Since your adjournment in December, the Adjutant and Inspector General, under my direction, has done all in his power to press forward the organization of the militia of the State, in conformity to the act passed for that purpose; and I have the pleasure to state, that the enrollments are generally made, except in a few localities, where proximity to the enemy has prevented it; and the organizations will soon be completed.

At this stage in our proceedings, we are met with formidable obstacles, thrown in our way by the late act of Congress, which subjects those between 17 and 50 to enrollment as Conscripts, for Confederate service. This act of Congress proposes to take from the State, as was done on a former occasion, her entire military force, who belong to the active list, and to leave her without a force, in the different counties, sufficient to execute her laws or suppress servile insurrection.

Our Supreme Court has ruled, that the Confederate government has the power to raise armies by conscription, but it has not decided that it also has the power to enroll the whole population of the State who remain at home, so as to place the whole people under the military control of the Confederate government, and thereby take from the States all command over their own citizens, to execute their own laws, and place the internal police regulations of the States in the hands of the President. It is one thing to “raise armies”, and another, and quite a different thing, to put the whole population at home under military law, and compel every man to obtain a military detail, upon such terms as the central government may dictate, and to carry a military pass in his pocket while he cultivates his farm, or attends to his other necessary avocations at home.

Neither a planter nor an overseer engaged upon the farm, nor a blacksmith making agricultural implements, nor a miller grinding for the people at home, belongs to, or constitutes any part of the armies of the Confederacy; and there is not the shadow of Constitutional power, vested in the Confederate government, for conscribing and putting these classes, and others engaged in home pursuits, under military rule, while they remain at home to discharge these duties. If conscription were constitutional as a means of raising armies by the Confederate government, it could not be constitutional to conscribe those not actually needed, and to be employed in the army, and the constitutional power to “raise armies”, could never carry with it the power in Congress to conscribe the whole people, who are not needed for the armies, but are left at home, because more useful there, and place them under military government and compel them to get military details to plough in their fields, shoe their farm horses, or to go to mill.

But it may be said that an attempt to maintain the rights of the State will produce conflict with the Confederate Government. I am aware that there are those who, from motives not necessary to be here mentioned, are ever ready to raise the cry of conflict, and to criticise and condemn the action of Georgia, in every case where her constituted authorities protest against the encroachments of the central power, and seek to maintain her dignity and sovereignty as a State, and the constitutional rights and liberties of her people.

Those who are unfriendly to State sovereignty, and desire to consolidate all power in the hands of the Confederate Government, hoping to promote their undertaking by operating upon the fears of the timid, after each new aggression upon the constitutional rights of the States, fill the newspaper presses with the cry of conflict, and warn the people to beware of those who seek to maintain their constitutional rights, as agitators or partisans who may embarrass the Confederate Government in the prosecution of the war.

Let not the people be deceived by this false clamor. It is the same cry of conflict which the Lincoln Government raised against all who defended the rights of the Southern States against its tyranny. It is the cry which the usurpers of power have ever raised against those who rebuke their encroachments and refuse to yield to their aggressions.

When did Georgia embarrass the Confederate Government in any matter pertaining to the vigorous prosecution of the war? When did she fail to furnish more than her full quota of troops, when she was called upon as a State by the proper Confederate authority? And when did her gallant sons ever quail before the enemy, or fail nobly to illustrate her character upon the battle field?

She can not only repel the attacks of her enemies on the field of deadly conflict, but she can as proudly repel the assaults of those who, ready to bend the knee to power for position and patronage, set themselves up to criticise her conduct; and she can confidently challenge them to point to a single instance in which she has failed to fill a requisition for troops made upon her through the regular constitutional channel. To the very last requisition made, she responded with over double the number required.

She stands ready at all times to do her whole duty to the cause and to the Confederacy, but while she does this, she will never cease to require that her constitutional rights be respected, and the liberties of her people preserved. While she deprecates all conflict with the Confederate Government, if to require these be conflict, the conflict will never end till the object is attained.

“For freedom's battle once begun,Bequeath'd by bleeding sire to son,Though baffled oft is ever won,“ will be emblazoned in letters of living light upon her proud banners, until State sovereignty and constitutional liberty, as well as Confederate independence, are firmly established.

I cannot withhold the expression of the deep mortification I feel at the late action of Congress, in attempting to suspend the privilege of the writ of Habeas Corpus, and to confer upon the President powers expressly denied to him by the Constitution of the Confederate States. Under pretext of a necessity which our whole people know does not exist in this case whatever may have been the motives, our Congress, with the assent, and at the request of the Executive, has struck a fell blow at the liberties of these States.

