foreign nations and between the States; but all such laws as they were, not produced by any sectional feeling, were left to be decided upon by the tribunals of the country with an ultimate appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, the final arbiter on all cases arising under the Constitution. Such cases produced no excitement in the public mind, and all confidence was reposed in that elevated tribunal that it would vindicate the supremacy of the Constitution.

There is no reason to apprehend that that tribunal would shrink from declaring the class of enactments of which we are now treating, which are aimed against the rights of slaveholders, repugnant to the Constitution, and therefore void. There is, therefore, an obvious remedy for the grievances arising out of this unconstitutional legislation, and that, too, a remedy provided by the Constitution itself for an evil foreseen when it was made. Moreover, there are indications of a returning sense of justice in the Northern States, from which we may hope for the voluntary repeal of these obnoxious enactments.

Upon the subject of the violent interference by mobs with the execution of the fugitive slave law, and the forcible abduction of slaves when with their owners in the Northern States, it is proper to observe there reigns throughout this land a spirit of insubordination to law that is probably unequaled in any other civilized country on the globe. While this is true, it is a fact of which we can still be proud that the judicial tribunals of the Federal Government have not failed in any case brought before them to maintain the rights of Southern citizens, and to punish the violators of those rights.

When Southern soil is invaded by Northern madmen for the purpose of overthrowing the institution of slavery, they meet their death by the law, and that is the end of their scheme.

The fact that a sectional party avowing opposition to the admission of slavery into the Territories of the United States has been organized, and has for the present obtained possession of the Government, is to be deeply regretted, because it opens before us all the dangers against which the Father of his Country so earnestly warned us.

But the history of our country for a few years back instructs us in the truth that politcal parties, even when coming into power with overwhelming popularity, soon melt away under the influence of internal jealousies and disappointments and the attacks of vigilant opponents.

When a party comes into power upon the basis of a single question of policy, there is soon found the truth, that government can not be administered upon a single idea, and its supporters become divided upon the questions which affect their own interests.

There is every reason to hope that the party which has just assumed the reins of government will feel that the vast interests entrusted to their management are of much greater importance than the question whether slaves shall or shall not be admitted into all the territory that now belongs to the United States. There is reason to hope that when the masses of that party understand that the admission of slaves into a Territory does not increase the number of slaves in being, they will be prepared to make any arrangement with their Southern brethren which shall assure to them equal rights in the common Territories.

Under the state of facts now existing it would seem almost needless to speak of the propriety of the State of Missouri engaging in a revolution against the Federal Government. Secession is the word commonly employed when the revolution now in progress is mentioned; but as the Constitution of the United States recognizes no power in any State to destroy the Government, the word "secession," when used in this paper is to be understood as equivalent to revolution.

To involve Missouri in revolution, under present circumstances, is certainly not demanded by the magnitude of the grievances of which we complain, nor by the certainty that they cannot be otherwise and more peacefully remedied, nor by the hope that they would be remedied or even diminished by such revolution.

The position of Missouri in relation to the adjacent States which would continue in the Union, would necessarily expose her, if she became a member of a new confederacy, to utter destruction whenever any rupture might take place between the different republics, In a military aspect, secession and a connection with a Southern confederacy is annihilation for our State.

Many of our largest interests would perish under a system of free trade.

Emigration to the State must cease. No Southern man owning slaves would come to the frontier State; no Northern man would come to this foreign country avowedly hostile to his native land.

Our slave interest would be destroyed, because we would have no better right to recapture a slave found in a free State than we now have in Canada. The owners of slaves must either remove with them to the South or sell them, and so we would, in a few years, exhibit the spectacle of a State breaking up its most advantageous and important relations to the old Union, in order to enter into a slaveholding confederacy and having itself no slaves.

The thought of revolution by Missouri, under present circumstances, is not, we believe, seriously entertained by any member of this Convention.

But what is now the true position for Missouri to assume? Evidently that of a State whose in

terests are bound up in the maintenance of the Union, and whose kind feelings and strong sympathies are with the people of the Southern States, with whom we are connected by ties of friendship and of blood. We want the peace and harmony of the country restored, and we want them with us. To go with them as they are now, to leave the Government our fathers builded, to blot out the star of Missouri from the constellation of the Union, is to ruin ourselves without doing them any good. We cannot now follow them; we cannot now give up the Union; yet we will do all in our power to induce them to take their places with us in the family from which they have attempted to separate themselves. For this purpose we will not only recommend a compromise with which they ought to be satisfied, but we will unite in the endeavor to procure an assemblage of the whole family of States in order that in a General Convention such amendments to the Constitution may be agreed upon as shall permanently restore harmony to the whole nation.

