cendiary, producing universal combustion. Is that the true picture of our condition? If it is, then every man South should move heaven and earth to get out of this Government. But it is false. It is an exaggeration. It is hyperbolical imagery. It is false, and yet there are men in the North who taunt us with the same idea, and they get their color and support for it by injudicious men in the South. I say there are men in the North, such as Wilson of Massachusetts, and Wade of Ohio, who have declared that the South cannot exist out of the Union; that the Union is essentially necessary for her preservation and the preservation of her domestic peace; that the danger of servile insurrection is such that, left to herself, she would be destroyed, and that nothing but the power of the General Government to put down servile insurrection would be competent to meet the dangers of her situation. It is all false. It is all hyperbolical exaggeration. There is not a word of truth in it.

I have lived along time, Mr. President. Born in Virginia, I have lived more than half a century, and lived a good deal in that time, and I have not been an inobservant watcher of the condition of public affairs since I reached manhood. But in my boyhood there were more insurrections and more fears of insurrections than exist now. Then Exeter Hall had not opened its floodgates of inflammation, nor had an anti-slavery society existed in the world. The strife of parties had not brought the slavery element into the political organizations of the day. There is less fear of slavery insurrection now, and there is less cause for it now, than there was in my boyhood, and the reason of it is this: in proportion as you turn a black man into a civilized man, you subjugate him more perfectly to the will of his master; in other words, in proportion as you reduce his savage traits, you make him subject to the will of a superior race, as in wild animals subjected to the taming process-in proportion as there is moral and Christian culture in this barbarian, just in that proportion is he dominated over peacefully by the will of a superior race.

Some men would break up this nation because of a Montgomery or John Brown raid. I have only a few words in regard to such things as that. I do not believe there is a Republican in the land, of any standing in the Republican party, who is not heart and soul against a John Brown raid. But I will say to you, as I said to some gentlemen in Virginia, in the Harper's Ferry District, where, I discover, a very fine Union man is elected, and a distinguished seceder was beat; in the very Harper's district, in the town in which John Brown was hung; I said to them, I was very sorry, indeed, that my fellow student Wise, the Governor, had put the old Commonwealth to so great expense to dispose of a few villains and murderers and trai

tors. I was sorry that he organized an armed host to traverse the State, and made the most warlike preparations. I said that if this scene had occurred in Missouri, we would have disposed of the question in a summary manner, and would have complied with that provision of our Constitution which entitles every man to speedy justice. No court would have been troubled. No armies organized. No troops raised. Nor would it have cost the State a single cent, because the only instrumentality that would have been used would be drawn from the nearest tree, and that there was not a man in it that would not furnish the cord or raise the hemp that was necessary to the dispensation of justice in the case. I scorn the idea that we need the protection of the General Government to defend ourselves against John Brown raids. I feel humbled and humiliated that any such doctrine as that should be advanced by any slaveholding State in the Union. We are able to protect ourselves, and the only reason why an army was sent recently to the frontier to put down a Montgomery raid, was, that there was no Montgomery raid to put down. [Laughter.]

I think I have in the main gone through the evils of which we complain, and summing them all up, you discover at last that they are best expressed by this one phrase-alienated feeling, sundered affections, weakened fraternal love, the absence of a brotherly spirit between the members of this Confederacy. Sir, I would not wish to underrate that evil, or measure it below truth's proper scale. It is a great evil; it is a momentous ill on the people who are to live together by affection, that their affection should be sundered; and the greatest part of the evil is that it is so difficult to restore this friendly feeling once more. How can it be done? What are the modes of restoring the affections? I had some little experience in one department of the affections, and I know this, that nothing but the law of kindness has ever yet been efficacious in restoring or melting together the several parts of a whole which had suffered a rupture. I know that God has implanted in every human being this principle, that the heart will leap kindly back to kindness, and I know that unkindness is a repelling power. I know that no great pacification ever yet was made by either force or intimidation. I know that adjustment never yet summoned such handmaids to do her work. I know that on the contrary she invokes and goes forth alone aided by one single spirit, the most potent power in the universe to accomplish such an object, and that is the spirit of conciliation. I do not think it incompatible with that spirit that I should say to the North, you have committed error; or to the South, we have committed error. I know some gentlemen's sympathies are with the North, and some gentle