The Constitution of the Confederate States declares that, “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” The power to suspend the habeas corpus at all, is derived, not from express and direct delegation, but from implication only, and an implication can never be raised in opposition to an express restriction. In case of any conflict between the two, an implied power must always yield to express restrictions upon its exercise. The power to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus derived by implication, must therefore be always limited by the express declaration in the Constitution that:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated; and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,” and the further declaration that, “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” And that,

“In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right of a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the State or District where the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”

Cruel, bloody, desolating war is still waged against us by our relentless enemies, who, disregarding the laws of nations and the rules of civilized warfare, whenever either interferes with their fanatical objects or their interest, have in numerous instances been guilty of worse than savage cruelty.

They have done all in their power to burn our cities, when unable by their skill and valor to occupy them; and to turn innocent women and children, who may have escaped death by the shells thrown among them, without previous notice, into the streets, destitute of homes, food and clothing.

They have devastated our country, wherever their unhallowed feet have trod our soil, burning and destroying factories, mills, agricultural implements, and other valuable property.

They have cruelly treated our sons while in captivity, and in violation of a cartel agreed upon, have refused to exchange them with us, for their own soldiers, unless we would consent, against the laws of nations, to exchange our slaves as belligerents, when induced or forced by them, to take up arms against us.

They have done all in their power to incite our slaves to insurrection and murder, and when unable to seduce them from their loyalty, have, when they occupied our country, compelled them to engage in war against us.

They have robbed us of our negro women and children who were comfortable contented and happy with their owners, and under pretext of extraordinary philanthropy, have in the name of liberty congregated thousands of them together in places where they could have neither the comforts nor the necessaries of life, there neglected and despised to die by pestilence and hunger.

In numerous instances their brutal soldiers have violated the persons of our innocent and helpless women; and have desecrated the graves of our ancestors and polluted and defiled the altars which we have dedicated to the worship of the living God.

In addition to these and other enormities hundreds of thousands of valuable lives, both North and South, have been sacrificed, causing the shriek of the mother, the wail of the widow and the cry of the orphan to ascend to Heaven from almost every hearthstone in all the broad land once known as the United States.

Such is but a faint picture of the devastation, cruelty and bloodshed which have marked this struggle.

War in is most mitigated form, when conducted according to the rules established by the most enlightened and civilized nations, is a terrible scourge and cannot exist without the most enormous guilt resting upon the heads of those who have without just cause brought it upon the innocent and helpless people who are its unfortunate victims. Guilt may rest in unequal degrees in a struggle like this upon both parties, but both cannot be innocent. Where then rests this crushing load of guilt?

While I trust I shall be able to show that it rests not upon the people nor rulers of the South, I do not claim that it rested at the commencement of the struggle upon the whole people of the North.

There was a large intelligent and patriotic portion of the people of the Northern States, led by such men as Pierce, Douglas, Vallandingham, Bright, Voorhies, Pugh, Seymour, Wood and many other honored names, who did all in their power to rebuke and stay the wicked reckless fanaticism which precipitated the two sections into this terrible conflict. With such men as these in power we might have lived together in the Union perpetually.

In addition to the strength of the Democratic party in the North, there were a large number of persons whose education had brought them into sympathy with the so called Republican, or in other words the old federal, consolidation party, who would never have followed the wicked leaders of that party who used the slavery question as an hobby upon which to ride into power, and who to-day stand before Heaven and earth guilty of shedding the blood of hundreds of thousands and destroying the brightest hopes of posterity, had they known the true objects of their leaders and the results which must follow the triumph of their policy at the ballot box.

The moral guilt of this war rested then in its incipiency neither upon the people of the South nor upon the Democratic party of the North, or upon that part of the Republican party who were deluded and deceived. But it rested upon the heads of the wicked leaders of the Republican party, who had refused to be bound by the compacts of the Constitution made by our common ancestry. These men when in power in the respective States of the North arrayed themselves in open hostility against an important provision of the Constitution, for the security of clearly expressed and unquestionable rights of the people of the Southern States.

Many of the more fanatical of them denounced the Constitution. because of its protection of the property of the slaveholder, as a “covenant with death and a league with Hell,” and refusing to be bound by it, declared that a “higher law” was the rule of their conduct, and appealed to the Bible as that “higher law.” But when the precepts of God in favor of slavery were found in both the old and the new testament, they repudiated the Bible and its Divine Author and declared for an anti-Slavery Bible and an anti-Slavery God.

