assert their liberties and to protect their menaced rights. There never was before such universality of conviction among any people, on any question involving so serious and so thorough a change of political and international relations.

This grew out of the clearness of the right so to act, and the certainty of the perils of farther association with the North. The change was so wonderful, so rapid, so contrary to universal history, that many fail to see that all has been done in the logical sequence of principles, which are the highest testimony to the wisdom of our fathers, and the best illustration of the correctness of those principles. This Government is a child of law instead of sedition, of right instead of violence, of deliberation in stead of insurrection. Its early life was attended by no anarchy, no rebellion, no suspension of authority, no social disorders, no lawless disturbances. Sovereignty was not for one moment in abeyance. The utmost conservatism marked every proceeding and public act. The object was to do what was neces sary, and no more; and to do that with the utmost temperance and prudence." St. Just, in his report to the Convention of France, 1793, said: "A people has but one dangerous enemy, and that is government." We adopted no such absurdity.

In nearly every instance, the first steps were taken legally, in accordance with the will and prescribed direction of the constituted authorities of the seceding States. We were not remitted to brute force or natural law, or the instincts of reason. The charters of freedom were scrupulously pre Berved. As in the English Revolution of 1638, and ours of 1776, there was no material alteration in the laws beyond what was necessary to redress the abuses that provoked the struggle. No attempt was made to build on speculative principles. The effort was confined within the narrowest limits of historical and constitutional right. The contro versy turned on the records and muniments of the past. We merely resisted innovation and tyranny, and contended for our birth-rights and the covenanted principles of our race. We have had our Governors, General Assemblies, and Courts; the same electors, the same corporations, "the same rules for property, the same subordinations, the same order in the law and the magistracy." When the sovereign States met in council, they, in truth and substance and in a constitutional light, did not make but prevented a revolution.

Commencing our new national life under such circumstances, we had a right to expect that we would be permitted, without molestation, to culti vate the arts of peace and vindicate on our chosen arena and with the selected type of social characteristics, our claims to civilization. It was thought,

too, by many, that war would not be resorted to by an enlightened country, except on the direst necessity. That a people, professing to be animated by Christian sentiment, and who had regarded our peculiar institution as a blot and blur upon the fair escutcheon of our common Christianity, should make war upon the South for doing what they had a perfect right to do, and for relieving them of the incubus which, they professed, rested upon them by the association, was deemed almost beyond belief by many of our wisest minds. It was hoped, too, that the obvious interest of the two sections would restrain the wild frenzy of excitement and turn into peaceful channels the thoughts of those who had but recently been invested with power in the United States.

These reasonable anticipations were doomed to disappointment. The red glare of battle, kindled at Sumter, dissipated all hopes of peace, and the two governments were arrayed in hostility against cach other. We charge the responsibility of this war on the United States. They are accountable for the blood and havoc and ruin it has caused. For such a war we were not prepared. The difference in military resources between our enemies and ourselves; the immense advantages possessed in organized machinery of an established government; a powerful navy; the nucleus of an army; credit abroad, and illimitable facilities in mechanical and manufacturing power, placed them on "the vantage ground."

In our infancy we were without a seaman or soldier, without a revenue, without gold and silver, without a recognized place in the family of nations, without external commerce, without foreign credit, with the prejudices of the world against us. While we were without manufacturing facilities to supply our wants, our ports were blockaded; we had to grapple with a giant adversary, defend two thousand miles of seacoast and an inland frontier of equal ex. tent. If we had succeeded in preventing any successes on the part of our enemy, it would have been a miracle. What we have accomplished, with a population so inferior in numbers, and means so vastly disproportionate, has excited the astonishment and admiration of the world.

The war in which we are engaged was wickedly, and against all our protests, and the most earnest efforts to the contrary, forced upon us. South Carolina sent a commission to Washington to adjust all questions of dispute between her and the United States. One of the first acts of the provisional government was to accredit agents to visit Washington, and use all honorable means to obtain a satisfactory settlement of all questions of dispute with that Government. Both efforts failed. Commissioners were

up some of the springs of Northern prosperity-to destroy Southern wealth is to reduce Northern profits, while the restoration of peace would necessarily re-establish some commercial intercourse.

It is absurd to pretend that a government, really desirous of restoring the Union, would adopt such measures as the confiscation of private property, the emancipation of slaves, systematic efforts to incite them to insurrection, forcible abduction from their homes and compulsory enlistment in the army, the division of a sovereign State without its consent, and a proclamation that one-tenth of the population of a State, and that tenth under military rule, should control the will of the remaining nine-tenths. The only relation possible between the two sections under such a policy is that of conqueror and conquered, superior and dependent. Rest assured, fellow-citizens, that although restoration may still be used as a war cry by the Government, it is only to delude and betray.

Fanaticism has summoned to its aid cupidity and vengeance; and nothing short of your utter subjugation, the destruction of your State governments, the destruction of your social and political fabric, your personal and public degradation and ruin, will satisfy the demands of the North. Can there be a man so vile. so debased, so unworthy of liberty us to accept peace on such humiliating terms?

It would hardly be fair to assert that all the Northern people participate in these designs. On the contrary, there exists a powerful political party, which openly condemns them. The Administration has, however, been able thus far, by its enormous patronage and its lavish expenditures, to seduce, or by its legions of "Hessian" mercenaries, to overawe the masses, to control the elections, and to establish an arbitrary despotism. It cannot be possible that this state of things can continue.

It may not be amiss, in this connection, to say that at one time it was the wish and expectation of many at the South to form a treaty of amity and friendship with the Northern States, by which both peoples might derive the benefits of commercial intercourse and move side by side in the arts of peace and civilization History has confirmed the lesson taught by divine authority, that each nation, as well as each individual, should seek their happiness in the prosperity of others, and not in the injury or ruin of a neighbor. The general welfare of all is the highest dictate of moral duty and economic policy, while a heritage of triumphant wrong is the greatest curse that can befall a nation.