men's sympathies are with the South, and they become a little uneasy at any words that will impute error to either of their favorite sections. But, then, that disqualifies you for the work of mediation. You are not an effectual mediator, if you get yourself in such a morbid condition. You are to go out in the spirit of fairness-the spirit of justice-the spirit of kindness; and in all that you say upon this subject, you should struggle not to take a party aspect of it, and you should struggle to speak and write what the calm, impartial spirit of history will write in regard to all our troubles. A man who goes out in such a spirit is doubly armed. He carries with him a moral power-the great omnipotent power of the universe. He will have sway. But if he takes with him any other spirit than that, if he takes with him the spirit of a partisan, the spirit that has no sort of charity for the errors of the North or of the South, he will fail, and he ought to fail, in his mission. It must be left to other hands to accomplish it. It can never be done by him.

Look at some striking instances in which this spirit of pacification has been successful in our country. Turn your eyes to Ashland. Catch if you can the spirit of him whose remains lie there in honored sepulture, covered by the marble monument which gratitude has placed upon his grave, and around which clusters the love of a whole people. He was our great Pacificator. How did he succeed? How did he succeed in this Missouri trouble, which was the first great trouble after the formation of this Government? What spirit did he show? Now, any man that knew Henry Clay, knew that a loftier soul never took the form of humanity-a spirit prouder of its independence and self-respect, and holding inviolate the rights of individuals as well as nations. Now, he is in Congress. Missouri knocks at the door for admission. She knocked a long time, and it seemed as though she would be shut off. Strife ran high. The Union was upon the brink of dissolution. Now, mark the course of Clay-of that noble man, born in Virginia, the mill boy, the poor boy who labored hard for his livelihood-the young man who started out without education, to the wilds of the West, and whose soul was fashioned and moulded upon a large and sublime scale in the majestic solitudes of this country. But he had no education. The Representative from Roanoke was a finished scholar. Here, in the halls of that Congress, day after day, occasion upon occasion, that man would rise with his withering sarcasm and taunt the Speaker of the House with a slip in grammar, with a pronunciation that shocked his nervous system. He was led on by a gloating and reckless ambition. He had fixed his eyes in early youth, out in the frontiers, upon the Presidency, and never lost sight of it, and always taunted and gibed the noble-minded, great states

man of the West, so that there was no personal intercourse between them. Every chord of association was sundered. But now a country is to be saved. A compromise is to be effected. What does Henry Clay do? He takes his carriage in in the twilight of some evening. He understands that the great difficulty in the way of adjustment is that man, John Randolph. He has not spoken to him. But now, for his country's sake, he bows his soul. His lofty nature bends because his country demands it. He takes his carriage and drives to the door of Mr. Randolph, and gives his card, saying, "Henry Clay of Kentucky wishes to see John Randolph of Roanoake, upon a question of the country's peace." He is admitted. There is an interview betwen the men, and in twenty minutes afterwards a paper is borne by the statesman of the West written by John Randolph of Roanoke, and in an hour the troubles of the country are brought to an end. He was too big a man to sacrifice his country to any personal consideration. He knew what was the true character of a great pacificator, and he knew the means, the only means by which pacification could be brought about. He repeated the noble example in the contest of 1832 to 1833, when the relations of Calhoun and Clay were sundered. Another consultation with Mr. Calhoun, his personal enemy, another personal interview sought by him, not by Calhoun, and another great attempt to save the country, by sacrificing personal considerations to the weal of the whole. No one who knows the relations then existing between him and Calhoun, can underrate the greatness of the sacrifice. But he never failed. No man ever will fail who comes in this spirit, and uses such agencies and instrumentalities of power. More than that, no man ever can succeed who does not.