The abolition party having when in power, in their respective States, set at naught that part of the Constitution which guarantees protection to the rights and property of the Southern people, and having by fraud and misrepresentation obtained possession of the federal government, the Southern people in self-defence were compelled to leave the Union in which their rights were no longer respected. Having destroyed the Union by their wicked acts and their bad faith, these leaders rallied a majority of the people of the North to their support, with a promise to restore it again by force. Monstrous paradox! that a Union which was formed upon a compact between sovereign States, being eminently a creature of consent, is to be upheld by force. But monstrous as it is, the war springs ostensibly from this source—this is its origin, its soul and its life, so far as a shadow of pretext for it can be found. In their mad effort to restore by force a Union which they have destroyed, and to save themselves from the just vengeance, which awaited them for their crimes, the abolition leaders in power have lighted up the continent with a blaze of war which has destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property, and hundreds of thousands of valuable lives, and loaded posterity with a debt which must cause wretchedness and poverty for generations to come. And all for what? That fanaticism might triumph over constitutional liberty as achieved by the great men of 1776, and that ambitious men might have place and power. In their efforts to destroy our liberties the people of the North, if successful, would inevitably lose their own by overturning, as they are now attempting to do, the great principles of Republicanism, upon which constitutional liberty rests. The government in the hands of the abolition administration is now a despotism as absolute as that of Russia.

Unoffending citizens are seized in their beds at night by armed force, and dragged to dungeons and incarcerated at the will of the tyrant, because they have dared to speak for constitutional liberty and to protest against military despotism.

The Habeas Corpus that great bulwark of liberty, without which no people can be secure in their lives, persons or property, which cost the English several bloody wars and which was finally wrung from the crown by the sturdy Barons and people at the point of the bayonet; which has ever been the boast of every American patriot, and which I pray God may never, under pretext of military necessity, be yielded to encroachments by the people of the South, has been trampled under foot by the Government at Washington which imprisons at its pleasure whomsoever it will.

The freedom of the ballot box has also been destroyed, and the elections have been carried by the overawing influence of military force.

Under pretext of keeping men enough in the field to subdue the South, President Lincoln takes care to keep enough to hold the North in subjection also, to imprison or exile those who attempt to sustain their ancient rights liberties and usages, and to drive from the ballot box those who are not subservient to his will or enough of them to enable his party to carry the elections. Can an intelligent Northern Conservative man contemplate this state of things without exclaiming, whither are we drifting? What will we gain by the subjugation of the South if in our attempt to do it we must lose our own liberties and rivet upon ourselves and our posterity the chains of military despotism?

How long a people once free will submit to the despotism of such a government, the future must develop. One thing is certain while those who now rule remain in power in Washington, the people of the Sovereign States of America can never adjust their difficulties. But war, bloodshed, devastation and increased indebtedness, must be the inevitable result. There must be change of administration and more moderate councils prevail in the Northern States, before we can ever have peace. While subjugation, abolition and confiscation are the terms offered by the Federal Government, the Southern people will resist, as long as the patriotic voice of woman can stimulate Guerilla band, or a single armed soldier to deeds of daring in defence of liberty and home.

I have said, the South is not the guilty party in this dreadful carnage, and I think it not inappropriate that the reasons should be often repeated at the bar of an intelligent public opinion, that our own people and the world should have “line upon line,” “precept upon precept” “here a little and there a little,” “in season and out of season,” as some may suppose, to show the true nature of this contest—the principles involved—the objects of the war on our side, as well as that of the enemy, that all right minded men everywhere may see and understand, that this contest is not of our seeking, and that we have had no wish or desire to injure those who war against us, except so far as has been necessary for the protection and preservation of ourselves. Our sole object from the beginning has been to defend, maintain and preserve our ancient usages, customs, liberties and institutions, as achieved and established by our ancestors in the revolution of 1776.