Until some evidence is given of a change of policy on the part of the Government, and some assurance is received, that efforts at negotiation will not be spurned, the Congress are of opinion that any direct overtures for peace would compromise our selfrespect, be fruitless of good, and interpreted by the enemy as an indication of weakness. We can only repeat the desire of the people for peace, and our readiness to accept terms, consistent with the honor and integrity and independence of the States, and compatible with the safety of our domestic institutions.

Not content with rejecting all proposals for a peaceful settlement of the controversy, a cruel war of invasion was commenced, which, in its progress, has been marked by a brutality and disregard of the rules of civilized warfare, as stand out in unexampled barbarity in the history of modern wars. Accompanied by every act of cruelty and rapine, the conduct of the enemy has been destitute of that forbearance and magnanimity which civilization and Christianity have introduced to mitigate the asperi ties of war. The atrocities are too incredible for narration. Instead of a regular war, our resistance of the unholy efforts to crush out our national

international rules between belligerents are ignored. Instead of conducting the war as between two military and political organizations, it is a war against the whole population. Houses are pillaged and burned; churches are defaced; towns are ransacked; clothing of women and infants is stripped from their persons; jewelry and mementoes of the dead are stolen; mills and implements of agriculture are destroyed; private saltworks are broken up; the introduction of medicines is forbidden; means of subsistence are wantonly wasted to pro

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duce beggary; prisoners are returned with contagious diseases; the last morsel of food has been taken from families, who are not allowed to carry on a trade or branch of industry; a rigid and of fensive espionage has been used to ferret out "disloyalty;" persons have been forced to choose between starvation of helpless children and taking the oath of allegiance to a hated government.

The cartel for the exchange of prisoners has been suspended, and our unfortunate soldiers subjected to the grossest indignities. The wounded at Gettysburg were deprived of their nurses and inhumanly left to perish on the field. Helpless women have been exposed to the most cruel outrages and to that dishonor which is infinitely worse than death. Citizens have been murdered by the Butlers and McNeils and Milroys, who are favorite generals of our enemies. Refined and delicate ladies have been seized, bound with cords, imprisoned, guarded by negroes, and held as hostages for the return of recaptured slaves. Unoffending noncombatants have been banished or dragged from their homes to be immured in filthy jails. Preaching the gospel has been refused, except on condition of taking the oath of allegiance. Parents have been forbidden to name their children in honor of "rebel" chiefs. Property has been confiscated. Military governors have been appointed for States, satraps for provinces, and Haynaus for cities.

These cruelties and atrocities of the enemy have been exceeded by their malicious and bloodthirsty purpose and machinations in reference to the slaves. Early in this war, President Lincoln averred his constitutional inability and personal unwillingness to interfere with the domestic institutions of the States and the relation between master and servant. Prudential considerations may have been veiled under conscientious scruples. Mr. Seward, in a confidential instruction to Mr. Adams, the minister to Great Britain, on 10th March, 1862, said: "If the Government of the United States should precipitately decree the immediate abolition of slavery, it would re-invigorate the declining insurrection in every part of the South."

Subsequent reverses and the refractory rebelliousness of the seceded States caused a change of policy, and Mr. Lincoln issued his celebrated proclamation, a mere brutem fulmen, liberating the slaves in the "insurrectionary districts." On the 24th June, 1776, one of the reasons assigned by Pennsylvania for her separation from the mother country was that, in her sister colonies, the "King had excited the negroes to revolt," and to imbue their hands in the blood of their masters, in a manner unpractised by civilized nations. This, probably, had reference to the proclamation of Dunmore, the

last royal Governor of Virginia, in 1775, declaring freedom to all servants or negroes, if they would join "for the reducing the colony to a proper sense of its duty."

The invitation to the slaves to rise against their masters, the suggested insurrection, caused, says Bancroft, "a thrill of indignation to run through Virginia, effacing all differences of party, and rousing one strong, impassioned purpose to drive away the insolent power by which it had been put forth." A contemporary annalist, adverting to the same proclamation, said: "It was received with the greatest horror in all the colonies."

"The policy adopted by Dunmore," says Lawrence in his notes on Wheaton, "of arming the glaves against their masters, was not pursued during the war of the Revolution; and when negroes were taken by the English, they were not considotherwise than as property and plunder." Emancipation of slaves as a war measure has been severely condemned and denounced by the most eminent publicists in Europe and the United States.

The United States, "in their diplomatic relations, have ever maintained." says the Northern authority just quoted, "that slaves were private property, and for them, as such, they have repeatedly received compensation from England." Napoleon I. was never induced to issue a proclamation for the emancipation of the serfs, in his war with Russia. He said: "I could have armed against her a part of her population, by proclaiming the liberty of the serfs. A great number of villages asked it of me, but I refused to avail myself of a measure which would have devoted to death thousands of families." In the discussions growing out of the treaty of peace of 1814, and the proffered mediation of Russia, the principle was maintained by the United States that "the emancipation of enemy's slaves is not among the acts of legitimate warfare."

In the instructions from John Quincy Adams, as Secretary of State, to Mr. Middleton, at St. Petersburg, October 18th, 1820, it is said: "The British have broadly asserted the right of emancipating slaves (private property) as a legitimate right of war. No such right is acknowledged as a law of war by writers who admit any limitation. The right of putting to death all prisoners in cold blood and without special cause, might as well be pretended to be a law of war, or the right to use poisoned weapons, or to assassinate."

Disregarding the teachings of the approved writers on international law and the practice and claims of his own Government in its purer days, President Lincoln has sought to convert the South into a St.