men.

already under the control of Northern men. It should have been remembered by Southern men, that Great Britain and other European powers, though anxious to see the Union broken up, were as unfriendly to slavery as the Northern abolitionists, and far more so than the great mass of Northern In the event of successful secession, and the formation of a Southern confederacy, those trans-Atlantic powers would feel at liberty to take a far higher tone in regard to slavery than they had ever ventured upon while the institution enjoyed the protection of the American flag. Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria, and Italy might unite in treating inter-state commerce by sea in slaves as piracy. The Northern people would naturally have sympathized with and acquiesced in this European policy; and the Southern Confederacy would thus have found that political independence of the North had made their institution more vulnerable than ever to the intolerant antislavery sentiment of the civilized world. The prolonged existence of slavery under such circumstances would have been impossible.

Pending the debate in the South Carolina Convention upon the declaration of causes for secession, Mr. Gregg, a leading member, objected that no reference was made in it to the tariff, and internal improvements policy. But to this Mr. Keitt, who had for years been a prominent member of the United States House of Representatives, pertinently replied: "Your late Senators, and every one of your members of the House of Representatives voted for the present tariff. If the gentleman had been there he would have voted for it. The tariff is not the question which has brought us up to our present attitude. I am willing in this issue to rest disunion upon the question of slavery." Mr. Keitt, in the same connection, expressed his doubts. about the constitutionality of the fugitive-slave act. This was to admit that the Northern states in adopting their personal liberty bills, had only nullified an unconstitutional act of Congress. Mr. Rhett reiterated the same doubt of the constitutionality of the fugitive-slave act. Mr. Meminger, the author of the declaration, stated that he concurred in that doubt. He therefore laid the grievance of South Carolina upon the failure of the individual Northern states to fulfill their constitutional obligations. It was not the Federal Government, he said, which had failed to perform its duty in this regard. He intimated his disapprobation of the attempt of Congress to do what was solely incumbent on the states.

On the 21st of December, Messrs. Barnwell, Adams, and Orr were elected and constituted a commission to proceed to Washington. Their purpose was to negotiate the terms of a cession of the forts, arsenals, and other public property within the limits of South Carolina. They were to settle the terms of peace and amity between the two independent republics. Commissioners were also sent to the other Southern States, to propose a Southern Congress. On Jan. 4, 1861, the convention elected delegates to the proposed Congress. Thus South Carolina attempted to pass out of the Union.

GEORGIA FOLLOWS SOUTH CAROLINA.

III

The Legislature of Georgia met on Nov. 8, 1860. On the 18th, it passed an act authorizing the election of delegates to a state convention. The election took place. The delegates chosen met on the 17th of January, 1861. On the 18th, a resolution was adopted declaring secession to be a right and duty. On the 19th, the ordinance of secession was adopted, by yeas 208, nays 89. The Senators and Representatives in Congress withdrew on the 21st. On the 24th, delegates were elected to the Southern Congress at Montgomery. Commissioners were sent to the other slave-holding states, on the 28th, charged with the duty of securing concerted action; and on the 29th, an address to the South and to the world was adopted. After a recess, the convention met again in March. The delegates ratified the Confederate States Constitution, and authorized the Confederate Government to take possession of the forts, arsenals, and other property of the United States which had been seized by the state authorities. On the 26th of April, Governor Brown issued a proclamation forbidding the payment of debts to northern creditors. He called on the people to pay these debts into the state treasury.

Foremost among the men of Georgia who opposed secession, was the late Alexander H. Stephens. In an address to the legislature, on Nov. 14, 1860, he said with emphasis, that the election of Mr. Lincoln did not justify secession; that secession, on account of the legal election of a President, would place the South in the wrong; that the House of Representatives was largely against the new President; and that in the Senate there was a majority of four against him. The speaker proceeded to state that the President could not form his Cabinet, nor appoint a public officer, without the consent of the Senate. "Where," said he, "will you go, following the sun in its circuit round the globe, to find a government that better protects the liberties of its people, and secures to them the blessings we enjoy? I think that one of the evils that beset us is a surfeit of liberty, an exuberance of the priceless blessings for which we are ungrateful.”

