CHAPTER XVII.

Colonel Davis.-Union Convention.-Governor Foote.-Quitman's Views. - Democratic State Convention. —Quitman's Speech.— Letter to B. F. Dill.-Presidential Election.-General Pierce.Letter to Chapman. - Letter to Central Committee. - General Scott.-Correspondence with Judge Wilkinson.—Elwood Fisher. —R. D. Cralle. —Nominated for Vice-president in Alabama.— Memphis Convention.-The Doctrine of Protection.—Quitman at Rhinebeck.-Defends the Institutions of the South.-Meditates the Liberation of Cuba.—Arraigned in New Orleans.—His Defense.-Reply to Judge Campbell.-Letter to Thomas Reed and II. T. Ellett.-His Relations with Cuba not yet to be explained.

In this contingency, the Democratic ticket being without a leader, and the election near at hand, the Central Democratic Executive Committee, backed by an emphatic appeal from the state-rights press, prevailed on Colonel Jefferson Davis to lead the forlorn hope. He was enfeebled by illness and almost blind, but he entered immediately on the canvass with characteristic energy. Ill health and the want of time prevented his success, but he gave a powerful impetus to the reaction which soon occurred.

The State Convention, otherwise called the Union Convention, assembled in the capitol on the 10th of November, 1851. It reversed all that had been hitherto done in Mississippi to embody Southern sentiment for resistance and defense.

The Position of Mississippi, declared in Convention at Jackson, which met on the 10th day of November, 1851.

The people of Mississippi, in convention assembled, as expressive of their deliberate judgment on the great questions involved in the sectional controversy between

the slaveholding and non-slaveholding states of the American Union, adopt the following resolutions:

1st. Resolved, That, in the opinion of this Convention, the people of Mississippi, in a spirit of conciliation and compromise, have maturely considered the action of Congress, embracing a series of measures for the admission of California as a state 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 the proposition to exclude slavery from the territories of the United States and to abolish it in the District of Columbia; and while they do not entirely approve, will abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this sectional controversy, so long as the same, in all its features, shall be faithfully adhered to and enforced.

2d. Resolved, That we perceive nothing in the above recited legislation of the Congress of the United States which should be permitted to disturb the friendly and peaceful "existing relations between the government of the United States and the government and people of the State of Mississippi."

3d. Therefore resolved, That, in the opinion of this Convention, the people of the State of Mississippi will abide by the Union as it is, and by the Constitution of the United States without amendment. That they hold the 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 them to it so long as it continues to be the safeguard of those rights and principles.

4th. Resolved farther, That, in the opinion of this Convention, the asserted right of secession from the Union, on the part of a state or states, is utterly unsanctioned by the federal Constitution, which was framed to "establish" and not to destroy the Union of the states, and that no secession can, in fact, take place without a subversion of the Union established, and which will not virtually amount in its effects and consequences to a civil revolution.

5th. Resolved farther, That while, in the opinion of this Convention, such are the sentiments and opinions of the people of the State of Mississippi, still, violations of the rights of the people of the state may occur, which would amount to intolerable oppression, and would justify a resort to measures of resistance, among which, in the opinion of the Convention, the people of the state have designated the following:

1st. The interference by Congressional legislation with the institution of slavery in the states.

2d. The interferente with the trade in slaves between the states.

3d. Any action of Congress on the subject of slavery in the District of Columbia, or in places subject to the jurisdiction of Congress, incompatible with the safety and domestic tranquillity-the rights and honor of the slaveholding states.

4th. The refusal by Congress to admit a new state into the Union on the ground of her tolerating slavery within her limits.

5th. The passage of any law by Congress prohibiting slavery in any one of the territories.

6th. The repeal of the fugitive slave law and the neglect or refusal by the general government to enforce the constitutional provisions for the reclamation of fugitive slaves.

6th. Resolved farther, That, in the opinion of this Convention, the people, in the recent elections, have been governed by an abiding confidence that the said adjustment measures of Congress would be enforced in good faith in every section of the land.

7th. Resolved farther, That, as the people of the State of Mississippi, in the opinion of this Convention, desire all farther agitation of the slavery question to cease, and have acted upon and decided all the foregoing questions, thereby making it the duty of this Convention to pass no acts within the purview and spirit of the law under which it is called, this Convention deems it unnecessary to refer to the people, for their approval or disapproval at the ballot-box, its action in the premises.

8th. Resolved, That, in the opinion of this Convention, without intending to call in question the motives of the

members of the Legislature, the call of this Convention by the Legislature, at its late extraordinary session, was unauthorized by the people, and that said act, in peremptorily ordering a convention of the people of the state without first submitting to them the question whether there should be a convention or no convention, was an unwarranted assumption of power by the Legislature, at war with the spirit of republican institutions, an encroachment upon the rights of the people, and can never be rightfully invoked as a precedent.

It is not in place here to follow this matter farther. It belongs rather to the history of the state.* But it may be observed that the concessions made by that body, and especially the repudiation of the great fundamental attribute of sovereignty, the right of secession, gave a fatal blow to the so-called Union party, and terminated its existence in less than two years. The Nashville Convention turned out to be an abortion. Foote had been elected governor by a lean majority, with the general understanding that he should be returned to the Senate on the expiration of his term. But before that period arrived the Democratic State-rights party was again in power; one of its most gifted and consistent leaders, the warm personal and political friend of Quitman,† had been elected to the chief magistracy, and a large majority of the Legislature was of the same complexion. Governor Foote declined a poll for the Senate, and left the stato for California, without even a demonstration of gratitudo from a party whose heterogeneous ranks he had consolidated and disciplined, and whom, in the face of a tempest of opposition, he had conducted to victory.

The following letter from Gen. Quitman, dated Dec. 20th, 1851, will be read with interest, foreshadowing, as it does, the line of conduct recently adopted by the Mis

* A complete history of Mississippi will soon appear, from the pen of B. W. Sanders, one of the most brilliant writers in the South. † Hon. John J. M'Rac.

sissippi and other Southern delegates, in the Charleston Convention.

To W. D. Chapman, Editor of the Standard, Columbus, Mississippi.

"The feverish anxiety to bury the past in oblivion, exhibited by many presses and state-rights men, carries with it a reproach upon ourselves for having raised opposition to the compromise measures. We, nine tenths of the Democratic party of the state, were the agitators. We proposed to meet what we deemed fatal encroachment upon our state as well as personal rights promptly and effectually at the threshold. We were beaten by our old foe, the Federal Whigs, aided by desertions from the democratic faith, and now we most anxiously implore the latter to forget the past, as if the error was ours and not theirs. The foreshadowing influence of the next presidential campaign may procure our pardon, but not, I predict, without our submitting to the decimation of our front rank in the late fight. I regret exceedingly that your very civil letter, asking my opinion in relation to uniting with Northern Democrats in nominating a candidate for President, did not reach. my hands in time to render my answer of any value to you. The die is now cast. The press, with scarce an exception that I have seen, and apparently the great body of our party, not only seem to concur in the proposal, but are disposed to read out of the party those who think differently. It is still open for discussion in our proposed state convention. I hope it will then receive a most serious consideration. A concurrence of leading men in that body can only check the strong propensity to take part in a fight in which sixty millions of annual revenue and thirty thousand public offices are to be divided. From the highest statesman down to the smallest village politician thero is in that great lottery a chanco for a prize, if he shall have had the luck to shout on the successful side. Could there be a stronger evidence of the central tendency of our government than is exhibited in our own case? We of the State-rights party complain of the overshadowing influence of federal power. We profess to be organized in opposition to that influence, and