men, torn from the pursuits of peace, excluded from the closed work-shop and counting-house, must shoulder the musket to guard their homes at the cost of fraternal blood.

I confidently trust that the people of the Fourth Congressional District will, in this grave emergency, give new proofs of their devotion to the Constitution, and their superiority to envy, fear, and delusion. HENRY WINTER DAVIS.

Your fellow-citizen,

THE REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THIR

TY-THREE.

On the 14th of January the special Committee of Thirty-three presented their Report, and the discussion thereon began on the 21st. In that committee, on the 7th of January, an amendment proposed by Mr. Davis was adopted to the Fugitive Slave Bill (afterward reported to and rejected by the House), securing to the fugitive slave a trial by jury in the state to which he was returned. On the 18th of December the committee had previously adopted, on motion of Mr. Davis, a resolution, to be reported to the House, calling upon the several states to revise their statutes, with a view to repeal such as clearly conflicted with the Constitution or laws of the United States (Personal Liberty Bills).

On the 28th the President submitted the propositions from the Virginia General Assembly, adopted on the 19th, proposing a Peace Conference of commissioners from each of the states, to be holden in Washington on the 4th of February, and declaring that the proposition for amendment of the Constitution, submitted in the United States Senate by Mr. Crittenden, "so modified as that the first article proposed shall apply to all territory of the United States now held or hereafter acquired south of latitude 36° 30', and that African slavery shall be protected therein while a Territory; and that the fourth article shall secure to the owners of slaves the right of transit, with their slaves, between and through the non-slaveholding states and territories, constitute the basis of such an adjustment as would be accepted by the people of Virginia."

On the 31st of January Mr. Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, delivered a speech, remarkable for ability, candor, and moderation, in support of the propositions submitted by the Committee of Thirty-three, including an amendment to the Constitution in these words:

"Article XII. No amendment of this Constitution having for its object any interference, within the states, with the relations between their citizens and those described in section second of the first article of the Constitution as 'all other persons,' shall originate with any state that does not recognize that relation within its own limits, or shall be valid without the assent of every one of the states composing the Union."

The Peace Conference met on the 5th of February.

Seven states had now passed formal ordinances of secession, and their senators and representatives had withdrawn. Major Anderson was be

leaguered in Fort Sumter. The "commissioners" from South Carolina had come to Washington, "authorized and empowered to treat with the government of the United States for the delivery of the forts, magazines, light-houses, and other real estate, with their appurtenances, in the limits of South Carolina; and also for an apportionment of the public debt, and for a division of all other property held by the government of the United States as agent of the confederated states, of which South Carolina was recently a member; and generally to negotiate as to all other measures and arrangements proper to be made and adopted, in the existing relation of the parties, and for the continuance of peace and amity between this commonwealth and the government at Washington." They demanded of the President the immediate withdrawal of the United States troops then in Charleston Harbor. Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie were occupied by South Carolina militia. The "Palmetto" flag was raised over the United States Custom-House and Post-Office in Charleston. The United States Arsenal there was "taken by force of arms," and on the 9th of January the steamer Star of the West having the United States ensign at the fore, was fired into from a masked battery on Morris Island. The navy yard at Pensacola, Forts Barrancas and Pulaski, the United States Arsenal at Augusta (Georgia), the United States Mint and Custom-House at, and the forts below New Orleans, and the United States revenue cutters, had been seized. The rebel Convention had met at Montgomery (Alabama), and even North Carolina had threatened, by a unanimous declaration of her House of Commons, "to go, if reconciliation fails, with the other slave states."

Such was the condition of affairs when Mr. Davis addressed the House on the 7th of February, 1861, as follows:

MR. SPEAKER,-We are at the end of the insane revel of partisan license which for thirty years has in the United States worn the mask of government. We are about to close the masquerade by the dance of death. The nations of the world look anxiously to see if the people, ere they tread that measure, will come to themselves.