In the same speech Mr. Stephens replied to a speech of Mr. Toombs, who had spoken on the previous day. The government of the United States had then been arraigned by Mr. Toombs on the charge of having taxed the South in order to pay bounties to northern fishermen. These bounties had subsisted under forty-eight years of Southern Presidential rule. The bounties had served to train sailors to fight the battles of the country. The tariff and navigation laws were grievances dwelt upon by Mr. Toombs. He held that they warranted an overthrow of the government. As to the tariff, Mr. Stephens replied that the duties had been readjusted to the satisfaction of the South; while the navigation acts had originated during the administration of a Southern President.

In the state convention Mr. Stephens made an able and earnest speech against secession. His language, in the light of subsequent events, was prophetic. "When," said he, "we and our posterity shall see our lovely

South desolated by the demon of war, which this act of yours will inevitably invite and call forth; when our green fields of waving harvest shall be trodden down by the murderous soldiery and fiery car of war sweeping over our land; our temples of justice laid in ashes; all the horrors and desolation of war upon us; who but this convention will be held responsible for it? And who but him who shall have given his vote for this unwise and illtimed measure, as I honestly think and believe, shall be held to strict account for this suicidal act of the present generation, and probably cursed and execrated by posterity for all coming time, for the wide and desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this act you propose to perpetrate? What reasons can you give to the nations of the earth to justify it? What right has the North assailed? What interest of the South has been invaded? What justice has been denied?" He warned the delegates that "the last slave would be wrenched from them by stern military rule, or by the vindictive decree of a universal emancipation, which may reasonably be expected to follow." He asked, what had the South to gain by withdrawing from the Union? The South had always had the control of it, and could retain that control "if," said he, "we remain in it, and are as united as we have been." The South had fifty years of Southern Presidents to twenty-four of the North; and eighteen of the twenty-nine judges of the Supreme Court, although nearly four-fifths of the judicial business had arisen in the free states. "This," said he, "we have required so as to guard against any interpretation of the Constitution unfavorable to us." The South had also twenty-four of the thirty-five Presidents (pro tem.) of the Senate; twenty-three of the thirty-five Speakers of the House of Representatives, while the North had all along a majority of population and Representatives. The South had fourteen of the nineteen Attorneys-General; eighty-six of the one hundred and forty ministers; and a vast majority of the higher offices in the army and navy, foreign and civil service, with two-thirds of the clerical force. Mr. Stephens pointed to the facts that more than three-fourths of the revenue for the support of the government had been raised in the Northern states; that in the free states the expenditure for the support of the Post-Office Department, for the year 1860, was $13,000,000, and that the income of the department in those states was $19,000,000,- showing an excess of revenue amounting to $6,000,000. The expenditure by the department in the Southern States was $14,716,000, while the postal revenue in those states was only $8,001,026,- leaving a deficit of $6,714,974.

Mr. Stephens concluded with the remark, that he regarded the government of the United States as "the best and freest government - the most equal in its rights, the most just in its decisions, the most lenient in its measures, and the most aspiring in its principles to elevate the race of men that the sun of heaven ever shone upon." He declared the attempt to overthrow such a government to be the height of folly, madness, and wickedness, to

MR. STEPHENS' REQUEST OF THE AUTHOR.

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The appeal was all in

which he could neither lend his sanction nor his vote. vain. This array of facts and arguments failed to arrest the tide of secession. The ordinance was voted for finally, nearly three to one.

Alexander H. Stephens was a great figure in the eye of the Nation. During the old contests between the Whig and Democratic parties, he was a staunch Whig. As time wore on, the Republican party arose and he became a Democrat, along with his friend, Robert Toombs. He was called by his host of admirers, "the Georgia commoner." His home was called "Liberty Hall." He was never married, owing perhaps to his physical decrepitude. He was a man of singular appearance, being almost like a skeleton. Toward the end of his life he was wheeled in and out, to and from his seat in Congress, upon a chair from which he made some of his ringing congressional speeches, even at the end of his career. In early life his spare figure was erect and his dark hair unfrosted. At the end of the war he was imprisoned in Fort Warren. On his release he sent for the writer who, being then a citizen of New-York, renewed the old acquaintance which had begun in Congress as early as 1857. Mr. Stephens was the contemporary and friend of such men as Herschel V. Johnson, William H. Crawford, Charles J. Jenkins, Joseph Henry Lumpkin, and was a brother of Judge Linton Stephens. He was the author of two volumes connected with the war, entitled The War Between The States. They are written in a lucid but colloquial style, after the manner of the Imaginary Conversations of Walter Savage Landor, yet they lack that cogency which belongs to his speeches, and have more discursiveness than properly belongs to interesting narrative.

