American colonies was placed by the illustrious men who framed and adopted the declaration of the reasons which governed the people of the colonies in their action; yet it manifest that the inhabitants of the non-slave-holding States are hardening their hearts against all signs and evidences which justify our exodus from among them, and that, like Egyptians of old, they are not willing that we should depart in peace from our state of bondage, but, in the spirit of the oppressor, they seek to tighten their grasp upon a people who have been to them an abundant source of profit and advantage, and are preparing their host to follow after and to return us to a captivity the latter end of which must be worse than the first. Whilst President Buchanan has officially declared that he has no power to employ the military and naval forces under his control in hostility against any of the State which have dissolved their connection with the late Federal Union, yet it is apparent that he support officers of the Army under his control in the hostile occupation of portions of the territory of this |State and our sister State of South Carolina, permits his general and members of his Cabinet to set on foot military expeditions against us, re-enforce forts, order men-of-war to hover on our coast in hostile array, and has advised Congress to pass laws for the purpose of collecting revenue from imposts into our State by means of armed vessels. This conduct of President Buchanan, which is totally at war with our claim of independence and sovereignty, is not only recognized to be correct and supported by the representatives of the non-slave-holding States sitting in Congress at Washington, and claiming to be the Congress of the United States, but they have, be speech and votes, manifested a firm resolve to disregard the act of the people, done in convention, dissolving the political ties which united us with the people whom they represent, and declare their purpose, so soon as they attain further power by the inauguration of a President elected by themselves, without the voice and in direct opposition to the will of our people, to use all the military and naval power which they may be enabled to acquire the possession and control of to subjugate our people and those of the States concurring with us, and to compel us to submit to that Government which we resolved to throw off because its further continuance menaced the destruction of our rights and liberties. We have unmistakable evidence of every kind that is significant and reliable that the people of the non-slave-holding States sustain the action and declared purposes of those whom they chose by a large majority of their voices to represent them and rule u. We have seen Legislature of the great States of New York, Ohio, and Massachusetts passing resolutions pledging men and money to aid in fastening upon us again the chains with which they hope to attach us forever to a condition of bondage and vassalage to an unfriendly people. No friendly voice was lifted in the councils of these States to defend our action and to maintain our right to throw off a Government which, in our opinion, no longer conferred on us those blessings of peace and domestic tranquillity which it was founded to secure. No one was heard to utter that truth which our ancestors had inserted in their Declaration of Independence, "that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. " Of all the mighty thousands of Northern men whom we were beseeched to trust to as a sufficient means to guard us against the ruin which we foresaw in the impending ascendancy of the Black Republican party, not even a respectable minority in the Legislature alluded to opposed their votes to such foul acts of