effectual exclusion of any representative voice on behalf of the slave-holding States in the management of a co-ordinate department of the Government, and by the declared intent to administer that department in a manner hostile to their peace, safety, and prosperity.

Its success subverts and defeats the ends of the Constitution. Instead of forming a more perfect union it has dissolved the Union by compelling the secession of one of its members and the anticipated secession of others. Instead of establishing justice it denies justice to fifteen of the States by refusing to admit any more slave States into the Union, and by the enactment of laws to prevent the rendition of fugitive slaves. It endangers instead of insuring domestic tranquillity by the possession of the channels through which to circulate insurrectionary documents and disseminate insurrectionary sentiments among a hitherto contended service population. It neglects instead of providing for the common defense by permitting within the limits of some of the States the organization of plans for the armed invasion of others, and by refusing to surrender the criminals when fugitives from justice. It disregards and impairs instead of promoting the general welfare by compassing the destruction of an inestimable amount of property with all its direful consequences. It will rob us of instead of securing to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of liberty by the extinction of a great domestic and social institution, by the overthrow of self-government and the establishment of an equality of races in our midst. Its success overthrows the fundamental principles of the Revolution by denying the freedom of property. This freedom of property is the corner stone of social happiness. As has been said:

The rights of life, liberty, and property are os intimately blended, together that neither can be lost in a state of society without all; or, at least, neither can be impaired without wounding the others.

To maintain the value of property and realize its fullest advantages there must be guaranteed permanence, security, and protection. "Republicanism" proposes to place the right to property in slaves under the ban of a consolidated, centralized General Government, and threatens to employ all its powers and resources to the consummation of the single purpose of destroying this single species of property. When this shall be done, the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" must be involved in common ruin, for the admission of sovereignty in a government admits the universal claim of governmental sovereignty to despotic power over all these, whether it is in form a monarch, a democracy, or a republic. From these considerations Your Excellency must concur in the opinion expressed by the Governor of the State of Alabama, that-

The success of said party and the power which it now has and will soon acquire greatly endanger the peace, interests, security, and honor of the slave-holding States, and make it necessary that prompt and efficient measures should be adopted to avoid the evils which must result from a Republican administration of the Federal Government.

You cannot be surprised that, in the opinion of the people of Alabama, the time has arrived when imperious necessity and self-preservation require them to exercise their right to abolish the present Government and institute a new one, laying it foundation in such principles and organizing its powers in such from as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. I am impressed with a sense of this necessity, and contemplating the possible success