That Revolution was undertaken to establish two great rights—State Sovereignty—and self government. Upon these the Declaration of Independence was predicated, and they were, the Corner Stone upon which the Constitution rested. The denial of these two great principles cost Great Britian her American Colonies which had so long been her pride. And the denial of them by the Government at Washington, if persisted in, must cost the people of the United States the liberties of themselves and their posterity. These are the pillars, upon which the temple of Constitutional liberty stands, and if the Northern people in their mad effort to destroy the Sovereignty of the Southern States, and take from our people the rights of self-government, should be able, with the strength of an ancient Sampson, to lay hold upon the pillars and overturn the edifice, they must necessarily be crushed beneath its ruins, as the destruction of State Sovereignty and the right of self-government in the Southern States, by the agency of the Federal Government, necessarily involves the like destruction in the Northern States; as no people can maintain these rights for themselves who will shed the blood of their neighbors to destroy them in others. It is impossible for half the States of a Confederacy, if they assist the central government to destroy the rights and liberties of the other half to maintain their own rights, and liberties against the central power, after it has crushed their Co-States.

The two great truths announced by Mr. Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, and concurred in by all the great men of the revolution were, 1st, “That Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the Governed.” 2nd, “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.”

We are not to understand by the first great truth, that each individual member of aggregate mass composing the State, must give his consent before he can be justly governed; or that the consent of each, or a particular class of individuals in a State is necessary. By the “governed” is evidently here meant communities and bodies of men capable of organizing and maintaining government. The “consent of the governed,” refers to the aggregate will of the community or State in its organized form, and expressed through its legitimate and property constituted organs.

In elaborating this great truth, Mr. Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, says, that governments are instituted among men to secure certain “inalienable rights,” that “among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;” “that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

According to this great fundamental principle, the Sovereign States of America, North and South, can only be governed by their own consent, and whenever the Government to which they have given their consent, becomes destructive of the great ends for which it was formed, they have a perfect right to “abolish it” by withdrawing their consent from it, as the Colonies did from the British Government, and to form a “new Government,” with its foundations laid on such principles, and its powers organized in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” Upon the application. to the present controversy, of this great principle, to which the Northern States are firmly committed as the Southern States, Georgia can proudly challenge New York to trial before the the bar of enlightened public opinion, and impartial history must write the verdict in her favor, and triumphantly vindicate her action in the course she has pursued. Not only the Sovereign States of America have heretofore recognized this great truth, but it has been recognized by the able and enlightened Emperor of the French, who owes his present elevation to the “consent of the governed.”

He was called to the Presidency by the free suffrage or consent of the French people, and when he assumed the imperial title, he again submitted the question to the “governed” at the ballot box, and they gave their “consent.”

At the recent treaty of peace with the Emperor of Austria, he ceded an Austrian province to France, and Napoleon refused to “govern it,” till the people at the ballot box, gave “their consent” that he should do so.

The Northern States of America are to-day, through the agency of the despotism at Washington, waging a bloody war upon the Southern States, to crush out this great American principle, announced, and maintained in a seven years war, by our common ancestry, after it had won the approbation of the ablest and most enlightened Sovereign of Europe.

In discussing this great principle, I can but remark, how strange is the contrast between the conduct of the Emperor Napoleon, and that of President Lincoln. Napoleon refuses to govern a province till a majority of the people at the ballot box has given their consent. Lincoln, after having done all in his power to destroy the freedom and purity of the ballot box, announces in his late proclamation his determination to govern the Sovereign States of the South by force, and to recognize and maintain as the government of these States, not those who at the ballot box can obtain the “consent of the governed,” or of a majority of the people, but those who can obtain the consent of one tenth of the people of the State. Knowing that he can never govern these States with “the consent of the governed,” he tramples the declaration of Independence under his feet, and proclaims to the world, that he will, govern these States, not by the “consent of the governed”, but by military power, so soon as he can find one tenth of the governed humiliated enough to give their consent.

But the world must be struck with the absurdity of the pretext upon which he bases this extraordinary pretension. He says, in substance, the Constitution requires him to guarantee to each State a republican form of government. And for the purpose of carrying out this provision of the Constitution, he proclaims that, so soon as one tenth of the people of each of the seceded States shall be found abject enough to take an oath to support his unconstitutional acts, and at the same time to support the Constitution, and shall do this monstrous deed, he will permit them to organize a State Government, and will recognize them as the Government of the State, and their officers as the regularly constituted authorities of the State. These he wilt aid in putting down, driving out, expelling and exterminating, the other nine tenths, if they do not likewise take the prescribed oath.

One-tenth of the people of a State put up and aided by military force to rule, govern or exterminate nine-tenths! And this to be done under the guise or professed object of guaranteeing republicanism! What would Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Hancock, or even Hamilton, have said to this kind of republicanism? What say the conservative Northern statesmen of the present day, if permitted to speak? Does such a government as this derive its just powers from the “consent of the governed?” Is this their understanding of the republican government, which the United States is to guarantee to each State? If so, what guaranty have they for the freedom of their posterity? If the government at Washington guarantees such republicanism as this to Georgia in 1864, what may be her guaranty to Ohio and other Western States in 1874?

