Today in History:

16 Series IV Volume I- Serial 127 - Correspondence, Orders, Reports and Returns of the Confederate Authorities, December 20, 1860 – June 30, 1862

Page 16 CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.

MILLEDGEVILLE, GA., January 3, 1861.

His Excellency Governor JOSEPH E. BROWN,

Governor of the State of Georgia:

SIR: I beg leave to hand you herewith a commission from His Excellency Andrew B. Moore, Governor of the sovereign States of Alabama, and attested by the great seal of the State, under date of December 21, 1860, by which I have the honor to be constituted and appointed a commissioner to the sovereign State of Georgia, with authority to consult and advise with Your Excellency as to what is best to be done to protect the rights, interests, and honor of the slave-holding States. No duty more agreeable to my feelings could have been laid upon me at this trying hour in the history of our country than that of a delegate from Alabama, the beloved State of my adoption, to Georgia, the beloved and honored States of my nativity. The unnatural warfare which, in violation of the Federal compact and for a long series of years, has been unceasingly waged by the anti-slavery States upon the institutions, rights, and domestic tranquillity of the slave-holding States, has finally culminated in the election of an open and avowed enemy to our section of the Union; and the great and powerful party who have produced this result calmly awaits the 4th day of March next, when, under the forms of the Constitution and the laws, they will usurp the machinery of the Federal Government and the laws, they will usurp the machinery of the Federal Government and madly attempt to rule, if not to subjugate, and ruin the South. In anticipation of such a contingency and in advance of any of her sister States, the General Assembly of Alabama on the 24th day of February, 1860, solemnly declared that--

To permit a seizure of the Federal Government by those whose unmistakable aim is to pervert its whole machinery to the destruction of a portion of its members would be an act of suicidal folly and madness almost without a parallel in history; and that the General Assembly of Alabama, representing a people loyally devoted to the Union of the Constitution, but scorning the Union which fanaticism would erect upon its ruin, deem it their solemn duty to provide in advance the means by which they may escape such peril and dishonor, and devise new securities for perpetuating the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity.

In stern pursuance of this purpose the General Assembly adopted, among others, the following resolution:

That upon the happening of the contingency contemplated in the foregoing preamble, namely, the election of a President advocating the principles and action of the party in the Northern States calling itself the Republican party, it shall be the duty of the Governor, and he is required forthwith, to issue his proclamation calling upon the qualified voters of this State to assemble on a Monday not more than forty days after the date of said proclamation, at the usual places of voting in their respective counties, and elect delegates to a convention of the State, to consider, determine, and do whatever, in the opinion of said convention, the rights, interests, and honor of the State of Alabama require to be done for their protection.

And the same General Assembly, on the 25th day of February, 1860, in response to resolutions received from the State of South Carolina, inviting a conference of the Southern States, adopted these additional resolutions:

1. Resolved, That the State of Alabama, fully concurring with the State of South Carolina in affirming the right of any State to secede from the confederacy whenever, in her own judgment, such a step is demanded by the honor, interests, and safety of her people, is not unmindful of the fact that the assaulitution of slavery and upon the rights and equality of the Southern States, unceasingly continued with increasing violence and in new and more


Page 16 CORRESPONDENCE, ETC.