While attempts are being made to heal the present divisions, it is a matter of the highest importance that there should occur no military conflict between the Federal Government and the government of any of the seceded States. Such conflict will certainly produce a high state of exasperation and very probably render abortive all attempts to adjust the matters of difference.

While it is admitted that every government must possess the power to execute its own laws, and that the Government of the United States is no exception to this necessary and universal rule, still, in a case such as that with which we are now dealing, it is all-important that those in authority should remember that such power is not given to be exercised for the destruction of the Government, under the guise of maintaining its authority. The question of exercising such power is to be determined with a view to all existing circumstances; and while the power itself cannot be abandoned, the greatest patience and forbearance may often be required in order to prevent evils in the highest degree dangerous to the peace of the nation.

Placed as Missouri is in the very centre of the Confederacy, united to all its parts and interested in the prosperity of each part, she would speak to the Government of the United States and to the Governments of the seceding States, not in the language of menace but of kindness, not threatening but entreating; and with this feeling she would ask all concerned in the Governments to avoid all military collisions which would without doubt produce uncontrollable excitement, and very probably ruinous civil war. Civil war among the American people, the citizens of the freest nation of the world, blest of God, envied of man, would be a spectacle at which Humanity would shudder, over which Freedom would

weep, and from which Christianity affrighted would flee away.

If it be the glorious mission of Missouri to aid in arresting the progress of revolution and in restoring peace and prosperity to the country; if she shall be instrumental in binding together again the hearts of the American people, and thus restoring the union of affection as well as the union of political and individual interest, she will but occupy the position for which nature designed her by giving her a central position, and endowing her with all the elements of wealth and power. And why should she not?-she was brought forth in a storm and cradled in a compromise. She can resist the one and recommend the other.

In order to express her opinion and wishes, the following resolutions are submitted:

1. Resolved, That at present there is no adequate cause to impel Missouri to dissolve her connection with the Federal Union, but on the contrary she will labor for such an adjustment of existing troubles as will secure the peace, as well as the rights and equality of all the States.

2. Resolved, That the people of this State are devotedly attached to the institutions of our country and earnestly desire that by a fair and amicable adjustment all the causes of disagreement that at present unfortunately distract us as a people may be removed, to the end that our Union may be preserved and perpetuated, and peace and harmony be restored between the North and the South.

3. Resolved, That the people of this State deem the amendments to the Constitution of the United States, proposed by the Hon. John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, which the extension of the same to the territory hereafter to be acquired by treaty or otherwise, a basis of adjustment which will successfully remove the causes of difference forever from the arena of national politics.

4. Resolved, That the people of Missouri believe the peace and quiet of the country will be promoted by a Convention to propose amendments to the Constitution of the United States, and this Convention therefore urges the Legislature of this State to take the proper steps for calling such a Convention in pursuance of the fifth article of the Constitution, and for providing by law for an election of one delegate to such Convention from each electoral district in this State.

5. Resolved, That in the opinion of this Convention, the employment of military force by the Federal Government to coerce the submission of the seceding States, or the employment of military force by the seceding States to assail the Government of the United States, will inevitably plunge this country into civil war, and thereby entirely extinguish all hope of an amicable settlement of the

Mr. BIRCH offered the following, which was read :

MONDAY, MARCH 11, 1861. and it is not known whether it was held at any other place or not.

"The gentleman who gave me the foregoing

Whereas, An article appeared in the Missouri Republican of this morning, of which the following is a copy :

"A Flot to precipitate Missouri into Disunion exposed.

"Mr. Editor :-Within the last four days, a prominent gentleman of this city, who was a candidate for this Convention on the Constitutional ticket, was waited upon by several gentlemen, who stated that the Convention which is now in session was unsound, and that it was necessary to take measures to have this State secede; and to bring about that result, the gentleman to whom I allude, was invited to meet his visitors on a certain designated evening and at an appointed place, to take the preliminary steps to force the State into secession.

"The gentleman above referred to answered his visitors by informing them that they had mistaken his views, that he was not a secessionist, and was opposed to secession. His visitors charged him with changing his grounds which charge was denied, and the matter was cut short by the gentlemen being distinctly and emphatically informed that if they held their meeting there they would be exposed. The meeting was not held at the place indicated,

Be it therefore Resolved, That a committee be appointed to specifically enquire into the facts and circumstances connected with so daring a conspiracy as the one therein foreshadowed; and that the said committee have the power to send for persons and papers, and to sit during the session of this Convention.