The absurdity of such a position, on constitutional principles or views, is too glaring for comment. When such terms are offered to them, well may the people of these States be nerved to defend their rights and liberties at every hazard, under every privation, and to the last extremity.

But I must notice the other great truth promulgated in the declaration of Independence—“that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent States.”

George the Third denied this great truth in 1776, and sent his armies into Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, to crush out its advocates and maintain over the people a government which did not derive its powers from the “consent of the governed.” President Lincoln, in 1861, has made war upon the same States and their Confederates, to crush out the same doctrine by armed force. Yet he has none of the apparent justification before the world that the British King had. The colonies had been planted, nurtured and governed by Great Britain. As States, they had never been independent and never claimed to be. This claim was set up for the first time in the declaration of Independence. Under these circumstances, there was some reason why the British Crown should resist it. But the great truth proclaimed was more powerful than the armies and navy of Great Britain.

On the 4th of July, 1776, our fathers made this declaration of the freedom and independence of the States. The revolution was fought upon this declaration, and on the 3d day of September 1783, in the treaty of peace, “His Britanic Majesty, acknowledges the said United States, to-wit: New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent States; that he treats with them as such,” &c.

On and after that day Georgia stood before the world, clad in all the habiliments, and possessed of all the attributes of sovereignty. When did Georgia lose this sovereignty? Was it by virtue of her previous compact with her sister States? Certainly not.

The Articles of Confederation between the colonies, during the struggle, set forth the objects to be attained, and the nature of the bond between the parties to it, and the separate sovereignty of each of the States a party to it, was expressly reserved. Was it when she, with the other States, formed the Constitution in 1787? Clearly not. The Constitution was a compact between the thirteen States, each of which had been recognized separately, by name, by the British King, as a free sovereign and independent State.

The objects and purpose for which the federal government was formed, were distinctly specified and were all set forth in the compact. The government created by it was limited in its powers by the grant, with an express reservation of all powers not delegated. The great attribute of separate State Sovereignty was not delegated. In this particular, there was no change from the Articles of Confederation; Sovereignty was still reserved and abided with the States respectively. This more “perfect Union,” was based upon the assumption that it was for the best interest of all the States to enter into it with the additional grant of powers and guarantees—each State being bound as a sovereign to perform and discharge to the others all the new obligations of the compact. It was so submitted to the people of the States respectively, and so acceded to by them. The States did not part with their separate sovereignty by the adoption of the Constitution. In that instrument all the powers delegated are specifically mentioned. Sovereignty, the greatest of all political powers, the source from which all others emanate, is not amongst those mentioned. It could not have been parted with except by grant, either expressed or clearly implied. The most degrading act a State can do is to lay down or surrender her sovereignty. Indeed it can not be done except by deed or grant. The surrender is not to be found in the Constitution amongst the expressly granted powers. It cannot be amongst those granted by implication; for by the terms of the compact none are granted by implication except such as are incidental to, or necessary and proper to execute those that are expressly granted. The incident can never be greater than the object—and if nothing in the powers expressly granted amounts to sovereignty, that which is the greatest of all powers, can not follow or be carried after a lesser one, as an incident by implication—and then to put the matter at rest forever, it is expressly declared, that the powers, not delegated, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people. Sovereignty, the great source of all power, therefore was left with the States by the compact, left where King George left it, and left where it has ever since remained, and will remain forever if the people of the States are true to themselves, and true to the great principles which their forefathers achieved at such cost of blood and treasure in the war of 1776.

The constitution was only the written contract or bond, between the Sovereign States, in which the covenants were all plainly expressed, and each State as a sovereign pledged its faith to its sister States, to observe and keep these covenants. So long as each did this, all were bound by the compact. But it is a rule as well known and as universally recognized in savage as in civilized life—as well understood and as generally acquiesced in between sovereign States, as between private individuals, that when one party to a contract refuses to be bound by it, and to conform to its requirements, the other party is released from further compliance.

Without entering into an argument to show the manner in which the Northern States had perverted the contract, and warped its terms to suit their own interest, in the enactment and enforcement of tariff laws for the protection of their industry at the expense of the South, and in the enactment of internal improvement laws, coast navigation laws, fishery laws, &c., &c., which were intended to enrich them at the expense of the people of the South, I need cite but a single instance of open, avowed, self-confessed, and even boasted, violation of the compact by the Northern States, to prove that the Southern States were released and discharged from further obligation to the Northern States, by every known rule of law, morality, or comity.

