of Yancey, and Rhett, and Pickens, and Toombs, and of Davis. I will not surrender this government until I know that a better one has been provided for me.

"When I see in the distance the frightful and appalling consequences of disunion and civil war, which many will not see until the reality is brought to their own firesides and hearth-stones, where our wives, and our daughters, and all that is cherished on earth is clustered, I can not but persuade myself that both parties will shudder and recoil at its approach, and come to honorable terms of settlement. For one I shall never despair of the republic.

"When I see that upon the secession of any or all the Southern States, the President is left no alternative and no discretion, but is solemnly sworn before his God to PRESERVE, protect, and defend the Constitution, and that that Constitution declares the laws of the United States to be the supreme law of the land,' which he 'shall take care to see faithfully executed,' and places the army and navy of the United States under his control, and provides for calling forth the militia to enable him 'to execute the laws and suppress insurrections,' I can not doubt that the declaration of secession, however much it may be deplored, will necessarily impóse upon the government the obligation of resorting to such measures as will enable him to see the laws faithfully executed; the right to do which was too firmly established in the days of President Jackson by the legislation of 1832, ever to be overthrown while the government endures. I only speak of this as an existing fact, which is not likely and hardly possible to be changed. If it can be avoided, I shall be rejoiced to see it, and, while I can not doubt the power, would, as your representative in Convention, cheerfully unite in any recommendation or remonstrance against the exercise of the power.

"When I see too, that, without the power to strike a blow in resistance or defense, without the means to vindicate herself, the state may be humbled and subdued (and all the gasconade and bravado of light-headed and flippant would-be patriots can not prevent it); when I see that a single ship of war stationed at the Capes of Virginia will as effectually block up and destroy the entire commerce of Virginia and Maryland as if they were surrounded by icebergs in the Arctic Ocean, while we have no naval force with which to dislodge or remove the blockade; when I see that the commerce of every other Southern state may be cut off in the same way, and by the same means, by sending one or more warsteamers to block up the several ports of Charleston, Cape Fear River,

Savannah, the coasts of Florida, Mobile Bay, and the mouth of the Mississippi, while the commerce of every free state in the valley of the Mississippi is left open by means of railroad, lake, and canal communication with New York; when I see that of three million five hundred thousand militia-men enrolled in the United States, the North has upward of two million five hundred thousand, with no negroes to take care of at home, and the South only about nine hundred and forty-seven thousand, with our wives and daughters to protect and our negroes to watch; when I see that, upon all constitutional obligations being broken down, there must be incessant and exhausting hostilities carried on between the Border Free and the Border Slave States, or else that Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri will speedily become Free States, hitched on to a confederacy of Slave States, from which it is even now proposed they should then be turned adrift; when I see this state groaning under a debt of forty-five millions, to be raised by direct taxation, and all her sources of revenue cut off, and without the credit to obtain a dollar in any market in the world on any terms, as will be her condition in a state of rebellion and civil war; when I see nothing but bankruptcy and distress staring every man in the face; when I see all these and other untold calamities to be brought upon our people by the inconsiderate haste of an hour's excitement, or for misapplied sympathy for a state that we were told in advance would 'hitch us on' and 'precipitate us into revolution whether we would or not;' when I can see nothing but absolute ruin and desolation for all in common, which neither our safety nor our honor requires us to encounter-I say, if this work is to be done, it must be performed by other hands than mine; for I would not, for all the honors, and offices, and wealth of the world, have such a crime resting on my soul.

"I have said I would take any compromise that would restore peace to the country; but it is not to be disguised that there are those in this state and others in the South who do not mean to be satisfied with any concessions or compromise that can be offered. They are for disunion per se, and have been, as Mr. Rhett acknowledges, for thirty years. For them I have nothing to offer but resistance to every proposition and every effort that looks to the secession of this state; and if, upon obtaining all that we have the right under the Constitution to claim, they still persist in their opposition to the execution of the laws, and in stirring up rebellion and treason, I think it manifest that the government will fall back on the platform upon which we have just carried this state, to wit, 'The

Union, the Constitution, and the Enforcement of the Laws' equally, fairly, and impartially on all; for then it will be a question between a well-regulated government on the one hand, and anarchy and mob law on the other; for if the government has no power to collect its taxes or duties, to execute its laws, put down rebellion, and punish treason, then it is no longer the government that was formed by our fathers, and the sooner the whole fabric tumbles to pieces the better.

"This Union, as far as my action will go, must and shall be preserved, as long as it can be done with honor. Has Virginia tamely submitted to dishonor for the last ten years, and is she now only stimulated to redeem that honor by the precipitate action of other states? If not, what new cause has arisen within the last two months that makes it necessary to call together the Legislature, or a convention without authority, hold an election almost without notice, meet in convention and declare herself out of the Union in less time than is ordinarily devoted to the passage of a bill for the construction of a mud turnpike in the mountains? If war had actually been declared against us, no more precipitate action could have been taken. This, too, when public sentiment in the North is daily and hourly undergoing modifications, and petitions are pouring in upon Congress to refer the matter to the people for settlement, who say they are ready to yield to all just and reasonable demands for the sake of the Union.

