PROCEEDINGS OF A SESSION SPECIALLY CALLED. MONDAY, MARCH 4, 1861. By the President of the United States of America. A PROCLAMATION. Whereas, objects of interest to the United States require that the Senate should be convened at twelve o'clock on the 4th of March next, to receive and act upon such communications as may be made to it on the part of the Executive: Now, therefore, I, James Buchanan, President of the United States, have considered it to be my duty to issue this my proclamation, declaring that an extraordinary occasion requires the Senate of the United States to convene for the transaction of business at the Capitol, in the city of Washington, on the 4th day of March next, at twelve o'clock at noon on that day, of which all who shall at that time be entitled to act as members of that body are hereby required to take notice. Given under my hand and the seal of the United States, at Washington, the eleventh day of February, in the year of our Lord [L. S.] one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and of the independence of the United States of America the eighty-fifth. JAMES BUCHANAN. By the President: J. S. BLACK, Secretary of State. In conformity with the foregoing proclamation of the President of the United States, the Senate assembled in its chamber, at the city of Washington. The Vice-President resumed the chair. The credentials of the following senators having been heretofore presented to the Senate, the oath prescribed by law was administered to them by the Vice-President, and they took their seats in the Senate: The honorable John C. Breckinridge, from the State of Kentucky. The honorable Salmon P. Chase, from the State of Ohio. The honorable Daniel Clark, from the State of New Hampshire. The honorable Thomas L. Clingman, from the State of North Carolina. The honorable Jacob Collamer, from the State of Vermont. On motion by Mr. Hale, Ordered, That the hour of the daily meeting of the Senate be one o'clock, until otherwise ordered. The President of the United States, the ex-President, the Chief Justice and associate justices of the Supreme Court, and Foreign Ministers having entered the Senate chamber, the Senate proceeded, accompanied by them, to the eastern portico of the Capitol. The President thereupon delivered the following address: FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES: In compliance with a custom as old as the government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly, and to take in your presence the oath prescribed by the Con stitution of the United States to be taken by the President "before he enters on the execution of his office.' I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement. Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the southern States that by the accession of a Republican administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations, and had never recanted them. And, more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read: "Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend, and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes." I now reiterate these sentiments; and, in doing so, I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in anywise endangered by the now incoming administration. I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause as cheerfully to one section as to another. There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the law-giver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution-to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves, whose cases come within the terms of this clause, "shall be delivered up," |