What are our prospects for a compromise? What hopes are before us? You have seen the stand taken by Arkansas. You know what North Carolina has done. She has decided against a Convention. North Carolina and Arkansas have said, the mad waves of secession shall not overwhelm us. We stay this tide. We are struggling for our rights in the Union, and we will stand by the border States. But there is a sectional President in power. Have we any hopes of him? He is a Republican. He has a divided Cabinet. Some are conservative men, some are radical. What are the the prospects before us? Well, now, first let me say, that, although suicide is getting to be epidemic I have no idea at all that this Administration is going to commit suicide. I have no idea the Republican party intend to destroy themselves. But I give it credit for great shrewdness and tact. There is one man in that Cabinet that sees all these struggles in their actual practical import. I think there are one or two men in it who have not the remotest idea at all of the actu

al condition of public affairs. There is no reliance to be placed upon them. But, as I said, there is one man in that Cabinet who sees, with the vision of entire coolness, the whole scope of our political horizon, and knows what the actual condition of this country at this hour is, and that man is Seward. He is not going to destroy himself. He, in common with the Republican party, want to perpetuate themselves. They do not wish to be mere ephemerals that live an hour or a day, but they want to perpetuate themselves and establish a Republican dynasty, after the fashion, at least in duration, of the defunct Democratic dynasty that has gone by the board. Well, how can they do so if the Union is broken. If the border States go out what becomes of the Republican party? It dies instanter, for the very moment that the border States leave this Union there is no longer any distinctive characteristic belonging to the Republican party, at least on the slavery question, and they have to take their chances with the people of the North in a new confederacy, and get up issues leaving out the element of slavery agitation.

In any aspect, therefore, in which you can view this question, it appears to me manifest that this Administration is not going to commit suicide. They are going to preserve this Union, and they can only do it by making an adjustment with the border States. And when such an adjustment is made, satisfactory to the honor and interest of these States, all men will be without excuse if they do not join.

But let us see what has been the practical operation of the Republican party in the last Congress. This, you will say, is a speculation of mine. But let me point your attention, especially, my very clear-headed, and, if you permit me to say so, my very eloquent friend from Lewis. Permit me, since you are under a lively apprehension touching the action of the Republican party, and since, especially, you dread their dogma, the Wilmot Proviso, to call your attention to the actual conduct of this Republican party in Congress, since the period when they have had all the power. When our Southern brethren abandoned us, and left us alone to fight their battles on the strongholds of the Constitution, what result did they bring upon us? If they had stayed, this Administration would have been powerless. Two departments of the Government would have been against the Administration-Congress and the Judicial department. The Senate would have been against him, the House would have been against him, and the Supreme Court would have been against him. What, then, could he do under our form of Government? Where was the source of any actual danger? Is any gentleman afraid? What is he airaid of? What are our remedies? Can we guard against danger

which may be threatened to bring upon us? Yes, no law can be passed that is hurtful to us. If an unconstitutional law were to pass, the Supreme Court would denounce it. He was elected by an accident-he was elected by the blunders of his adversaries-by the erroneous manner in which the campaign was fought against him, We made his victory easy, although he was a minority President. He took advantage of our error, and he got into power, and now there he is powerless. He cannot make a Cabinet minister unless you elect him. He cannot make an appointment to any office of high grade without your say-so. If the Southern States had not gone out, all the States that opposed his election might have conferred with each other as to what were the actual evils to complain of. They might have met in a body through their commissioners, and set out in writing what they thought were their grievances, and what they held to be the proper means of redressing them. Had there been such counsel as that, no such complication would have arisen as when Georgia sent her ambassador here. Istruggled then, because I wanted to receive him, to get this Convention to adopt a resolution which would have enabled every man in this body to have listened to him with pleasure, and to practice towards him all the courtesies due to the representative of a sister State. I wanted them to adopt a resolution that this sister of ours, whether she thought so or not, was our sister still; and, being one of the family, she had a right to talk, and talk to all the family. But it was determined, under the genius of precipitancy and hot haste, to do otherwise.

I hear a great deal said about coercion. Undoubtedly, we are against coercion. It is not right that the Federal Government should force a State into submission. But do gentlemen consider the coercion which is used against us? The only real coercion that has been used in these troubles has been used by the South against us. I will say nothing now about those acts of war of which some of the Southern States have been guilty and which, if committed by an independent foreign nation, would have fired this nation from one end to the other: of the firing on our flag; the seizing of our forts; of the capture of our treasury; of taking the jurisdiction of the Mississippi. All these are really acts of war against the Government of the United States; and yet that Government, with a forbearance that is parental and benign, and worthy of all commendation, has said nothing in return, but has used the magnanimity which can be rightly used by a great Government towards its citizens has been doing what Edmund Burke asked of Lord North, in the time of George the Third, to do towards these colonies. This Government has thus far acted in

the spirit of conciliation. It has forborne; it has not undertaken to resist force by force, because I suppose there is no doubt of it in the world that every act committed by our Southern brethren, and especially the act of organizing a government, and taking jurisdiction of the Mississippi river, and seizing the forts, are all acts of war, which would not be tolerated by this Government if practiced by any nation upon the face of the earth. But it was not of that partieularly that I wish to speak. I wish to speak of another sort of coercion that has been practiced towards us, and I fear it was intended-I mean the coercion arising from holding such views as these:

