General Cass spoke with earnestness and much feeling about the impending crisis--admitted fully all the great wrongs and outrages which had been committed against the South by Northern fanaticism, and deplored it. But he was emphatic in his condemnation of the doctrine of secession by any State from the Union. He doubted the efficacy of the appeal for a convention, but seemed to think it might do well enough to try it. He spoke warmly in favor of using force to coerce a State that attempted to secede. Judge Black, the Attorney-General, was emphatic in his advocacy of coercion, and advocated earnestly the propriety of sending at once a strong force into the forts in Charleston harbor, enough to deter, if possible, the people from, any attempt at disunion. He seemed to favor the idea of an appeal for a general convention of all the States. Governor Cobb, the Secretary of the Treasury, declared his very decided approbation of the proposition for two reasons--first, that it afforded the President a great opportunity for a high and statesmanlike treatment of the whole subject of agitation, and the proper remedies to prevent it; secondly, because, in his judgment, the failure to procure that redress which the South would be entitled to and would demand (and that failure he thought certain), would tend to unite the entire South in a decided disunion movement. He thought disunion inevitable, and under present circumstances most desirable. Mr. Holt, the Postmaster-General, thought the proposition for the convention dangerous, for the reason that if the call should be made and it should fail to procure redress, those States which now are opposed to secession might find themselves inclined, from a feeling of honor, to back the States resolving on disunion. Without this common demand and common failure he thought there would be no such danger of united action, and therefore a stronger prospect of some future plan of reconciliation. Mr. Thompson, the Secretary of the Interior, thought well of the plan of calling for a general convention--thought his State (Mississippi) about equally divided between the union and disunion men. He deprecated the idea of force, and said any show of it by the Government would instantly make Mississippi a unit in favor of disunion. Mr. Toucey, Secretary of the Navy, thought well of the appeal for the convention--coincided in an opinion I had expressed, that retaliatory State measures would prove most availing for bringing the Northern fanatics to their senses.