The following from among the numerous letters received by the Committee from distinguished men of various shades of politics, were read by Edgar Ketchum, Esq.: FROM SENATOR PRESTON KING. serve he is required to devote to this first great duty all his ability. He is not limited in doing so to the means committed to him by the Constitution or the laws. From these considerations it is indisputable that slavery, whether sanctioned or not by State laws, now eminently endangers the national life, or threatens to do so, and therefore may be destroyed by the Government of the United States. As to the questioning of citizens of New York who rejoice in the whether, in the exercise of this power, can the Government disregard its own obligations, or the rights of persons? [Applause.] In answer, I will refer to an authority which is well entitled to your respect. One of "the fathers," (Alexander Hamilton,) in discussing the question whether a nation may in certain extraordinary cases be excusable for not observing a right in the performance of a duty, says: "A nation is excusable in certain extraordinary cases for not observing a right in performing a duty, if the one or the other would involve a manifest and grave national calamity. But here also an extreme case is intended. The calamity to be averted must not only be evident and considerable, it must be such as is likely to prove fatal to the nation, as threatens its existence or at least its permanent welfare." Of the second class of exceptions, (those which threaten the permanent welfare of the nation,) "The case of certain feudal rights which once oppressed all Europe, and still oppresses too great a portion of it, may serve as an example; rights which made absolute slaves of a part of the community, and render the condition of the remainder not much more eligible." "These rights, though involving that of property, being contrary to the social order and to the permanent welfare of society, were justifiably abolished in the instances in which Abolitions have taken place, and may be abolished in all the remaining vestiges." [Cheering.] "Whenever, indeed, a right of property is infringed for the general good, if the nature of the case admits of compensation, it ought to be made, but if compensation be impracticable, that impracticability ought not to be an obstacle to a clearly essential reform." [Applause.] Fellow-citizens: The people of the loyal, States have with unequalled patriotism devoted their lives to the service of the country. The Government, through its various departments, has formed an army and a navy of vast proportions and the most efficient character, with a promptitude and skill most honorable to them. Now, let the people require that this accumulated power shall be used not only to crush out armed rebellion but its malignant cause. [Tremendous and long-continued cheering.] Your military and naval forces with rapid blows are destroying the military power of your enemy; but unless the last blow which is struck strikes off the fetters of the slaves, the work of restoring the Constitution and the Union will be mockery. [Great applause.] WASHINGTON, March 5, 1862. DEAR SIR: Your invitation to attend a meetdownfall of treason, and who are in favor of sustaining the National Government in the most energetic exercise of all the rights and Powers of war in the prosecution of its purpose to destroy the cause of treason, and to express their views as to the measures proper to be adopted in the existing exigencies, to be held at the Cooper Institute on the evening of March 6, is received. Slavery and the influence it has exerted over the minds of so many of the people among whom it has existed, is the fountain of the treason against our republican institutions, and the cause of the extended insurrection that has subverted the constitutional Governments of so many States, and that is now waging war against the existence and unity of the Government of the United States. Permanent security to the existence of republican government and to the peace of the country requires that the cause of the treason, as well as the treason itself, shall be overcome and extinguished, or placed at once under such control of law as will produce its extinction, and thus make certain that its power and influence to disturb the public peace can never be renewed. The whole power of the Government should be put forth, with prompt and persistent energy, to overcome by military force and capture or disperse the armed organizations of the insurgents, and to seize the persons of the ringleaders, that the penalty for treason may be inflicted upon them. Every citizen who desires the perpetuity of republican government should give his hearty support to the Government in accomplishing these objects. I should be glad to be present at the meeting at the Cooper Institute, but public engagements here prevent me. Please to accept my thanks for your invitation. Very respectfully, PRESTON KING. Mr. JAMES MCKAYE, Chairman Committee, &c. FROM SENATOR CHARLES SUMNER. A DEAR SIR: Never, except when disabled by ill health, have I allowed myself to be absent from my seat in the Senate for a single day; and now, amid the extraordinary duties of the present session, I am more than ever disposed to adhere to this inflexible rule. If any thing could tempt me to depart from it, I should find an apology in the invitation with which you have honored me. The meeting which has been called under such distinguished auspices is needed at this moment to rally the country to those true principles by which alone this great rebellion can be permanently suppressed. I should be truly happy to take part in it, and try to impart to others something of the strength of my own convictions. It is only necessary that people should see things as they are, and they will easily see how to deal with them. This is the obvious condition of practical action. Now, beyond all question, slavery is the great transcendent malefactor and omnipresent traitor-more deadly to the Union than all the leaders, civil or military, of the rebellion. Of course, therefore, if you are in earnest against the rebellion, you will not spare slavery. And happily the way is plain-so that it cannot be