Mr. KNOTT moved to lay the resolution on the table, which motion was decided in the negative by the following vote, the ayes and noes having been called for by Mr. BIRCH :

AYES.-Messrs. Allen, Bartlett, Bass, Bast, Bogy, Brown, Cayce, Collier, Comingo, Crawford, Donnell, Frayser, Flood, Givens, Gorin, Harbin, Hatcher, Hill, Hough, Hudgins, Kidd, Knott, Matson, Noell, Redd, Sayre, Shackelford of Howard, Sheeley, Waller and Watkins -30.

NOES.-Messrs. Birch, Breckinridge, Broadhead, Bridge, Bush, Calhoun, Douglass, Drake, Dunn, Eitzen, Foster, Gantt, Gravely, Henderson, Hendrick, Hitchcock, Holmes, Holt, How, Howell, Irwin, Isbell, Jackson, Jamison, John. son, Leeper, Linton, Long, Marmaduke, Mar. vin, Maupin, McClurg, McCormack, McDow. ell, McFerran, Meyer, Morrow, Moss, Norton Orr, Phillips, Ray, Ritchey, Ross, Rowland' Scott, Smith of Linn, Smith of St Louis,

The resolution was then agreed to by the following vote, the ayes and noes having been demanded :

AYES.-Messrs. Birch, Breckinridge, Broadhead, Bridge, Bush, Calhoun,Douglass, Drake, Eitzen, Foster, Gantt, Gravely, Henderson, Hendrick, Hitchcock, Holmes, Holt, How, Irwin, Isbell, Jackson, Jamison, Johnson, Leeper, Linton, Long, Marmaduke, Marvin Maupin, McClurg, McCormack, McDowell, McFerran, Meyer, Morrow, Moss, Norton, Orr, Phillips, Ray, Ritchey, Ross, Rowland, Scott,Smith of Linn, Smith of St. Louis, Turner, Woodson, Wright, Vanbuskirk, Zimmerman and Mr. President-52.

NOES. Messrs. Allen, Bartlett, Bass, Bast, Bogy, Brown, Cayce, Collier, Comingo, Crawford, Donnell, Dunn, Frayser, Flood, Givens, Gorin, Harbin, Hatcher, Hill, Hough, Howell, Hudgins, Kidd, Knott, Matson, Noel, Sayre, Shackelford of Howard, Sheeley and Waller -30

Absent on Leave: Same as before.

:

Absent Messrs. Rankin, Shackelford of St. Lou's, Stewart, Welch and Woolfolk.

The President appointed Messrs. Birch, Zimmerman and Drake on said committee.

The Convention proceeded to the consideration of the special order for the day, viz: the report of the Committee on Federal Relations when

Mr. REDD, from said Committee presented the following Minority Report:

Minority Report of the Committee on Federal Relations:

The undersigned, members of the Committee on Federal Relations, being unable to agree to the report presented by the committee, desire to present for the consideration of the Convention the views that they entertain, and that they believe the people of Missouri entertain in relation to the causes that have led to the present alarming condition of our beloved Union, and the course that, if pursued, would most likely lead to an amicable adjustment of the issues involved in the present crisis, preserve the Union from further disintegration, and restore peace and harmony to our divided and distracted country.

Within the lifetime of many now living, our Federal Government, the best that the wisdom of man ever devised, was created and put in successful operation; its first President was inaugurated in March, 1789, and from that time through

a long series of years it continued to increase in territory and population, in wealth and power, with a rapidity hitherto unparalled in the history of nations, until twenty sovereign States were admitted as members of the Union, formed by the original thirteen; and until a comparatively recent period these States were all one people, one in sympathy, one in fraternal feeling, one in patriotic devotion to that common Union, of which all were proud. How is it now? Fraternal feeling has fled; a spirit of bitter and determined hostility has taken its place; State stands arrayed against State and section against section, arming for a deadly conflict; seven of the States have withdrawn from the Union that their fathers made, and made a Union of their own, and a federal government of their own; that government, with one of the most clear-headed and sagacions statesmen of the age at its head, is organized, in full operation, exercising all the powers of sovereignty, and prepared to defend its sovereignty by military power.

Other States, alarmed for the safety of their slave institutions, are preparing to follow their example; the din of preparation for civil strife is heard on every hand, and that once glorious Union, so dear to the heart of every American patriot, is now in the progress of its dissolution.

There is cause for all this; a free people capable of self-government do not destroy institutions of which they were once so proud, and incur all the risks of civil strife, without some adequate cause; all experience demonstrates that mankind are more disposed to bear with great and pressing evils, than to resort to revolution with all its attendant horrors.

