...I have been publishing in Northern newspapers, article after article, arguing, reasoning, urging, persuading, yea, begging our Northern fellow-citizens not to force upon the South the terrible issue of Disunion, or Dishonor. And candidly, can I say to-night that I would have illuminated my house with enthusiasm and shoutings, had either one of the candidates urged in Georgia been elevated to the Presidential chair. ...

In times like these, passion should not rule the hour; calm and dispassionate deliberation should be brought to the consideration of every question. ...The practical issue before us is the triumph of the sectional Black Republican party of the North, and the duty of Georgia in the present emergency. To this I address myself.
Is the election of Lincoln a sufficient ground for the dissolution of the Union?

Can it be supposed that our fathers intended intended to allow our national elections to be controlled by men who were not citizens under the National Constitution? Never, never! Yet to elect Abraham Lincoln, the right of suffrage was extended to free negroes in Vermont, Massachusetts, Ohio, New York and other Northern States, although the Supreme Court has declared them not to be citizens of this nation. Yes! Our slaves are first stolen from our midst on underground Railroads, and then voted at Northern ballot-boxes to select rulers for you and me. The memory of our fathers is slandered when this is declared to be according to the Constitution. ...

it is true that counting the unanimous votes of the Southern States and the large minorities in the North against the Black Republicans, a majority amounting to perhaps a million or more votes, have declared against Abraham Lincoln for the next Presidency. Is not this according to the forms of the Constitution? I may be asked. I answer it is. But will my objecting friend answer, is it according to its spirit? I may be told that other Chief Magistrates have been elected by popular minorities. This I admit, but never against such an overwhelming majority, and never by a sectional party based upon the prospect and avowal of a continuation of the same results in every future election. The truth is, that we have lived to see a state of things never contemplated by the framers of the Constitution. At that time we were all slaveholding States - a homogenous people, having a common origin, common memories - a common cause, common hopes - a common future, a common destiny. ...

the Constitution is full of checks to protect the minority from the sudden and excited power of a majority, no provision was suggested for the protection of the majority from the despotic rule of an infuriated, fanatical, sectional minority. The experience of eight years in the Presidential Chair, and the almost more than human wisdom of Washington gave him a glimpse of the fatal omission thus made in the Constitution, and hence we find in that wonderful document - his Farewell Address - a note of solemn warning against such a perversion of the Government, by the formation of sectional parties. ...

What liberty have we secured by the Constitution of the United States? Our personal liberty is protected by the broad aegis of Georgia's sovereignty. To her we never appealed in vain. What liberty does the Union give us? The glorious liberty of being robbed of our property, threatened in our lives, abused and vilified in our reputation on every forum from the grog-shop to the Halls of Congress, libeled in every vile newspaper, and in every town meeting, deprived of all voice in the election of our Chief Magistracy, bound to the car of a fiendish fanaticism, which is daily curtailing every vestige of our privileges, and by art and cunning, under the forms of the Constitution, binding us in a vassalage more base and hopeless than that of the Siberian serf. This is "glorious" liberty secured by a "glorious" Union. And the election of Lincoln by a purely sectional vote, and upon a platform of avowed hostility to our rights and our liberty, is the cap-stone - nay, the last magna carta - securing us to these wonderful privileges. ...

Equality among the states is the fundamental idea of the American Union. Protection to the life, liberty and property of the citizen is the corner-stone and only end of Government in the American mind. Look to the party whose triumph is to be consummated in the inauguration of Lincoln - The exclusive enjoyment of all common territory of the Union, is their watchword and party cry. The exclusion of half the States of the Union has been decreed, and we are called upon to record the fiat. Will you do it, men of Georgia? Are you so craven so soon?

But protection- whence comes it to us? Dare you to follow your fugitive into a Northern State to arrest him? The assassin strikes you down, and no law avenges your blood; your property is stolen every day, and the very attempt to recover it subjects you to the insults of the North...

Georgia extends her sovereign arm over us, and our lives, our property, our liberty and our reputation are safe under her protection. Loyalty and fidelity have their reason for their growth and food for their sustenance when we turn to this good old Commonwealth. But when we look to this Union - oh, tell me - why owe we allegiance to it? ...