"Well, now, it is idle to dispute about secession, or the right of secession.The fact is, South Carolina has gone; and then Alabama says, the fact is, South Carolina has gone, and we may as well go also. And little Florida said she would go too, and so of the rest. All these are facts, and must be treated as facts." Well, what is the meaning of that? Why, the logical sequence is, that the fact is to operate on us to determine our action. In other words, we are to do now what we would not have done, or thought of doing, unless these examples had gone before us. I say that is practical coercion. Then, again, their resolves in regard to the international slave trade, cutting it off and not letting us carry our negroes among them. That is coercion likewise, and it is unfriendly coercion, it is unsisterly. But let it pass. I dismiss the whole subject of coercion upon the ground that we live in a Government in which no great results can ever be brought about by the exercise of power.

Now, after the South abandoned, us leaving the Federal Government in the possession of the Republican party, what has that party done? My friend from Lewis said it had not abandoned the Chicago platform. He ought to take that back, because it is not just. You remember that, at the last session of Congress, there was a little sprinkling of slavery in New Mexico, created there by Territorial Legislation for the especial benefit of the officers of the army, who wishing body servants to go with them when they were ordered into the Territory, and had no power to refuse, desired them to clean their boots, brush their clothes, and attend to other work of that sort, and they took their slaves, and as some of them had been sued for taking slaves where the laws had prohibited slavery, the Territorial Legislature recognized slavery for the special accommodation of those officers. Now, one of the parties in the Lower House of Congress, in accordance with the platform made in Chicago, moved to repeal that law, and they did repeal it. The Senate rejected the measure. This was before the Presidential victory had been achieved. But since that victory, seeing

that they have the whole power of the Government in thir hands, they have organized three Territories, two of them south of Oregon, and yet no man of the Republican party has risen in that body, either in the Senate or the Lower House to attach a Wilmot Proviso to an act of organization. What does that prove? Is not that a surrender of the party platform? Is not that a patriotic evidence of a disposition on their part to meet the issue in the spirit of kindness? They had the power, why didn't they use it? If you say that the action of the South probably has scared them; very well I do not care what is the cause. If you put it down to the ignoble sentiment of fear and not of patriotic inspiration, be it so. But the fact is nevertheless that, with the power in their own hands, they have organized three Territories, and they have just done it, and two of them are south of Oregon, and no Republican in the Senate, not even Wade, nor Hale, nor the radical Sumner, nor the clearsighted, far-seeing Seward, nor Lovejoy in the Lower House-whom, by the by, I don't regard as a Republican at all, but as belonging to the school of Wendell Phillips and Lloyd Garrison-has risen to ask that a Wilmot Proviso be attached to the act. I think it is a clear and unmistakable evidence of a disposition on their part to surrender dogmas to the welfare and the peace of their country,

On motion of Mr. WATKINS, the Convention adjourned.

SIXTEENTH DAY.
ST. LOUIS, March 19th, 1861.

Met at 10 o'clock.
Mr. PRESIDENT in the Chair.
Prayer by the Chaplain.
Journal read and approved.

Mr. WRIGHT. Mr. President-I am admonished, by several considerations, to be as brief as possible in the remarks I feel it my duty to offer to the Convention this morning. First of all, I find the instrument of language perishing-that my voice is failing; and then, again, I know I have occupied, largely, the attention of this body, and I feel a delicacy that every gentleman will at once appreciate-in occupying so much of your time, when there are other wise and patriotic gentlemen who have minds to think and lips to utter. To me, one of the most alarming signs of the times, in the way of doctrine, is the idea that has been suggested by our Republican friends of the North, touching the re-organization of the Supreme Court. Now, I don't attach much importance to the mere fact that the Republican party hold that the decisions of the Supreme Court are