Executive Department of the State of Delaware, and my were agreeable intercourse with them and many of the members of the Legislature.

I have the honor to remain, very truly, yours,

DAVID CLOPTON.

[Inclosure.]

DOVER, DEL., January 1, 1861.

SIR: I have the honor to transmit to you the accompanying papers,* including a commission from the Governor of the State of Alabama, appointing the undersigned commissioner to the sovereign State of Delaware "to advise and consult with His Excellency Governor William Burton and the members of the Legislature or State convention, as the case may be, of said State, as to what is best to be done to protect the rights, interests, and honor of the slave-holding States. " With a due appreciation of the delicacy and responsibility of the trust confided, and from an earnest desire to discharge its duties in the manner most conducive to the harmony and co-operation so eminently proper in present emergencies, I address Your Excellency this communication and request that it be submitted to your Legislature. The necessity of such consultation and of the appointment of a commissioner for the purpose expressed implies that these rights, interests, and honor are endangered. The causes which have produced, upon the part of the people and Governor of the State of Alabama, this not merely apprehension, but conviction of danger, are indicated in the accompanying commission. In the succession of party triumphs and defeats which have marked the political history of the country, the power and patronage of the Executive Department of the Federal Government will on the 4th of March next pass for the first time under the control of a purely sectional party, which has succeeded by a purely sectional vote. The principles and purposes of this party includes the additional fact that its aim will be, by all the means of legislation and of the administration of the Government, to promote and foster the interests and internal prosperity of one section, and to debase the institutions, weaken the power, and impair the interests of the other section. Its animus, its single bond of union, is hostility to the institution of slavery as it exists in the Southern States. Its members, numbering nearly two millions of voters, as evidenced by the late Presidential election, have been collected from all the other various political organizations, and although disagreeing totally upon other important political principles, have nevertheless ignored all these, and been molded into a compact mass of enmity to this particular institution, upon which depend the domestic, social, and political interests of fifteen States of the Union, and which institution was recognized, respected, guarded, and protected of the States by whom it was ordained and established.

The slave-holding States, notwithstanding the vastness of their interests at stake, will be either unrepresented in the Cabinet councils of the incoming Administration or represented by men who sympathize with this party in its purpose. The same policy will be

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*Not found.

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