have levied war against the Federal Government, and then war would have been inevitable. He would be glad if this could be avoided, but it could not be. The President would be sworn to execute the laws and preserve the Union. He, himself, was sworn to do the same. He could not avoid the performance of his duty. Suppose, said Senator Wade, the Southern States should withdraw peacefully, would their situation be better? The civilized world condemned slavery as much as the free States did. The civilized world would never sympathize with the institution. The policy of the free States would be to extend a protectorate over Mexico. Mexico hated the South for her fillibustering and her encroachments. She would love the North, because it proffered freedom and safety.

"The free States would offer to the world a Homestead law; they would invite the laboring white man from every quarter of the globe. They did not believe in making a government solely for the negro, as had been intimated by the Senator from Illinois and others; but would found a republic of free labor. The slave States might go on with their system alongside, and the world would judge which system was most consonant with human happiness."*

While the House Committee of Thirty-three, on which there were such Northern men as Corwin of Ohio, C. F. Adams of Massachusetts, Morrill of Vermont, Curtis of Iowa, Dunn of Indiana, Washburne of Wisconsin, and such Southern men as Millson of Virginia, Houston of Alabama, Boyce of South Carolina, Rust of Arkansas, Hamilton of Texas, Winslow of North Carolina and Taylor of Louisiana-while this Committee was candidly, and with a just sense of its duty and the occasion, applying itself to the task of settling the issues of the day, another evidence, if any were necessary to prove that the consideration of their grievances. was a pretext with the extreme Southerners, was afforded in the publication of the following

ADDRESS OF CERTAIN SOUTHERN SENATORS AND MEMBERS OF

To our Constituents:

CONGRESS.

WASHINGTON, December 14, 1860. The argument is exhausted. All hope of relief in the Union through the agency of committees, Congressional legislation or * "Congressional Notes," by Ezek. Richards, States, December 18, 1860.

constitutional amendments, is extinguished, and we trust the South will not be deceived by appearances or the pretense of new guarantees. In our judgment, the Republicans are resolute in the purpose to grant nothing that will or ought to satisfy the South. We are satisfied the honor, safety and independence of the Southern people require the organization of a Southern confederacy-a result to be obtained only by separate State secession-that the primary object of each slaveholding State ought to be its speedy and absolute separation from a Union with hostile States.

J. L. Pugh, of Alabama.
David Clopton, of Alabama.
Sydenham Moore, of Alabama.
J. L. M. Curry, of Alabama.
J. A. Stallworth, of Alabama.
J. W. H. Underwood, of Georgia.
L. J. Gartrell, of Georgia.
James Jackson, of Georgia.
John J. Jones, of Georgia.
Martin J. Crawford, of Georgia.
Alfred Iverson, U. S. Senator, Geo.
George S. Hawkins, of Florida.
T. C. Hindman, of Arkansas.
Jeff. Davis U. S. Senator, Miss.
John D. Ashmore,

A. G. Brown, U. S. Senator, Miss.
William Barksdale, of Mississippi.
Reuben Davis, of Mississippi.
Burton Craig, of North Carolina.
Thos. Ruffin, of North Carolina.
John Slidell, U. S. Senator, Lou.
J. P. Benjamin, U. S. Senator, Lou.
J. M. Landrum, of Louisiana.
L. T. Wigfall, U. S. Senator, Texas.
John Hemphill, U. S. Senator, Tex.
J. H. Reagan, of Texas.

M. L. Bonham, of South Carolina.
W. Porcher Miles, of South Caro.
John McQueen, of South Carolina.
of South Carolina.

CHAPTER XIII.

JOHNSON'S Faith in the Union - Awakens to a Sense of the Situation - His Position toward the Southern Leaders - Not to be Brow-beaten or Frightened— The Senate Debate continued - Johnson on the Right of Secession - Great Speech of December 18 and 19, 1860 He takes open Ground against the Traitors His Propositions to Amend the Constitution Rights of the South within the Union - Quotes Madison, Jackson, Marshall and Webster against Secession Washington enforced the Laws in 1795 - Jackson and Nullification - A Seceding State a Foreign Power - South Carolina an Abolitionist Lincoln's Election no Cause for Secession- The South favoring a Monarchy.