mistaken. Look now throughout the whole rebel territory, and you will not find a single officer legally qualified to discharge any of the functions of Government. By the Constitution of the United States, "members of the several State Legislatures and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and the several States, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution." But these functionaries have all renounced their allegiance to the United States, and taken a new oath to support the rebel Government, so that at this moment they cannot be recognized as constitutionally empowered to act. But a State is known only through its functionaries, constitutionally empowered to act, and since these have ceased to exist, the State with its unnatural institutions has ceased to exist, or it exists only in the dead parchments by which its government was originally established. The action of these functionaries was impotent to transfer its territory to a pretended confederation. To destroy the State was all that they could do. In the absence of any constitutional authority in this territory, Congress must assume all necessary jurisdiction. Not to do so will be an abandonment of urgent duty. There are some who propose a temporary military government; others propose a temporary provisional government, with limited powers. All these concede to Congress jurisdiction over the territory; nor can this jurisdiction be justly questioned. But it seems to me clearly best that, on this important occasion, we shall follow the authoritative precedents of our history, and proceed as Congress has been accustomed to proceed in the organization and government of other territories. This will be simple. And as to slavery, if there be any doubt that it died constitutionally and legally with the State from which it drew his wicked breath, it might be prohibited by the enactment of that same Jeffersonian ordinance which originally established freedom throughout the great Northwest. Accept my thanks for the honor you have done me, and believe me, dear sir, Faithfully yours, CHARLES SUMner. FROM SENATOR HENRY WILSON. A letter from Senator Wilson concludes as follows: ** * "Humanity, justice, and patriotism all demand that the American people should never pardon the great criminal that has raised the banner of revolt against the unity and authority of the Republic. The blood of our fallen sons demands that the Government for which they gave their lives should walk up to the verge of constitutional power in inflicting condign punishment upon their murderer. The nation, imperilled by slavery, should use every legal and constitutional power to put it in process of ultimate extinction. To that end I would at once abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, repeal the black code that dishonors the national capital, tender to the loyal slaveholding States the treasures of the Federal Government to aid them in the work of emancipation, deal justly and liberally with the loyal men of the rebel States, but free the bondmen of rebels. With much respect, "I am your obedient servant, 66 HENRY WILSON. “To J. MCKAYE, Esq., * * * God, in his providence, has placed slavery within the rightful power of the nation. We must not tremble and hesitate because of the magnitude of the labors and duties cast upon us; we must meet and discharge our duties as men in whose hands is placed the ark of human happiness and hopes. We must and will, if true to God, our country, and the race of mankind, now and forever destroy and wipe out from this nation the accursed institution of human slavery. "The slaveholder, by his treason and rebellion against the Constitution, and by the war he has forced upon the Government for selfpreservation, has wholly absolved us from all constitutional and political obligations to treat his unnatural claim of property in man with any toleration whatever. When the traitor is forced by arms from his purpose to destroy the Constitution and Government, he cannot, the moment he is defeated in his wicked purpose, plead the Constitution he made war to overthrow as the shield and protection for his forfeited rights of slavery. It is the right and duty of the nation to protect itself, now and in the future. We must make sure against another rebellion, greater than the one now upon us. The national life must be preserved, by applying the knife to the cancer that is eating the very substance and life of the nation. The nation must make a proclamation of freedom to the slaves of every traitor; and as a matter of policy, not of strict right, provide for making compensation to loyal slaveholders for the temporary loss incident to the speedy emancipation of their slaves. Less than this we cannot do with honor or safety. We have a right to do more. We have a right, instantly and at once, to uproot and eradicate forever any local institution, law, custom, usage that puts in imminent peril the national life. We have a right to kill slavery, that the nation may live. "Very respectfully, your obedient servant, "D. WILMOT." FROM EX-GOVERNOR BOUTWELL, OF MASS. BOSTON, March 6, 1862. I HAVE Sought in vain to arrange my professional engagements so as to be present at your meeting. I am consoled in the disappointment, which is greater to me than it can be to you, by the reflection that my voice will not be needed in your meeting, and that my presence could add nothing to the importance of the occasion. Can any thing be more essential to the prosperity of New York than the reestablishment of the Government upon a firm basis? Would it not be a crime against humanity, if every interest of the country except slavery should suffer by the war, while slavery, the cause of all our trials, should escape unhurt? Let the merchants of New York bear in mind the fact that the smallest free State is more important to every substantial interest of the country than any slave State can ever be: I am, very truly, your obedient servant, FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS. * * I regard this war as only one scene in the struggle between slaveholders and the people, which has already lasted seventy years, and will endure till one or the other be destroyed. Determined myself, as one of the