The proposed State Convention.
The following letter from Senator Mason, giving his views on the condition of the country, and more especially in regard to the expediency of the call of a Convention of the people of Virginia, to consider what it may become the State to do in the crisis which is upon us, will command general attention.--It is in response to a letter addressed to him by one of the editors of the Richmond Enquirer. Senator Mason says that whilst he is disinclined at all times to volunteer his opinions, he has not the slightest indisposition to express them when they are asked.--He proceeds:
I have observed, with great satisfaction, that the Governor has called the Legislature to meet at an early day, and deeply impressed with the disordered condition of the country from causes far beyond the reach of legislation, have taken it for granted their first act will be to order elections for a general Convention of the State.
The questions now forced upon the country are vital in their solution, to the peace, the honor, and the safety of the Southern States. Virginia, whether in territory, in population, or in position, certainly takes no inferior rank in the South; and it is of the last importance to her, as it is to them, that the matured sense of her people should be expressed in deliberation on these grave questions, and, if necessary, carried into execution, in the solemn forms of her sovereign authority.
All that has happened, and much that has yet to come, was foreseen and predicted by those not claiming to be wise beyond their generation, as the legitimate and inevitable fruits of the ascendancy of the Abolition party in the North. How could it be otherwise?--The election just over has established in the seats of Federal authority, and by overwhelming majorities in the non-slaveholding States, a great political power, whose open and avowed mission is to break up and destroy interests in property, and in society, and in all the slaveholding States, which, when effected, must reduce their lands to deserts, and throw their people as outcasts upon the world. The public voice ordaining this atrocious wrong comes from a people who have no part or lot in the great interest so recklessly assailed, for it will stand as a recorded fact that not a single electoral vote will be cast in support of this power in any State where this interest pertains.
Who does not see and feel that when the States of the South are subjected to this dominion they will be brought, against their will, under a government to which they are not parties, and over which they hold not the slightest check? This is not the form of government which our ancestors gave us, nor is it a government which our people will endure. The people of the North, in thus acting, have separated themselves from the people of the South, and the government they thus inaugurate will be to us the government of a foreign power. We shall stand to such powers as Italy to Austria, and Poland to Russia. It will be one people governed by another people. Who can wonder, then, at the startling events which have crowded before us since the anti-Federal act of this Northern election?
What was seen yesterday but in dim distance, is the reality of to-day; and that which is looked to but as a probability to-day, becomes the stern fact of to-morrow. Our people at the South are intelligent, brave and sensitive. When a hostile arm is raised against them they do not wait for the blew, but rush at once to disable the adversary. And this is what they are doing now.
Let us review events, and then we may the better understand what may devolve on Virginia in the political exigencies of the times.
The election of President is made, and nothing remains but formally to cast, and then to count the electoral vote. There are those who believe — and I am one of them — that no safety remains to the Southern States and their people, but such as shall be vindicated by a stern purpose of self-protection. The event that fixes this belief is not the election of the man, it is the accession of the power, of which he is the minister. They determine the political intentions of that power, not by its party platform, (gross and insulting though it be,) nor by the threats and taunts of its insolent lieutenants, or its demoralized press. They determine it, by the spirit of the Northern mind, evinced by an obdurate tenacity of purpose, through every vicissitude of political fortune; by the statutes of the Northern States, passed as well in violation of all honorable faith as of highest constitutional obligation, paralyzing the laws of Congress, made in pursuance of the Constitution, to protect the property of Southern people; by the encouragement and support given at the North to conspiracies and conspirators within their borders, against the lives and property of the people of the South, and by their refusal or failure to pass laws for the punishment of such offenders, or for prevention of the like in future; by the open recommendation of their Senators and Representatives of publications issued at the North, for circulation at the South, designed, by false and calumnious charges, to foment divisions amongst our people, and to incite the servile class to insurrection and rapine; by the sanction given to such inhuman and cruel conduct by constituents at the North, in returning such Representatives back to the Federal councils; and, if more were wanting, by that fixed and settled policy, made the corner-stone of the incoming administration, (to which there is no party exception at the North,) which refuses to the people at the South a common right with the people at the North, in the common Territories of the Confederacy.
Such are some of the reasons which, I believe, have satisfied those of whom I speak; which certainly have convinced me, that the Southern people must now look to their own State authorities, and to them only, for their safety in the future; whether in the form of other and higher securities in the present Confederacy, or in a new Confederacy, the injured States must determine in Convention.