As has been remarked, Andrew Johnson was not distinguished for singing peans to the Union. With the patriotic faith in his own heart, he regarded such periodical displays as but a cheap method of attracting, or very easy one of sustaining, notoriety. He was not a believer in dissolution, could not bring himself to comprehend how men born under such a benign flag, shielding such wise institutions, could contemplate an act so heinous. When Congressmen and politicians were variously disrupting and healing the Union in angry or pathetic speeches, he turned a deaf car, and looking into his heart, said, "It cannot be dissolved." He was now awakened, not to a sense of the realization of disunion, but of horror and indignation at those who already had the arm raised against the most symmetrical and generous form of government known.

If he sang no peans to it when he believed it safe, he was inspired with a resolute frenzy when he beheld it in danger. His clear, logical and patriotic periods struck consternation into the ranks of the traitors, and their boldest advocates and sympathizers sprang forward to grapple with him, striv

ing to attain, by passionate sectional appeals and personal denunciations of him as a traitor to the South, that power over him which they could not achieve by argument. But they miserably failed. The fact that Senator Johnson had acted with the Breckinridge wing of the Democracy in the previous Presidential campaign but made him the more fierce, seeing that the Breckinridge leaders had used the occasion to foment the slaveholders' rebellion. Although he sympathized with Douglas, Senator Johnson had supported Breckinridge in all honesty, believing that his constituents in Tennessee desired such action, and that in it lay the best chances of uniting the Democratic party. He was not in the confidence of the conspirators, and could not know that it was their purpose to have the Democratic party defeated, so that a plea, however remote and unjust, might be furnished to the Yanceyites for carrying out their long projected plan of precipitating the cotton States into revolution. Many Union Southern men were whirled into the rebel ranks or cowed into disloyal inaction, by the public and private lacerations they were subjected to by the organized system of brow-beating pursued by the ultra Southerners. But Johnson was of different stuff. He was not to be awed by any innuendoes of physical coercion, or hushed by any display of verbal ferocity.

The speeches in which he tore asunder all the pleas upon which his late coadjutors sought to dissever the Union are famous, and cannot be too often perused. They are singu larly able, and the interest attached to their views increases into heroism when we remember the place and time, the occasion upon which he spoke, the grandeur of the subject and the character of the men by whom he was surrounded.

It was on the 18th and 19th of December, 1860, that Senator Johnson, convinced of the extremities about to be pursued by the traitors, took open ground against them in a speech of great and defiant power. It flung consternation

and dismay into the ranks of secession, and struck a chord in the popular heart throbbing anxiously in the galleries, that several times proved to be irrepressible. This speech, as the grand opening effort of a Southern patriot against Southern treason, forms a great historical point not only in the career of the orator, but of his country at its most intense epoch. Among the propositions laid before the Senate for the adjustment of difficulties during the second session of the Thirty-sixth Congress, were three amendments to the Constitution by Senator Johnson. One proposed to change the mode of election of President and Vice-President of the United States from the Electoral College to a vote substantially and directly by the people. The second proposed that the Senators of the United States shall be elected by the people once in six years, instead of by the Legislatures of the respective States. The third provided that the Supreme Court shall be divided into three classes: the term of the first class is to expire in four years from the time that the classification is made, of the second class in eight years, and of the third class in twelve years; and as these vacancies occur they are to be filled by persons chosenone-half from the slave States, and the other half from the non-slaveholding States, thereby taking the judges of the Supreme Court, so far as their selection goes, from the respective divisions of the country; also, that either the President or Vice-President at each election shall be from the slaveholding States.

By these means the Senator trusted to equalize matters so that the South could not possibly object if it honestly meant to remain in the Union. If the South did not willfully and wantonly mean to disrupt the Union, its representatives could support his proposition.

Senator Johnson was opposed to secession, and was in favor of maintaining the rights of the South within the Union. Neither he nor his State would be driven out of