people, never to yield, I see no end of the war bat in abolishing slaveholders. As the rebellion has given our Government the full constitational right to do so, and the people have furnished the means, I shall consider the Government as unspeakably weak and wicked if it does not use that right and power at once. Respectfully yours, March 4, 1862. WENDELL PHILLIPS. FROM COL. C. H. VAN WYCK, M..O. DEAR SIR: Accept my thanks for your kind invitation to be present at the meeting at Cooper Institute, March 6th. Other duties will probably prevent my attendance. The life of this rebellion, the chiefs in this conspiracy, are the very raen who for years have been threatening the overthrow of the Republic if they were not allowed to ruie-if the divinity of slavery was not recognized and the right to its extension admitted To such treason and such traitors must every proclamation be an apology for the defence of the nation's existence-a guranty to rebels that their rights shall be properly protected, their property guarded, and, if their horses and negroes escape, that we will diligently arrest and safely return to their masters? If you cannot prevail upon Congress to confiscate all the property of the enemy, at least persuade the President not to allow generals to be issuing proclamations which humiliate the nation while they do not conciliate treason. The cause which has produced this rebellion will, in time, another. Let us deal with it in such a way that the history of the world will record this the first and last rebellion to perpetuate iniquity, not to redress wrong. Yours, C. H. VAN WYCK. FROM REV. J. P. THOMPSON, D. D. 32 W. 36th ST., N. Y., March 5, 1862. DEAR SIR: In response to the invitation of the Committee of Arrangements, it will give me much pleasure to be present at the Cooper Institute to-morrow evening, though I may be detained elsewhere until nine o'clock. I have a deep interest in the object of the proposed meeting, as stated in the call. As far back as last July, in a discourse published in "The Independent," and since published in the "Rebellion Record," I took the ground that, inasmuch as the act of secession had in every instance been performed State-wise, the seceded States had forfeited all rights and privileges under the national Union, had annihilated their own organic existence, had made void their laws and institutions, and should be dealt with by Congress as lapsed territories-to be received again as States only on condition that slavery should be finally abolished from their soil. The progress of events, and the apparent futility of any other mode of dealing with the rebellion, have strengthened the conviction then expressed, that the revolted States should be suffered to resume integral parts of the Union, with the usual an organic existence as rights and privileges of States, only when their inhabitants should purge themselves of treason, by putting away slavery-the sole motive to treason-and that otherwise, they should be held under the Union as lapsed territories. We want no 66 reconstruction" of the Union. The United States as a nation and a government has not been destroyed; and we must prove it indestructible. We want no revision of the Constitution-the best instrument of freedom ever devised. We must stand by the Union as it is; we must stand by the Constitution as it is. Slavery, the foe of the Union and the Constitution, must be dealt with in the Union, by the Constitution. The Union must assert its sovereignty over its own territory, left without local government by the act of secession, and must carry out the Constitution, by guaranteeing republican institutions to the people of that territory, when ready to be organized anew into States. Truly yours, Jos. P. THOMPSON. FROM GENERAL DOUBLEDAY. DEAR SIR: It would give me great pleasure to attend the emancipation meeting of the 6th instant, but official engagements will render it impossible. I believe slavery has caused the present war, and that it will be impossible to live in harmony hereafter without the cause is effectually removed. Yours, very truly, A. DOUBLEDAY, Brig. Gen. U. S. Vol. To J. MCKAYE, ESQ., Chairman of Committee of Arrangements, 82 Broadway, New York. Mr. James McKaye, Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements, then read the following resolutions, which were unanimously adopted: Resolved, That inasmuch as our nationality and democratic institutions are founded upon the idea that "all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," whatever tends to weaken and destroy the vital force of this idea in the popular heart constitutes the most dangerous and fatal enmity to the real unity, true peace, and glory of the nation. | in power, and in derogation of which the rebels wage their war. Resolved, That while slavery remained upon its own ground, as understood by the founders of the National Constitution, good citizens might deem themselves bound by a just respect for that instrument to refrain from dealing with it as in its own nature it deserved. But since its masters have begun a war for its triumph, and the subjugation of our National Government and free institutions, we deem it our supremest duty to make peace with it or cease our conflict against it until it shall be extirpated from the whole land. Resolved, That we entertain no jot of hatred or hostility toward the great body of the people of the rebel States; and, therefore, while we stand ever ready to welcome them to a loyal reunion under our glorious National Constitution, in the words of the Farewell Address of the Father of his Country, we desire "that the hap piness of the people of these States may be made complete under the AUSPICES OF LIBERTY,” and not utterly and forever rendered impossible by the reinstitution of slavery. We repudiate, therefore, and utterly repel the Resolved, That national unity does by no idea that the property and blood of the loyal means consist alone in the conservation of terri- people of the Free States are to be wasted withtorial domain, but in identity of idea and affec-out result, in the suppression of the military tion. In the heart of no people can a genuine power of the rebels, in order that the Capitol love of liberty and the rights