Sir, your inquisitorial committee, and the North so far as represented by them, (a small fraction, I know,) have, I take it, caught a Tartar this time. Boys say with us, and everywhere, I _reckon_, "You worry my dog, and I'll worry your cat." Sir, it is just simply a _fixed fact: the South will not submit to these questions_. No, not for an instant. We will not permit you to approach us at all. If we are morbidly sensitive, you have made us so. But you are directly and grossly violating the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church. The book forbids you to put such questions; the book forbids _you to begin discipline_; the book forbids your sending this committee to help common fame bear testimony against us; the book guards the honour of our humblest member, minister, church, presbytery, against all this impertinently-inquisitorial action. Have you a _prosecutor_, with his definite charge and witnesses? Have you _Common Fame_, with her specified charges and witnesses? Have you a request from the South that you send a committee to inquire into slanders? No. Then hands off. As gentlemen you may ask us these questions,--we will answer you. But, ecclesiastically, you cannot speak in this matter. You have no power to move as you propose. I beg leave to say, just here, that Tennessee [Footnote: At that time I resided in Tennessee.] will be more calm under this movement than any other slave-region. Tennessee has been ever high above the storm, North and South,--especially we of the mountains. Tennessee!--"there she is,--look at her,"--binding this Union together like a great, long, broad, deep stone,--more splendid than all in the temple of Baalbec or Solomon. Tennessee!--there she is, in her calm valour. I will not lower her by calling her unconquerable, for she has never been assailed; but I call her ever-victorious. King's Mountain,--her pioneer battles:--Talladega, Emucfau, Horse-shoe, New Orleans, San Jacinto, Monterey, the Valley of Mexico. Jackson represented her well in his chivalry from South Carolina,--his fiery courage from Virginia and Kentucky,--all tempered by Scotch-Irish Presbyterian prudence from Tennessee. We, in his spirit, have looked on this storm for years untroubled. Yes, Jackson's old bones rattled in their grave when that infamous disunion convention met in Nashville, and its members turned pale and fled aghast. Yes, Tennessee, in her mighty million, feels secure; and, in her perfect preparation to discuss this question, politically, ecclesiastically, morally, metaphysically, or physically, with the extreme North or South, she is willing and able _to persuade others to be calm_. In this connection, I wish to say, for the South to the North, and to the world, that we have no fears from our slave-population. There might be a momentary insurrection and bloodshed; but destruction to the black man would be inevitable. The Greeks and Romans controlled immense masses of white slaves,--many of them as intelligent as their lords.