One of the express covenants in the written bond, to which the Northern States subscribed, and without which, as is clearly seen by reference to the debates in the Convention which formed the Constitution, the Southern States never would have agreed to or formed the compact, was in these words:

“No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”

Massachusetts and other abolition States, utterly repudiated, annulled and set at naught this provision of the Constitution; and refused either to execute it or to permit the constituted authorities of the United States to carry it out within their limits.

This shameful violation by Massachusetts, of her plighted faith to Georgia, and this refusal to be bound by the parts of the Constitution, which she regarded burdensome to her, and unacceptable to her people, released Georgia, according to every principle of international law, from further compliance on her part. In other words, the Constitution was the bond of Union between Georgia and Massachusetts, and when Massachusetts refused longer to be bound by the Constitution, she thereby dissolved the union between her and Georgia.

It is truthfully said in the declaration of Independence, that “experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” So it was with Georgia and her Southern sisters in this case. Though Massachusetts and other Northern States, by their faithless acts and repudiation of the compact, had dissolved the union existing between the States, the Southern States did not declare the dissolution; hoping that a returning sense of justice, on the part of the Northern States, might cause them again to observe their constitutional obligations. So far from this being the case, they construed our forbearance into a consciousness of our weakness and inability to protect ourselves, and they organized a great sectional party, whose political creed was founded in injustice to the South, and whose public declarations and acts sustained the action of Massachusetts and the other faithless States.

This party, whose creed was avowed hostility to the rights of the South, triumphed in the election for President in 1860. The election of a federal Executive by a sectional party, upon a platform of avowed hostility to the constitutional rights of the South, to carry out in the Federal administration the doctrines of Massachusetts and other faithless States, left no further ground for hope that the rights of the South would longer be respected by the Northern States, which had, not only the Executive, but a majority of the Congress.

The people of the Southern States, each sovereign State for itself, then met in convention, and, in the most solemn manner known to our form of government, resumed the exercise of the powers which they had delegated to the common agent, now faithless to the trust reposed in it.

The right of Georgia, as a member to the original compact, to do this, is too clear for successful denial. And the right of Alabama and the other States, which had been admitted into the Union since the adoption of the Constitution, is equally incontrovertable; as each new State came into the Union as a sovereign, upon an equal footing in all respects whatever with the original parties to the compact.

The Confederate States can therefore with confidence submit their acts to the judgment of mankind; while with a clear conscience they appeal to a just God to maintain them in their course. They were ever true to the compact of the Union, so long as they remained members of it— obligations under it were ever faithfully performed, and no breach of it was ever laid at their door, or truly charged against them. In exercising their undoubted right to withdraw from the Union, when the covenant had been broken by the Northern States, they sought no war—no strife. They simply withdrew from further connection with self-confessed, faithless Confederates. They offered no injury, to them—threatened none—proposed none—intended none. If their previous union with the Southern States had been advantageous to them, and our withdrawal affected their interests injuriously, they ought to have been truer to their obligations. They had no just cause to complain of us; the breach of the Compact was by themselves —the vital cord of the union was severed by their own hands.

After the withdrawal of the Confederate States from the Union, if those whose gross dereliction of duty had caused it, had reconsidered their own acts, and offered new assurances for better faith in future, the question would have been fairly and justly put to the seceded States, in their sovereign capacity to determine; whether in view of their past and future interest and safety, they should renew the union with them or not; and upon what terms, and guarantees; and if they had found it to be their interest to do so, upon any terms that might have been agreed upon; on the principle assumed at the beginning, that it was for the best interest of all the States, to be bound by some Compact of union, with a Central Government of limited powers; each State faithfully performing its obligations; they would doubtless have consented to it. But if they had found it to be their interest not to do it, they would not, and ought not to have done it. For the first law of nature as applicable to States and communities, as to individuals, is self-protection and self preservation.

Possibly a new government might have been formed at that time, upon the basis of the Germanic Confederation; with a guaranty of the complete sovereignty of all the separate States; and with a central agent or government, of more limited powers than the old one; which would have been as useful for defence against foreign aggression; and much less dangerous to the Sovereignty and the existence of the States, than the old one, when in the hands of abolition leaders, had proved itself to be.

