“That while the country is now upon the very threshold of a most ruinous and desolating civil war, it may with truth be said, and we protest before God, that the people so far as we can see, have done nothing to produce it. “That the people of Tennessee, when the question was submitted to them in February last, decided by an overwhelming majority that the relations of the State towards the Federal Government should not be changed;--thereby expressing their preference for the Union and Constitution under which they had lived prosperously and happily, and ignoring in the most emphatic manner the idea that they had been oppressed by the General Government in any of its Acts,--legislative, executive or judicial. “That in view of so decided an expression of the will of the people, in whom ‘all power is inherent and on whose authority all free governments are founded;’ and in the honest conviction that nothing has transpired since that time which should change that deliberate judgment of the people; we have contemplated with peculiar emotions the pertinacity with which those in authority have labored to over-ride the judgment of the people and to bring about the very result which the people themselves had so overwhelmingly condemned. “That the Legislative Assembly is but the creature of the Constitution of the State, and has no power to pass any law or to perform any act of sovereignty, except such as may be authorized by that instrument: and believing as we do, that in their recent legislation the General Assembly have disregarded the rights of the people and transcended their own legitimate powers; we feel constrained,--and we invoke the people throughout the State as they value their liberties,--to visit that hasty, inconsiderate and unconstitutional legislation with a decided rebuke, by voting on the eighth day of next month against both the Act of Secession and that of Union with the ‘Confederate States.’ “That the Legislature of the State, without having first obtained the consent of the people, had no authority to enter into a ‘Military League’ with the ‘Confederate States’ against the General Government, and by so doing to put the State of Tennessee in hostile array against the Government of which it then was and still is a member. Such legislation in advance of the expressed will of the people to change their governmental relations, was an act of usurpation, and should be visited with the severest condemnation of the people.