Yet in the early youth of our national life, we are already exhausted by premature excesses. The corruption of our political maxims has relaxed the tone of public morals, and degraded the public authorities from the terror to the accomplices of evil doers. Platform for fools-Plunder for thieves-Offices for servicePower for ambition, unity in these essentials-Diversity in the immaterial matters of policy and legislation-Charity for every frailty-The voice of the people is the voice of God: these maxims have sunk into the public mind-have presided at the ad

ministration of public affairs, have almost effaced the very idea of public duty. The government, under their disastrous influence, has gradually ceased to fertilize the fields of domestic and useful legislation, and pours itself, like an impetuous torrent, along the barren ravine of party and sectional strife. It has been shorn of every prerogative that wore the austere aspect of authority and power. The President, no longer preceded by the fasces and the axe, the emblems of supreme authority, greets every popular elamor with wreathed smiles and gracious condescension, is degraded to preside in the Palace of the Nation over the distribution of spoils among wrangling victors, dedicates his great powers. to forge or find arms to perpetuate partisan warfare at the expense of the public peace. The original ideas of the Constitution have faded from men's minds. That the United States is a government entitled to respect and command; that the Constitution furnishes a remedy for every grievance, and a mode of redress for every wrong; that the States are limited within their spheres, are charged with no duties to each other, and bear no relation to the other States excepting through their common head, the government of the United States; that those in authority, alone, are charged with power to repress public disorder and compose the public discontents; restrain the conduct of the people and of the States within the barriers of the Constitution-these salutary principles have faded from the popular heart with the great interests which the government is charged to protect, and has gradually allowed to escape from its grasp. Congress has ceased to regulate commerce, to protect domestic industry, to encourage our commercial marine, to regulate the currency, to promote internal commerce by internal improvements-almost every power useful to the people in its exercise has been denied and abandoned, or so limited in its exercise as to be useless-its whole activity has been dedicated to expansion abroad, and acquiring and retaining power at home till men have forgotten that the Union is a blessing, and that they owe to the United States allegiance paramount to that of their respective States.

The consequence of this demoralization is, that States, without regard to the federal government, assume to stand face to face and wage their own quarrels, to adjust their own difficulties, to impute to each other every wrong, to insist that individual States shall remedy every grievance, and denouncing their failure to do

so as cause of civil war between the States; and as if the Constitution were silent and dead, and the power of the Union utterly inadequate to keep the peace between them. Unconstitutional commissioners flit from State to State, or assemble at the national capital to counsel peace or instigate war. Sir, these are the causes which lie at the bottom of the present dangers. These causes, which have rendered them possible and made them serious, must be removed before they can ever be permanently cured. They shake the fabric of our national government. It is to this fearful demoralization of the government and the people that we must ascribe the disastrous defections which now perplex us with the fear of change in all that constituted our greatness. The operation of the government has been withdrawn from the great public interests in order that competing parties might not be embarrassed in the struggle for power by diversities of opinion upon questions of policy; and the public mind, in that struggle, has been exclusively turned on the Slavery Question, which no interest required to be touched by any department of this government. On that subject there are widely marked diversities of opinion and interest in different portions of the Confederacy, with few mediating influences to soften the collision. In the struggle for party power, the two great regions of the country have been brought face to face upon this most dangerous of all subjects of agitation. The authority of the government was relaxed just when its power was about to be assailed, and the people emancipated from every control; and their passions, inflamed by the fierce struggle for the presidency, were the easy prey of revolutionary audacity.

Within two months after a formal, peaceful, regular election of the chief magistrate of the United States, in which the whole body of the people of every State competed with zeal for the prize, without any new event intervening, without any new grievances alleged, without any new menaces having been made, we have seen, in the short course of one month, a small portion of the population of six States transcend the bounds, at a single leap, at once of the state and the national Constitutions, usurp the extraordinary prerogative of repealing the supreme law of the land, exclude the great mass of their fellow-citizens from the protection of the Constitution, declare themselves emancipated from the obligations which the Constitution pronounces to be supreme over