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 and half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

On the fourth 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 tribunal shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

The guarantees of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding 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 the public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction 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."

When the Union was made slaves were governed by laws made by slaveholders in all the Slave States. These laws were recognised as a fact in the Constitution, but never intended to be enforced by the Federal Government, or they would not so carefully have excluded the idea of property in man from all its grand clauses. Had they, however, have been left entirely to State Government control, as they were intended, when the Union was formed, the original charters might have been preserved intact for freedom; but they were taken up and enforced by the Federal Government, thus introducing a wedge of compromise, and making the Government at Washington a slaveholding oligarchy and responsible for the calamities which have befallen us.

The unconstitutional acts referred to are the speech made by Lincoln at Springfield, Illinois, Personal Liberty Bills made in five of the Free States, so called, which conflicted with the Congressional Fugitive Slave Law, &c.

A number of Southern States formed themselves into a new Confederacy, determined to stand or fall

together; and, when an attempt was made by General Sherman to detach Georgia from her sister states, we see from the following article published in the Confederate Union, how he most signally failed:

:

As much has been said about the informal message sent by General Sherman to Governor Brown, Vice-President Stephens and Senator Johnston, inviting them to visit the General at Atlanta, for a conference in reference to the state of the country, with a view to negotiations for peace, and as the public mind has been much excited upon the subject, some saying that it is the duty of these gentlemen to accept the general's invitation and make an effort to settle our difficulties by negotiation; others contending that it was the duty of the governor to have seized the general's messenger and to have ordered him to be hung as a traitor, we have, for the gratification of our own and the curiosity of our readers, called upon the governor and inquired after the facts.

"The Governor, in reply to our inquiries, stated that Mr. William King, who represented himself as the bearer of a message from General Sherman, called upon him and stated, in substance, that General Sherman had requested him to say to the Governor that he would be pleased to receive a visit from him and other distinguished Georgians, with a view to a conference upon the state of the country and the settlement of our difficulties; that he

would give the governor a passport through his lines, with an escort, if desired, to go and return at such time as might be agreeable to him; that he (Gen. Sherman) recognized him (Governor Brown) as the governor of the whole state, and as over one hundred miles of the territory of the state is now behind his line, he (Gen. Sherman) would allow the governor to go and visit his people in the rear if he desired to look after their condition, and return. at his pleasure that he would receive him and other distinguished Georgians at his headquarters, and treat them with the respect and consideration due their positions during the conference which he invited that he did not wish to be compelled to overrun and desolate more of the territory of the state, &c.

Governor Brown's Reply.

"After hearing the statements of Mr. King, the Governor replied :

"" Please to make General Sherman an acknowledgment of obligation for the personal courtesies which you say he proposes to extend to me. But as he is only a general commanding an army, and I the governor of a state, neither the constitution of his country nor of my own country confers upon us any power to negotiate a treaty of peace. We probably held but few sentiments in common; but if we should agree in every particular, we would have power to bind no one by any compact we might make. As our interview could therefore

result in nothing practical, I must decline the invitation. While the portion of the state now in the rear of General Sherman's army is held by him, and the execution of laws of the state suspended by armed force, I know of no service which I could render to the people of that section by a personal visit. If I could better their condition or mitigate their sufferings, I would, on their account, cheerfully go at the expense of any inconvenience or personal sacrifice which the trip might cost me.

"To the remark that General Sherman does not wish to be compelled to overrun and desolate more of the territory of Georgia, I reply that no compulsion rests upon him to attempt this, unless it be the cruel orders of his government. If he makes the effort, he will find much greater difficulties in the way of his advance for the next hundred miles than those encountered during his march from Dalton to Atlanta. Georgia may possibly be overrun, but can never be subjugated, and her people will never treat with a conqueror upon her soil. As a sovereign state she had the undoubted right to dissolve her connection with the government of the United States, when the compact had been violated by the other States of the Confederacy, and to form a new compact, which she has done. She is as sovereign to-day as the day she seceded from the Old Union, and has the same power, by a convention of her people, which she then had, to resume all delegated powers and all the attributes of sovereignty, and