Compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting Parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River. The same Article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States. The General Government, as the Common Agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the nonslave-holding States to the Institution of Slavery has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from the service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her Constitutional obligation; but the current of Anti-Slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the Constitutional Compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by these non-slave-holding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation. The ends for which this Constitution was framed, are declared by itself to be "to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own Institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for threefifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor. We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of non-slave-holding States. Those States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic Institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the Institution of Slavery; they have permitted the open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books, and pictures to servile insurrection. For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the Common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a Sectional Party has found within that article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawu across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the Common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that Slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This Sectional Combination for the subversion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship persons, who, by the Supreme Law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its peace and safety. On the 4th of March next, this Party will take possession of the Government. It has announced, that the South shall be excluded from the common territory; that the Judicial Tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against Slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States. The Guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slave-holding States will no longer have the power of Self-government, or Self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy. Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanctions of a more erroneous religious belief. We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our Delegates, in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the Nations of the world, as a Separate and Independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which Independent States may of right do. B. GEORGIA PLATFORM OF 1850. To the end that the position of this State may be clearly apprehended by her Confederates of the South and of the North, and that she may be blameless of all future consequences— Be it resolved by the people of Georgia in Convention assembled, First. That we hold the American Union secondary in importance only to the rights and principles it was designed to perpetuate. That past associations, present fruition, and future prospects, will bind us to it so long as it continues to be the safe-guard of those rights and principles. Second. That if the thirteen original Parties to the Compact, bordering the Atlantic in a narrow belt, while their separate interests were in embryo, their peculiar tendencies scarcely developed, their revolutionary trials and triumphs still green in memory, found Union impossible without compromise, the thirty-one of this day may well yield somewhat in the conflict of opinion and policy, to preserve that Union which has extended the sway of Republican Government over a vast wilderness to another ocean, and proportionally advanced their civilization and national greatness. Third. That in this spirit the State of Georgia has maturely considered the action of Congress, embracing a series of measures for the admission of California into the Union, the organization of Territorial Governments for Utah and New Mexico, the establishment of a boundary between the latter and the State of Texas, the suppression of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, and the extradition of fugitive slaves, and (connected with them) the rejection of propositions to exclude slavery from the Mexican Territories, and to abolish it in the District of Columbia; and, whilst she does not wholly approve, will abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this sectional controversy. Fourth. That the State of Georgia, in the judgment of this Convention, will and ought to resist, even (as a last resort) to a disruption of every tie which binds her to the Union, any future Act of Congress abolishing Slavery in the District of Columbia, without the consent and petition of the slave-holders thereof, or any Act abolishing Slavery in places within the slave-holding States, purchased by the United States for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, navy-yards, and other like purposes; or in any Act suppressing the slave-trade between slave holding States; or in any refusal to admit as a State any Territory applying, because of the existence of Slavery therein; or in any Act prohibiting the introduction of slaves into the Territories of Utah and New Mexico; or in any Act repealing or materially modifying the laws now in force for the recovery of fugitive slaves. Fifth. That it is the deliberate opinion of this Convention, that upon the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Bill by the proper authorities, depends the preservation of our much loved Union. C. LETTER OF THIRTEEN GENTLEMEN OF MACON, AND MR. STEPHENS'S REPLY, ON THE RUPTURE IN THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION, AT CHARLESTON, IN 1860. MACON, Ga., MAY 5th, 1860. SIR: We are alarmed by the state of things developed in the Demecratic Convention at Charleston. The discord and disorganizing spirit which prevailed there threaten the integrity and overthrow of the Democratic Party. We are filled with painful forebodings at the prospect of the Democratic Party being slaughtered in the house of its friends a catastrophe which will put in equal peril the Union of the States and the safety of the South. Clinging to the fate and fortunes of both, we invoke your counsels in this crisis. We believe the Democracy of Georgia should be represented in the adjourned National Convention at Baltimore. Will you please give us your views candidly and promptly for publication? Your friends and fellow-citizens, ROBERT COLLINS, JOHN J. GRESHAM, JAS. W. CRAWFORDVILLE, GA., MAY 9, 1860. GENTLEMEN: Your letter, of the 5th inst., was received last night, and I promptly respond to your call as clearly and fully as a heavy press of business engagements will permit. I shall endeavor to be no less pointed and explicit than candid. You do not, in my judgment, over-estimate the importance of the questions now pressing upon the public mind, growing out of the disruption of the Charleston Convention. While I was not greatly surprised at that result, considering the elements of its composition, and the general distemper of the times, still I deeply regret it, and, with you, look with intense interest to the consequences. What is done cannot be undone or amended; that must remain irrevocable. It would, therefore, be as useless, as ungracious, to indulge in any reflections, as to whose fault the rupture was owing to. Perhaps, and most probably, undue excitement and heat of passion, in pursuit of particular ends connected with the elevation or overthrow of particular rivals for preferment, more than any strong desire, guided by cool judgment, so necessary on such occasions, to advance the public good, was the real cause of the rupture. Be that as it may, however, what is now to be done, and what is the proper course to be taken? To my mind the course seems to be clear. A State Convention should be called at an early day—and that Convention should consider the whole subject calmly, and dispassionately, with "the sober second thought," and determine whether to send a representation to Richmond or to Baltimore. The correct determination of this question, as I view it, will depend upon another; and that is, whether the doctrine of Non-Intervention by Congress, with Slavery in the Territories, ought to be adhered to, or abandoned by the South. This is a very grave and serious question, and ought not to be decided rashly or intemperately. No such small matters, as the promotion of this or that individual, however worthy or unworthy, ought to enter into its consideration. It is a great subject of public policy, affecting the vast interests of the present and the future. It may be unnecessary, and entirely useless, for me to obtrude my views upon this question, in advance of the meeting of such Convention, upon whom its decision may primarily devolve. I cannot, however, comply with your request, without doing so to a limited extent, at least. This, I shall do. In the first place, then, I assume, as an unquestioned and unquestionable fact, that Non-Intervention, as stated, has been for many years received, recognized, and acted upon, as the settled doctrine of the South. By Non-Intervention, I mean the principle, that Congress shall pass no law upon the subject of Slavery in the Territories, either for, or against it, in any way that they shall not interfere or act upon it at all—or, in the express words of Mr. Calhoun, the great Southern leader, that Congress shall "leave the whole subject where the Constitution and the great principles of Self-government place it." This has been eminently a Southern doctrine. It was announced by Mr. Calhoun, in his speech, in the Senate, on the 27th of June, 1848; and, after two years of discussion, was adopted as the basis of the adjustment finally made in 1850. It was the demand of the South, put forth by the South, and since its establishment has been again and again affirmed and re-affirmed as the settled policy of the South, by Party Conventions and State Legislatures, in every form that a people can give authoritative expression to their will and wishes. This cannot now be matter of dispute. It is history, as |