"I will not stop to inquire how long our allies in the Cotton States will be able to hold out, and help us after leading us into the difficulty, when their ports are all blockaded and their supplies of actual necessaries of life-of which they purchase one hundred and fifty million dollars' worth a year from the Free States-shall be cut off. I will not stop to inquire whether the world can live as long without their cotton as they can live without bread. I will not stop to show that both England and France have already, by the Chinese War, made arrangements for a supply of cotton from that region of the world, which, together with the supply from the East Indies, will render them in a few years independent of the Cotton States; for all these will be subjects for argument elsewhere; but I simply throw them out as hints for reflection, and as reasons for making haste slowly.

"What is to become of that vast multitude of naturalized citizens scattered through the Southern States who owe a sworn allegiance to the United States government, which is bound to protect them in every land, whether at home or abroad? Are they to be asked to commit willful

perjury by taking up arms against the Constitution and the government they have solemnly sworn to support, or are they to be driven from the South as aliens and enemies to the new-fangled government that is to be erected? It is a question for grave deliberation to determine what is to be their status when we separate from our government and theirs. If you, the natives of Virginia, owe your first allegiance to the state, surely they owe theirs to the general government.

"To be brief, I am ready to sacrifice myself, and live in obscurity and poverty, deserted by friends for whom I would die rather than harm, if by such sacrifice I can save the rich legacy from our fathers, and the rightful inheritance of our children. I am ready to hazard my life, if necessary, in fighting the battles of Virginia in a just cause, but I am not willing to sacrifice the best interests of my state and my country, and the hopes of oppressed mankind throughout the world, in upholding South Carolina in a bad cause, in a wholly unjustifiable and petulant whim, which she avows she has indulged for thirty years. I am not willing to rush upon destruction for a misplaced sympathy for a state that exulted over the election of a Republican President, burned their tar-barrels and illuminated their cities because it afforded them the pretext for rebellion, and that has since violently seized upon the forts, arsenals, arms, and ammunition, and money of the United States, and has fired upon and driven from her waters an unarmed vessel bearing that flag of the Union which has borne us triumphantly through every war and every trouble. I am not one of those who profess or feel such sympathy, nor will I uphold her in such conduct. Yet I would afford her every opportunity to retrace her injudicious step.

"My earnest and urgent advice, then, is that Virginia should remain in the Union, demanding all her constitutional rights, the repeal of all unconstitutional laws, or the declaration of their nullity by the Supreme Court, and a just punishment for those who shall resist its decisions. Let her remain in, and act the part of mediator and peace-maker between the extremes of both sections of the country. Recollect that those who now beckon you on to destruction are the same advisers and leaders that lured you on in 1854 to insist upon the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which has brought you to your present condition. That was a grievous error of which you had timely warning, but to which you would not listen; and those who warned you then were denounced as submissionists and traitors to the South as they are now. Be not deceived by the same men again, who would now lead you into one ten thousand times

more fatal; and do not hereafter forget that I tell you now, when you give up your Union, you surrender your liberties and the liberties of all who are to come after you.

"If this brief and hurried exposition of my views should meet with the concurrence of the people of Richmond, and they desire to call me into their service at a moment when all the calmness, deliberation, and philosophy of the most experienced and far-sighted statesmen should be called into requisition, I shall appreciate the honor, and not decline the trust. But if they are bent on committing an act of self-destruction that no time, nor labor, nor money can repair, and involving this state and themselves in everlasting ruin, some other arm than mine must be selected to strike the blow; for I can not and will not commit the parricidal act that would hand my name down in dishonor to posterity as one of the destroyers of my country and of the liberties of the people.

"I am, with great respect, your obedient servant,

"JOHN M. BOTTS. "P.S.-I have written this letter because I shall have no other opportunity of making my opinions known to the voters of Richmond — which have been greatly misrepresented as I am called to Washington, and shall most probably not return until about the time of the election. I will be sure to be here in time to give my own vote for Union men. "JOHN M. BOTTS."

In rapid succession one Cotton or Gulf State after another had passed their ordinances of secession, until they had all thrown themselves headlong into the rebellion. The action of the remaining states, to wit, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, mainly depended upon the course that Virginia might adopt. All eyes were turned upon her Convention. The proclamation of Mr. Lincoln calling for seventy-five thousand men (which I think should have been for three hundred thousand at the least, accompanied with a recital of the wrongs and injuries already perpetrated by South Carolina and her associate states, with a suitable appeal to the patriotism of the people to sustain the integrity of the nation) was issued on the 15th of April, 1861. The representatives of the people in Convention, who had been elected to keep Virginia in the Union, betrayed their trust, and in a moment of artfully and ingeniously contrived excitement, and in a fit of absolute intimidation, as I have shown, adopted an ordinance of secession on the 17th, which created a wild distraction in the people's mind. The fact was flashed