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convention of the Slave-labor States, to consider their grievances, and to “take action for their defense.”
He reminded the Virginians of the coincidence of the people of the two States in long cherishing sentiments of disunion.
He pointed to their public acts relative to meditated revolt, under certain contingencies.
1 He reminded them of the dangers which had just menaced their State by the raid of
John Brown and twenty men, at
Harper's Ferry, of the “implacable condition of Northern opinion” concerning Slavery; and the rapid increase of Abolition sentiment in the Free-labor States.
He reminded them that “the
South” had a right to demand the repeal of all laws hurtful to Slavery; the “disbanding of every society which was agitating the
Northern mind against Southern institutions ;” and the “surrender of the power to amend the
Constitution in regard to Slavery,” after it should be amended so as to nationalize the system.
He made an able plea, and closed by saying:--“I have delivered into the keeping of
Virginia the cause of the
South.”
But the politicians of
Virginia, who, like those of
South Carolina, had usurped the powers of the people, were averse to the establishment of a Southern Confederacy in which there was to be free trade in slaves brought from
Africa; for that free trade would destroy the inter-State trade in slaves, from which the oligarchy of
Virginia were receiving an annual income of from twelve millions to twenty millions of dollars.
2 The Virginia Legislature, which
Mr. Memminger said he found “extremely difficult to see through,”
3 consequently hesitated.
There was also another reason for hesitation, which one of Virginia's ablest, most patriotic, and Union-loving men unhesitatingly avowed to a friend, who wished to enlist him in the revolutionary scheme of South Carolina:--“If a new Confederacy should be formed,” he said, “I could not go with you, for I should use whatever influence I might be able to exert against entering into one with South Carolina, that has been a common brawler and disturber of the peace for the last thirty years, and who would give no security that I would be willing to accept, that she would not be as faithless ”