Indeed, in the progress of events, so far, the field of deliberation may be narrowed. One State has already made her election to abandon the confederation. I think, as to South Carolina, we may safely assume that as a fact, and with which the future has nothing more to do than to establish it in history. As to three other States, and most probably four, there is every reason to believe they are prepared also to secede as soon as the acts of separation can be reduced to form. What may be the sense of other States in this great crisis, (for great it certainly is,) as to the proper measures to be adopted for their safety. I will not venture to anticipate. But the secession of one State is a disruption of the Union.
Whether, in the opinion of other States, she has determined wisely or unwisely, the State is to be the arbiter of her own act; her destiny is in her own keeping, under submission alone to the Supreme Ruler of the universe. To reason otherwise, is to treat a State of the Confederacy not as one of the confederates, but as an integral part of a consolidated Empire. Fortunately for the occasion and its consequences, this is not an open question in Virginia.
Our honored State has ever maintained that our Federal system was a confederation of sovereign powers, not a consolidation of States into one people; and, as a consequence, whenever a State considered the compact broken, and in a manner to endanger her safety, such State stood remitted, as in sovereign right, to determine for herself, and under no responsibility, save to the opinion of the civilized world, both the mode and measure of redress.
The disruption of the Federal Union, thus imminent, or, I should more properly say, actual, is a great and pregnant event; and in considering, therefore, how it may become the Convention of Virginia to act, we must look to that event as a material if not a controlling element in its deliberations. In the first place, it may, and most probably will, force upon the Federal Government the settlement between it and the several States, of the question of the right of secession. If that right is denied, a new and paramount issue will be made between the States and the Federal power, which will be presented to the Virginia Convention in liming. One thing is very clear, Virginia (no more than any other Southern State) will not be passive, should any attempt be made, by force, to reduce such seceding State or States to subjection.
In the next place, it is to my mind equally clear, should one of the States separate from the Union on this slavery question, the disruption will necessarily carry with it the like separation of all those slaveholding States whose destiny it is to continue such; unless, under a returning sense of right and justice in the Northern mind, all may remain on such securities for the future as will establish this great social interest in the exclusive charge of those to whom it pertains.
I have ventured thus, though with unfeigned diffidence, to look forward to what Virginia may be called on to consider and determine, in regard to the great issues forced upon her counsels by events in progress. The magnitude of the occasion may be well estimated by the magnitude of those events. State follows State into Convention to deliberate on the necessity of breaking up a government which they believe has levied war against the essential interest and dearest rights of their people. The Southern States, happen what may, have never been the aggressors in this strange, unnatural contest. In what they have done, or what may yet remain for them to do, they are prepared to meet all the consequences. There can be no doubt or hesitancy, therefore, in my mind, as to the course of Virginia. A Convention is the only authority competent to the occasion, and it should be assembled at the earliest day practicable.
In conclusion, I will only add, that the crisis which for unborn posterity will fix the desti-
nies of the South, is upon us, and must be fearlessly me — certainly, with calm and prudent discretion, and all sobriety of judgement; but with an obdurate purpose to establish the just rights of our people, and to yield nothing that pertains to Virginia as a free and sovereign State.
J. M. Mason.
The Enquirer also publishes a letter from the Hon. Henry L. Hopkins, a prominent member of the Douglas wing of the Virginia Democracy, in response to a communication addressed to him on the subject of a State Convention. Mr. Hopkins is opposed to any Convention of delegates appointed by primary meetings of the people; but thinks it would be wise for the Legislature to call such a Convention, and provide by law for the election of its members, without delay. Alluding to the secession movement, he says:
‘ While the cotton States are busily preparing to take the awful step of secession, merely because of the loss of a Presidential election, under and according to the forms of the Constitution. I would appeal to them, as friends and brethren, to wait yet a little longer — especially as both houses of Congress, the Federal Judiciary, and a million of Northern votes are with us; and then I would ask Virginia, single-handed and alone, if other States would not join her in her mission of peace, to send commissioners to all those States in the North whose Legislatures have passed acts to nullify or obstruct the Fugitive Slave Law of Congress, in flagrant violation of the Constitution and our rights under it, to repeal those obnoxious acts, as the only means of saving the Union from destruction.
If their Legislatures or Conventions called to consider the proposition, should reject it, preferring their unconstitutional and hostile legislation to the preservation of the Union, then the whole South would go out together, and the act of secession, founded, not on the legal and constitutional election of a President, but upon their hostile legislation against us, thus solemnly reaffirmed, would be justified in the sight of God and man. This remedy, under existing circumstances, would, I think, be sufficient and effectual.
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