It is our duty to examine into the causes that have environed the Union with perils and threatened its utter destruction, and, if possible, devise a plan to save it from further disintegration. When we look back over the history of our country, we see arising in the Northern States an anti-slavery party, whose sole cohesive principle was a bitter hostility to the slave institutions of the Southern States. At first that party was weak, its members few, and scattered abroad, and considered by the Northern people themselves as mischievous fanatics: it continued gradually, but steadily, to increase, until political partics began to court its aid; from this time it progressed rapidly in numbers, and increased in its virulence and hatred to Southern slave institutions and to slave holders. Political demagogues, to promote their own selfish ends, pandered to its prejudices from the political rostrum. Sensation preachers, to increase their own importance, Sabbath after Sabbath, proclaimed its incendiary doctrines from the pulpit, instead of preaching peace on earth and good-will among men. It seized on the literature of the North and corrupted it in all its channels.

Books written to inculcate its destructive heresies were introduced into its Sabbath schools, common schools and institutions of learning of higher grade.

A large portion of the Northern press, literary, religious and political, teemed with articles misrepresenting and denouncing Southern institutions and Southern men.

Nourished and fostered by these means, this anti-slavery party obtained the control of the governments of the free States, and as those States came under their control they violated the compact that united them to their sister States of the South. By that compact, they had covenanted that a fugitive slave found within their borders should be delivered up upon demand of his master. They violated that compact,

1st. By failing to enact laws providing for his delivery.

2d. By refusing the master aid and permitting their lawless citizens to deprive him of his property by mob violence.

3d. When Congress interposed for his relief by the enactment of the fugitive slave law, they trampled that law under foot, and nullified it by deliberate State legislation.

By the compact that united the Northern States to their Southern sisters, they covenanted that they, upon demand made, would deliver up for trial any fugitive from justice charged (by indictment) with treason, felony or other crime.

They have willfully and deliberately violated this covenant. They have (without passing laws to restrain them) permitted their citizens to invade the soil of the Southern States, steal the slaves, and incite them to insurrection; and when the felon has been indicted and demanded, they have refused to give him up, and, to add insult to injury, they have justified the act by enunciating a proposition that strikes at the foundation of slave institutions, that as man cannot hold property in man, therefore slave stealing is no crime; and while there has been hitherto no just ground of complaint against the Federal Government, that Government has been powerless to remedy the evil.

This anti-slavery party, after having divided church organizations and destroyed the noble old Whig and the gallant young American party, has upon their ruins erected (in disregard of the warning voice of the Father of his Country) a purely sectional party called the Republican party.

We do not desire to do that party injustice. It should be judged as all other parties are judged, by its platform and the principles enunciated by its representative men, and upon the enunciation of which the party elevates them to power.

That party through its chosen leader proclaimed the dangerous and destructive heresies that our Federal Government cannot continue to exist as our fathers made it, part slave and part free;

that in that condition it is a house divided against itself and cannot stand; that it must become all one or all the other; that an irrepressible conflict is progressing between freedom and slavery, and that it must continue until the public mind can rest satisfied in the belief that slavery is in the process of extinction; that hereafter the slave property of Southern men shall be taken from them by Congressional legislation, if they take it with them into the Territories, the common property of all the States.

The free States, deaf to the earnest remonstances of their Southern sisters, regardless of the warning voice of a people jealous of their rights, indorsed the doctrines of that party and elevated its leader to the Presidential chair by large majorities in all the free States, except one, thus placing the Federal Government, to which the South had hitherto looked as its friend, in the hands of its enemies.

These are the causes that have dissolved the Union, and have driven State after State beyond its pale; and these are the causes that will drive the remaining slave States out of the Union, unless these sectional issues can be settled upon some basis consistent with security to their slave institutions.

This Convention was called for no ordinary purpose, it has assembled upon no ordinary occasion: while the people of Missouri will never surrender their slave institutions at the bidding of any earthly power, they ardently desire the preservation of the Union and the preservation of their slave institutions in the Union; this is the high mission to which this Convention is called; this can be accomplished only by action, prompt decided action. Delay is dangerous; we know not, no human sagacity can penetrate the dark vail that hides the future and tell us at what hour the country may be aroused from its repose by the clash of arms. The plan proposed by the Committee is, that this Convention request the Legislature to pass an act calling on Congress to call a National Convention, to propose a basis of settlement in the shape of amendments to the Constitution, to be afterwards submitted to the States for ratification or rejection. This amounts to doing nothing, literally nothing; if the plan was practicable, it would require eighteen months or two years to carry it into effect. But is it practicable, is there a reasonable ground to hope that it would save the Union? Let us see: Congress can only act when called on by two thirds of the States; Congress takes the position that the seceded States are yet in the Union. On this basis it would require the action of the Legislatures of twenty-three States uniting in the call. Several of these Legislatures have already taken their position against any amendments, consequently would not unite in the call, and the plan would fall still-born.