Frequently, during his service in Congress after the war, he was enfeebled, and remained at his room, or in his bed; but, for a chronic invalid, he was the most remarkable that "e'er wore earth about him." His patience, in spite of pain, was remarkable. His good humor was ever refreshing. He was as kindly a man as could be met in politics or in any sphere. He assisted the poor and ambitious scholar with his purse, and the poorest negro boy had his helpful advice and kindly offices. Upon one of the occasions when he was lying discouraged and ill at his room in the National Hotel, expecting to die, he sent for the writer. He was surrounded by friends, who looked disconsolate. Mrs. Coleman, the daughter of John J. Crittenden, was ministering to him, as it was thought, in his last illness. After taking the hand which now writes these lines, he turned over with a pleasant smile, and said: "I have read your eulogy on Speaker Kerr. I sent for you to make a request — a last request. Will you promise to deliver my eulogy when I am gone?" I promptly caught his compliment and smile, and said: "I would like you to promise me one thing; and that is to make my eulogy; you will be the survivor." Turning quietly to Mrs. Coleman, he said: "Well, he will always have his little joke," and he promised to be my eulogist. He got well.

At the end of his service in Congress, he was elected governor of Georgia. He was not, in one sense, a consistent Democrat, as men regard consistency. He frequently had individual and independent opinions of men and measures. No one could be more independent than he was before the legislature and the Confederate convention of Georgia, when he made his great speeches against secession and in favor of the Union. In his book he prints a fac simile of a letter written by Abraham Lincoln on the 30th of November, 1860, in which the then President-elect says: "I have read in the newspaper your speech recently delivered before the Georgia Legislature or its assembled members. If you have revised it, as is probable, I shall be much obliged if you will send me a copy." Thereupon, there began a correspondence between these gentlemen who had served together on the same committee in Congress, in which Mr. Lincoln undertook to strengthen the Union sentiment of Mr. Stephens by saying in the conclusion of one of his letters: "You think slavery is right and ought to be extended, while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That, I suppose, is the rule. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us." Mr. Stephens held that that difference was not a sufficient cause for war, and he dilated upon it with such fervor, spirit, and patriotism that he almost persuaded Georgia to halt before giving its consent to secession.

The Legislature of Mississippi met on the 26th of November, 1860. A convention was called, and the election of delegates fixed for December 20. They assembled Jan. 7, 1861. On the 9th, an ordinance of secession was adopted by a vote of 84 to 15. The minority, on the next day, signed the ordinance. It was thus made unanimous. The ordinance declared for independence. It expressed a readiness to form a Southern confederacy, on the basis of the old Constitution. A committee was appointed with reference to the subject. It recommended a provisional government. On the 30th of March, the convention ratified the Confederate Constitution. The Representatives in Congress resigned on the 12th of January. Albert G. Brown, one of the Senators, resigned on the 14th, and Jefferson Davis on the 21st.

Mr. Davis may be regarded as the exponent, then, of the sentiments and purposes of the State of Mississippi, and of the South. He was a member of the Senate Committee of Thirteen, in December, 1860. He submitted a proposition in that committee, that it be declared, by amendment of the Constitution, that property in slaves, recognized as such by the local laws of any of the states in the Union, shall stand on the same footing in all constitutional and Federal relations as any other species of property so recognized, and like other property shall not be subject to be diverted or impaired by the local law of any other state, either in escape thereto, or of transit or sojourn of the owner therein. He held that in no case whatever should such property be subject to be diverted or impaired by any legislative act of the United States or any of the territories thereof. This proposition, which