for the testimony of Douglas and Pugh, and to Mr. Bigler's Bucks County speech, September 17, 1863. The latter knew it to be true when he said that-- "When the struggle was at its height in Georgia, between Robert Toombs for secession, and A. H. Stephens against it, had those men in the Committee of Thirteen, who are now so blameless in their own estimation, given us their votes, or even three of them, Stephens would have defeated Toombs, and secession would have been prostrated. I heard Mr. Toombs say to Mr. Douglas that the result in Georgia was staked on the action of the Committee of Thirteen. If it accepted the Crittenden proposition, Stephens would defeat him; if not, he would carry the State out by 40,000 majority. The three votes from the Republican side would have carried it at any time; but union and peace in the balance against the Chicago platform were sure to be found wanting." If other testimony were wanting, I would ask a suspension of judgment until those facts, better known to Southern men, transpire. The intercourse about to be reëstablished between the sections will cumulate the proof. It will also bring to the light many facts showing that, while President Buchanan was working for the Peace Conference, while Virginia had been gained to our side with her ablest men, there were even then in the Cabinet those who not only encouraged revolt, but foiled by letter and speech the efforts of the Unionists at Washington and Richmond. These letters and acts are referred to in the recent speech of General Blair. They will be, and should be brought into the sunshine, if only to vindicate the true Union men of that dark hour, and to condemn those who have since made so much pretension with so much zealotry, coupled with unexampled cruelty and tyranny. In the light of subsequent events that policy was developed. It was the destruction of slavery at the peril of war and disunion; or, as Senator Douglas expressed it, "a disruption of the Union, believing it would draw after it, as an inevitable consequence, civil war, servile insurrections, and finally the utter extermination of slavery in all the Southern States."