The length of time for which the Germanic Confederation has existed, has proved, that its strength lies in what might have been considered its weakness—the separate Sovereignty of the individual members; and the very limited powers of the Central Government.

In view of these difficulties, it may be asked, when and how is this war to terminate? It is impossible to say when it may terminate; but it is easy to say how it will end. We do not seek to conquer the Northern people, and if we are true to ourselves they can never conquer us. We do not seek to take from them the right of self-government, or to govern them without their consent. And they have not force enough to govern us without our consent; or to deprive us of the right to govern ourselves. The blood of hundreds of thousands may yet be spilt, and the war will not still be terminated by force of arms. Negotiation will finally terminate it. The pen of the Statesman, more potent than the sword of the warrior, must do what the latter has failed to do.

But I may be asked, how negotiations are to commence, when President Lincoln refuses to receive commissioners sent by us; and his Congress resolves to hear no propositions for peace? I reply, that in my opinion, it is our duty to keep it always before the Northern people and the civilized world, that we are ready to negotiate for peace, whenever the people and government of the Northern States are prepared to recognize the great fundamental principles of the declaration of Independence, maintained by our common ancestry—the right of all self-government and the sovereignty of the States. In my judgment it is the duty of our government, after each important victory achieved by our gallant and glorious armies on the battle field, to make a distinct proposition to the Northern government for peace, upon these terms. By doing this, if the proposition is declined by them, we will hold them up constantly in the wrong, before their own people and the judgment of mankind. If they refuse to receive the commissioners who bear the proposition, publish it in the newspapers; and let the conduct of their rulers be known to the people; and there is reasonable ground to hope that the time may not be far distant when a returning sense of justice, and a desire for self-protection against despotism at home, will prompt the people of the Northern States to hurl from power those who deny the fundamental principle upon which their own liberties rest, and who can never be satiated with human blood. Let us stand on no delicate point of etiquette or diplomatic ceremony. If the proposition is rejected a dozen times, let us tender it again after the next victory; that the world may be reassured from month to month that we are not responsible for the continuance of this devastation and carnage.

Let it be repeated again and again, to the Northern people, that all we ask, is that they recognize the great principle upon which their own government rests,—the sovereignty of the States: and let our own people hold our own government to a strict account for every encroachment upon this vital principle.

Herein lies the simple solution of all these troubles.

If there be any doubt, or any question of doubt, as to the sovereign will of any one of all the States of this Confederacy, or of any border State whose institutions are similar to ours, not in the Confederacy, upon the subject of their present or future alliance, let all armed force be withdrawn; and let that sovereign will be fairly expressed at the ballot box, by the legal voters of the State; and let all parties abide by the decision.

Let each State have and freely exercise, the right to determine its own destiny, in its own way. This is all that we have been struggling for from the beginning. It is a principle that secures “rights, inestimable to freemen, and formidable to tyrants only.”

Let both governments adopt this mode of settlement, which was bequeathed to them by the great men of the Revolution; and which has since been adopted by the Emperor Napoleon, as the only just mode for the government of States, or even provinces, and the ballot box will soon achieve what the sword cannot accomplish—restore peace to the country; and uphold the great doctrines of State sovereignty and constitutional liberty.

If it is a question of strife, whether Kentucky or Maryland, or any other State, shall cast her lot with the United States, or the Confederate States, there is no mode of settling it so justly, with so little cost, and with so much satisfaction to her own people, as to withdraw all Military force from her limits, and leave the decision, not to the sword, but to the ballot box. If she should decide for herself to abolish slavery and go with the North, the Confederate government can have no just cause of complaint, for that government had its origin in the doctrine that all its just “powers are derived from the consent of the governed”, and we have no right to insist on governing a sovereign State, against her will. But if she should decide to retain her institutions and go with the South, as we doubt not she will, when the question is fairly submitted to her people at the polls, the Lincoln government must acquiesce, or it must repudiate, and trample upon, the very essential principles on which it was founded, and which were carried out in practice by the fathers of the Republic, for the first half century of its existence.

What Southern man can object to this mode of settlement? It is all that South Carolina, Virginia or Georgia claimed when she seceded from the Union. It is all that either has at any time claimed and all that either ever can justly claim. And what friend of Southern Independence fears the result? What has the Abolition government done to cause the people of any Southern State to desire to reverse her decision and return ingloriously to its embrace? Are we afraid the people of any seceded State, will desire to place the State back in the Abolition union, under the Lincoln despotism, after it has devastated their fields, laid waste their country, burned their cities, slaughtered their sons and degraded their daughters? There is no reason for such fear.

