The Life of Jefferson DavisAlfriend, Frank H. (Frank Heath)
History
The Life of Jefferson Davis
Alfriend, Frank H. (Frank Heath)
Confederate States of America; Davis, Jefferson, 1808-1889; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
Then they go on to recite six different causes, for which they will resort
to the most extreme remedies which we had supposed ever could be
necessary. The case only requires that I should say that the party to
which I belonged did not then, nor at any previous time, propose to go out
of the Union, but to have a Southern convention for consultation as to
future contingencies, threatened and anticipated. It was at last narrowed
down to the question, whether we should meet South Carolina and consult
with her. Honoring that gallant State for the magnanimity she had
manifested in the first efforts for the creation of the Government, in the
preliminaries to the struggle for independence, when she, a favored
colony, feeling no oppression, nursed by the mother country, cherished in
every method, yet agreed with Massachusetts, then oppressed, to assert the
great principle of community independence, and to carry it to the extent
of war--honoring her for her unvarying defense of the Constitution
throughout her whole course--believing that she was true to her faith, and
would redeem all her pledges--feeling that a friendly hand might
restrain, while, if left to herself, her pride might precipitate her on
the trial of separation, I did desire to meet South Carolina in
convention, though nobody but ourselves should be there to join her.
But, to close the matter, this convention, in its seventh resolution,
after stating all those questions on which it would resist, declared:
"That, as the people of Mississippi, in the opinion of this
convention, desire all further agitation of the slavery question to
cease, and have acted upon and decided the foregoing questions,
thereby making it the duty of this convention to pass no act in the
perview and spirit of the law under which it is called, this
convention deems it unnecessary to refer to the people, for approval
or disapproval, at the ballot-box, its action in the premises."
So that when the Senator appealed to this as evidence of what the people
of Mississippi had done, he was ignorant of the fact that the delegates of
the people of Mississippi did not agree with him; that their resolutions
did not sustain the view which he took, and that the people of Mississippi
never acted on them. If, then, there had been good taste in the
intervention of this local question, there was certainly very bad judgment
in hazarding his statements on a subject of which he was so little
informed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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