent to the whole, as I have already stated, we cannot doubt the result.

The Republican party is now in league with the tariff, in league with internal improvements, in league with three Pacific Railroads.

My next proposition is, that the Republican party of the North is in a permanent majority. It is true that in a government organized like the government of the Northern States, and like our own government, a majority, where it is permanent, is equivalent to the whole. The minority is powerless if the majority be permanent. Now, is this majority of the Republican party permanent? I say it is.

He is a representative man; his sentiments are the sentiments of his party; his principles of political action are the principles of political action of his party. I say, then; it is true, at least, that the Republican party of the North hates slavery.