of human nature may, in the end, be surrendered into the hands coexist with a toleration of slavery. Slavery of the conquered traitors, and the National Govis treason to the fundamental idea of our na- ernment be again put under the heel of the slave tional existence, and the war but its necessary barons. and legitimate effect. In the present imminent crisis he who seeks to maintain slavery becomes thereby the abettor of the great treason. Resolved, That in the present extreme exigency brought upon the country by slavery, we hold the right of the National Government to destroy the sole cause of all our disasters not only to be clearly within the Constitution, but to be imperatively demanded by it: First, upon the ground that its existence is wholly incompatible with national self-preservation. Either the nation must die or slavery must. Resolved. Therefore, that amid the varied events which are occurring during the momentous struggle in which we are engaged, it is the duty and the interest of the Government and the people to adopt and to advocate such measures as will insure universal emancipation, and thus complete the work which the revolution began. REV. M. D. CONWAY, a native of Virginia, made a humorous and effective speech, ably discussing the moral and legal bearings of the reSecond, because the rights and powers conferred by the laws of war upon all sovereignties, spective claims of Slavery and Freedom in this and under our system of delegated power pri- great crisis. His allusions to the present race marily upon the President and Congress, consti- of Virginian statesmen (?), and to the economitutionally require its destruction as the only cal aspects of the slavery-blight on the “Old effectual means of ending the conflict and rees-Dominion," were vigorous and eloquent. Nothtablishing permanent national peace and prosperity. And lastly and preeminently, because the supreme jurisdiction of the National Constitution over all the territories now occupied by the rebel States must be held to be exclusive of the traitorous rebel authorities therein established, by virtue of which alone slavery now therein exists, and that wherever the Constitution has exclusive jurisdiction it ordains liberty and not slavery. This is the very ground upon which the people placed the present Administration ing could have been more strikingly apposite than the story which the speaker related, amidst the laughter and applause of the immense audience, illustrating the present position of the government and the people on the momentous problem now to be solved. The President then introduced Hon. Carl Schurz, late Minister to Spain, who made the following address: SPEECH OF CARL SCHURZ AT COOPER INSTITUTE, N. Y., MARCH 6, 1862, in preparation, our brave armies have achieved I HAVE not come here to plead the cause of a party, for in looking around me, I become doubtful whether I belong to any; nor with a desire to gain the favor of those in power, for in this respect I have nothing to gain and much to lose; nor to flatter the multitude, for I know well that much of what I am going to say will expose me to acrimonious obloquy and vituperation; nor do I even think that the remarks I am going to make will exactly fit the line of argument followed in the resolutions presented I mean to speak the to your consideration. truth as I understand it; I shall give you my own ideas, such as they are. I have travelled far to obtain this audience of the people, for your invitation encountered my desire; and shunned no inconvenience, sacrifice, or responsibility. So you may conclude that I am in earnest. Of you I ask to lay aside to-night your party prejudices and passions; for this hour let your preconceived opinions be silent. I shall speak to you from the very depth of my profoundest convictions; listen to me as one sincere patriot will listen to another. [Cheering.] Many of us will have to confess that the present state of things is contrary to their first antiEighteen months ago we did not cipations. expect that the people of the South would be so ready to rush into the suicidal course of open rebellion; nor did the people of the South, when they took the fatal step, expect that the people of the North would resist the treasonable atterapt with so much determination and unanimity. In this respect the calculations of leadBut ing men on both sides proved erroneous. this lies behind us, and we have to deal with the nature and exigencies of the actual situation as it is. We are in open civil war. A numerous population, holding a very large portion of our country, is in arms against the Government; the rebellion against the constitutionally established authorities is organized on the largest scale. The avowed aim and object is to disrupt the union of these States, and to secure for the people of some of them a separate national existence. The first steps taken in that direction were successful; a separate Government, claiming to be independent of the Union, was estab-nally existing before the rebellion broke out. It lished; it now defends itself with armed force against the lawful authorities of this Republic. This is, in a few words, the actual situation of things. It presents us a twofold problem: first, to put down the rebels in arms, and then to restore the Union. The first is a military They are, problem, the second a political one. in my opinion, so distinct from each other that I can well conceive how the first can be successfully solved, and how, at the same time, in attempting to solve the second, we can completely fail. As to the first, I will say but little. After serious disasters and a long period spent To a can do all this without changing its attributes in the least, for the means it uses for suppressing the rebellion, and afterward for crushing out the rebellious spirit, are in perfect consonance with the fundamental principles upon which its whole system of policy rests. It is the rule of absolute authority and force on one side, and absolute submission to this rule on the other The same agencies which put down the rebel lion, the same operate in maintaining the re established authority, and all this in perfec keeping with the original nature of the whol political system. |