But I may be totd that Mr. Lincoln has repudiated this principle in advance, and that it is idle again to tender a settlement upon these terms. This is no reason why we should withhold the repeated renewal of the proposition. Let it be made again and again till the mass of the Northern people understand it; and Mr. Lincoln can not continue to stand before them and the world, stained with the blood of their sons, their husbands and their fathers, and insist, when a proposition so fair is constantly tendered, that thousands of new victims shall still continue to bleed, to gratify his abolition fanaticism, satisfy his revenge, and serve his ambition to govern these States upon the decision of one tenth of the people in his favor, against the other nine tenths. Let the Northern and Southern mind be brought to contemplate this subject in all its magnitude; and while there may be extreme men on the Northern side, satisfied with nothing less than the subjugation of the South, and the confiscation of our property; and like extremists on the Southern side, whose morbid sensibilities are shocked at the mention of negotiation, or the renewal of an offer by us for a settlement upon any terms; I cannot doubt that the cool-headed thinking men on both sides of the line, who are devoted to the great principles of self-government and State sovereignty, including the scar-covered veterans of the army, will finally settle down upon this as the true solution of the great problem which now embarrasses so many millions of people, and will find the higher truth between the two extremes.

If, upon the sober second thought, the public sentiment North sustains the policy of Mr. Lincoln, when he proposes by the power of the sword to place the great doctrines of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of his country under his feet, and proclaims his purpose to govern these States by military power, when he shall have obtained the consent of one tenth of the governed; how can the same public sentiment condemn him, if, at the head of his vast armies he shall proclaim himself Emperor of the whole country; and submit the question to the vote of the Northern people, and when he has obtained, as he could easily do, the vote of one tenth in his favor, he shall insist on his right to govern them as their legitimate sovereign? If he is right in principle in the one case, he would unquestionably be right in the other. If he may rightfully continue the war against the South to sustain the one, why may he not as rightfully turn his armies against the North to establish the other?

But the timid among us may say, how are we to meet and repel his armies, if Mr. Lincoln shall continue to reject these terms, and shall be sustained by the sentiment of the North? as he claims not only the right to govern us, but he claims the right to take from us all that we have.

The answer is plain. Let every man do his duty; and let us as a people place our trust in God, and we shall certainly repel his assaults, and achieve our Independence; and if true to ourselves and to posterity, we shall maintain our Constitutional liberty also. The achievement of our Independence is a great object; but not greater than the preservation of Constitutional liberty.

The good man cannot read the late proclamation of Mr. Lincoln, without being struck with the resemblance between it, and a similar one, issued several thousand years ago, by Ben-hadad, king of Syria. That wicked king, denied in others the right of self-government; and vaunting himself in numbers, and putting his trust in chariots and horses, he invaded Israel, and beseiged Samaria with an overwhelming force. When the king of Israel, with a small band, resisted his entrance into the city, the Syrian king sent him this message: “Thou shalt deliver me thy silver and thy gold, and thy wives, and thy children; yet I will send my servants unto thee to-morrow, about this time; and they shall search thy house, and the houses of thy servants; and it shall be, that whatsoever is pleasant in thine eyes, they shall put in their hands and take it away.” The king of Israel consulted the Elders, after receiving this arrogant message, and replied: “This thing I may not do.” Ben-hadad, enraged at this reply, and confident of his strength, sent back and said:

“The Gods do so to me, and more also, if the dust of Samaria shall suffice, for handfuls, for all the people that follow me.” The king of Israel answered and said: “Tell him, let not him that girdeth on his harness, boast himself as he that putteth it off.”

The result was, that the small band of Israelites guided by Jehovah, attacked the Syrian armies and routed them with great slaughter, and upon a second trial of strength, the Syrian armies were destroyed and their king made captive.

When Mr. Lincoln, following the example of this wicked king, and relying upon his chariots, and his horsemen, and his vast armies, to sustain a cause equally unjust, proclaims to us, that all we have is his, and that he will send his servants, whose numbers are overwhelming, with arms in their hands to take it, and threatens vengeance if we resist, let us—“Tell him, let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.” “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.” “God is the judge, he putteth down one and setteth up another.”

Not doubting the justice of our cause, let us stand in our allotted places; and in the name of Him who rules the hosts of Heaven, and the armies of Earth, let us continue to strike for liberty and independence, and our efforts will ultimately be crowned with triumphant success.