thereon to the House. The material of that committee represented the conservatism of the Union men South and the Republicans North. After frequent attempts to agree on some adjustment of political difficulties several Southern members withdrew from its deliberations, and the committee at last utterly failed to adopt or agree upon any terms satisfactory to the most moderate and yielding. At a later day a committee of thirteen, for a similar purpose, was appointed by the Senate. It was composed of the representative men of both sections and all parties, and after several fruitless and earnest efforts reported inability to agree upon any plan of settlement.

The belief prevails with no well-informed man of either section in Congress, excepting those whose are willing to submit without terms to the election of Lincoln and Hamlin, that any settlement can be had in the Union. The determination is universal with the Republicans of all degrees of hostility to slavery to abate nothing from their principles and policy as defined in the Chicago platform. It is the fixed purpose of the Republican party to engraft its principles and policy upon the Federal Government. Prominent Republicans have represented to us that if they were faithless enough to retract from the platform on which they obtained power their constituents would crush them.

We have been assured by many resistance men in the border slave-holding States that they have no hope of a settlement of existing difficulties in the Union and are anxious for the cotton States to secede promptly. Some favor, or have favored, a consultation of all the Southern States to negotiate for new guaranties, with but little or no expectation of obtaining them, but for the purpose, in the event of failure, of securing the ultimate contemporaneous secession of such States. Our settled conviction is that a large majority of our friends in the Border States disposed to resist Republican ascendency desire the immediate secession of the cotton and Gulf States, in which event the only question left for such States will be to select between the seceding and friendly States and a hostile Government, and on the determination of that issue there will be but an inconsiderable opposition.

It is the current opinion of many of our friends in the Border and Northern States that the secession of the cotton States is an indispensable basis for a reconstruction of the Union. Possibly the most important fact we can communicate is that the opinion generally obtained in Washington that the secession of five or more States would prevent or put an end to coercion, and the New York Tribune, the most influential of Republican journals, concedes that the secession of so many States would make coercion impracticable.

We have the honor to be, most respectfully, your obedient servants,

J. L. PUGH.

J. L. M. CURRY.

After the reading the document was laid on the table.

Mr. Dowdell offered the following resolution, which was adopted:

Resolved by the people of the State of Alabama in convention assembled, That the commissioners heretofore appointed by the Governor of this State to the several slave-holding States be, and they are hereby, directed to present to the conventions of said States the preamble, ordinance, and resolutions adopted by the people of the State of Alabama, in convention, on the 11th day of January, 1861, and to request their consideration of and concurrence in the first resolution.

EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT,

Montgomery, Ala., January 14, 1861.

GENTLEMEN OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

Events of the utmost moment have rendered it necessary that your body should be assembled. At the last session of the General Assembly joint resolutions were adopted making it my duty, in the event of the election of a President by the Black Republican party of the United States, to issue my proclamation to the qualified voters "to 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 required to be done for their protection. "