our woods with robbing and murdering hordes, who are fed, clothed, and sheltered, warned of approaching danger, and guided to pillage and blood, by the neighbors of their victims. It transforms our men, and, God forgive them! our women, too, into implacable enemies of Union men, into treacherous betrayers of their former friends, into spies and informers, into pur. veyors of revenge, rapine, and assassination. Against this common enemy, all classes of our people make common cause. Every great interest in our State wars upon it. Farmers, mechanics, merchants, manufacturers, professional men, speculators, land owners, steamboat men, railroad men, and multitudes of slaveholders, all combine to attack it. Reason, evidence, and experience are against it. The past condemns it; the future rejects it; the present deals it deadly blows. The people are marching over it. Politicians abandon it, as rats a falling house. It is in fact dead! We are here to bury it. They who cling to it cling to a corpse, and will be buried with it. No man who upholds it now will be trusted by the people, except perhaps in a few spots of our State, from this time forward. You can not save it, but you may lose yourself in the effort. When the wrecked vessel goes down, it is they who cling to it to the last, that go down with it.

THE MISSOURI CONVENTION,

AND ITS EMANCIPATION WORK.*

I do not appear before you this evening to give account of my performance of the service in our State Convention, to which I was assigned by the voters of this city and county. My acts, and, in a very small part, my words in that body, during the fifteen momentous days of its session, have been given to the world, and the judgment of my constituents has passed, or soon will pass upon them. I am not here to ask what that judgment is or will be; nor to defend any of my acts; nor to challenge applause for any. I performed my duty conscientiously, according to my best judgment, and that is enough for me to know. If any man thinks he could have shown a better judgment on any point, had he filled my place, I can only regret that he was not there to do it.

My object in responding to the invitation to address you this evening is, in as few and plain words as may be, to convey to your minds a definite and distinct impression of the spirit and acts of that body, which,

* A Speech delivered in St. Louis, July 9, 1863.

elected in February, 1861, for certain well-understood purposes, was called together in June, 1863, for other and far different purposes. It is due to the truth of history that this matter should be understood; and, if you will give me your attention, I am confident you will understand it in its true light.

I will not stop to discuss the question whether under the law authorizing the election of a Convention, that body, when elected and convened, had the rightful power to act upon the subject of the emancipation of slaves. That is a point to be settled by the Judiciary, not by the people. It is sufficient to say that it is an open question, which the Judiciary may sometime be required to determine, and upon which your opinion or mine, expressed in popular meetings, can have no weight. Conceding for the present the power, I turn to other matters properly cognizable by the people in their primary assemblies.

The Convention, it is universally agreed, was not elected with any reference to the subject of Emancipation. Throughout the whole State, not one single voter, in February, 1861, dreamed that it would ever be called to act upon that subject. It held three separate sessions, in February, July, and October, 1861, without a word being said by a single member about Emancipation. A historian, examining its journal and proceedings during those three sessions, would not suppose that it had any more to do with Emancipation in Missouri, than in the kingdom of Dahomey. It met again in June, 1862. During that session, on the 7th day of June, Judge Breckinridge introduced into the

Convention "An Ordinance to provide for submitting to a vote of the people of Missouri certain amendments to the Constitution, and a scheme for the gradual emancipation of slaves;" and accompanied its introduction with a speech in its favor. At the conclusion of that speech, Judge Hall of Randolph, moved to lay the Ordinance on the table, which was done by a vote of 52 to 19; and so ended the first attempt to bring the subject of Emancipation before the Convention. The motion to lay on the table cut off debate, and the speech of Judge Breckinridge was therefore all that was said about Emancipation, pro or con, in the Convention, from the day it first met, in February, 1861, to the day it closed its fourth session in June, 1862.

I am thus particular in this statement, because it will be presently seen to connect with other facts, of interest in the elucidation of the spirit and purpose of Governor Gamble in calling the Convention together, and of the Convention when it met in pursuance of his call. The tabling of Judge Breckinridge's Ordinance meant that the Convention was, on the 7th of June, 1862, opposed to any action on the subject of Emancipation; so much opposed that it would not even listen to a word from any other member than him; and doubtless he was listened to, only because he had the floor before the motion of Judge Hall could be made.

Soon after the Convention had so disposed of Judge Breckinridge's proposition, the Governor became aware that, in one respect, a mistake had been committed, which it was important should be rectified. You will remember that on the 10th of April, 1862, the Congress

of the United States, at the solicitation of the President, passed a joint resolution, in the following words:

"That the United States ought to co-operate with any State which may adopt gradual abolishment of Slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system."

This resolution was characterized by Governor Gamble as "a proposition of unexampled liberality;" and he saw that the action of the Convention on Judge Breckinridge's Ordinance was but a poor return, on the part of Missouri, for an offer which was as generous as it was unprecedented. On the 13th of June, 1862, therefore, he sent a message to the Convention, calling attention to the fact that its action "would, without doubt, be so misrepresented as to excite a hostile feeling to the State among all those in authority who favor Emancipation, and thus injuriously affect the interests of the State. And as no reason could be given upon the motion by which the ordinance was disposed of, the result might be represented as rudely discourteous to the President and Congress."

You will notice in this language of the Governor no reference to the policy or expediency of Emancipation, though the general Government had offered aid in the work. I do not say that the circumstances demanded such a reference; nor do I reproach or criticize him for the absence of it; but refer to it as a singular feature of his message, when brought into view along with the succeeding portion of that document, to which I will now call your attention.