As a legal question, I am compelled to decide that the election of Lincoln is in violation of the spirit of the Constitution of the United States. ...

Fanaticism is madness, is insanity. ...

We call it blind, because it cannot see; we call it deaf, because it cannot hear; we call it foolish, because it cannot reason; we call it cruel, because it cannot feel. By what channel, then, can you reach its citadel? Firmly planted therein, with every avenue closed to ingress, and yet every door of evil influence open to the bitter issues which flow without, the deluded victim glories in his own shame, and scatters ruin and destruction, in the mad dream that he is doing God's service. ...

All history speaks but one voice. Tell me when and where the craving appetite of fanaticism was ever gorged with victims; when and where its bloody hands were ever stayed by the consciousness of satiety; when and where its deaf ears ever listened to reason, or argument, or persuasion, or selfishness; when and where it ever died from fatigue, or yielded except in blood. ...

We have seen, then, that this election is legally unconstitutional, and that politically the issue on which it is unconstitutional is both vital in its importance and permanent in its effects. What, then, is our remedy? ...

I fear not to say I have gone to the God I worship, and begged Him to advise me. On the night of the 6th of November, I called my wife and little ones together around my family altar, and together we prayed to God to stay the wrath of our oppressors, and preserve the Union of our fathers. The rising sun of the seventh of November found me on my knees, begging the same kind Father to make that wrath to praise Him, and the remainder of wrath to restrain. I believe that the hearts of men are in His hands, and when the telegraph announced to me that the voice of the North proclaimed at the ballot-box that I should be a slave, I heard in the same sound, the voice of my God speaking through his Providence, and saying to his child, "Be free! Be free!"

Marvel not then that I say my voice is for immediate, unconditional secession. ...

...We have not sought this conflict; we have sought too long to avoid it; our forbearance has been construed into weakness, our magnanimity into fear, until the vindication of our manhood, as well as the defence of our rights, is required at our hands. The door of conciliation and compromise is finally closed by our adversaries, and it remains only to us to meet the conflict with the dignity and firmness of men worthy of freedom. ...

The instant the Government was organized, at the very first Congress, the Northern States evinced a general desire and purpose to use it for their own benefit, and to pervert its powers for sectional advantage, and they have steadily pursued that policy to this day. ...one would have supposed the North would have been content, and would have at least respected the security and tranquility of such obedient and profitable brethren; but such is not human nature. They despised the patient victims of their avarice, and they very soon began a war upon our political rights and social institutions, marked by every act of perfidy and treachery which could add a darker hue to such a warfare. ...This conflict, at least, is irrepressible - it is easily understood -we demand the equal right with the North to go into the common Territories with all of our property, slaves included, and to be there protected in its peaceable enjoyment by the Federal Government, until such Territories may come into the Union as equal States-then we admit them with or without slavery, as the people themselves may decide for themselves. Will you surrender this principle? The day you do this base, unmanly deed, you embrace political degradation and death. ...

we are told that secession would destroy the fairest fabric of liberty the world ever saw, and that we are the most prosperous people in the world under it. The arguments of tyranny as well as its acts, always reenact themselves. The arguments I now hear in favor of this Northern connection are identical in substance, and almost in the same words as those which were used in 1775 and 1776 to sustain the British connection. We won liberty, sovereignty, and independence by the American Revolution - we endeavored to secure and perpetuate these blessings by means of our Constitution. The very men who use these arguments admit that this Constitution, this compact, is violated, broken and trampled under foot by the abolition party. Shall we surrender the jewels because their robbers and incendiaries have broken the casket? Is this the way to preserve liberty? I would as lief surrender it back to the British crown as to the abolitionists. I will defend it from both. Our purpose is to defend those liberties. ...

We are said to be a happy and prosperous people. We have been, because we have hitherto maintained our ancient rights and liberties - we will be until we surrender them. They are in danger; come, freemen, to the rescue. ...

If you desire a Senator after the fourth of March, you must elect one in my place. I have served you in the State and national councils for nearly a quarter of a century without once losing your confidence. I am yet ready for the public service, when honor and duty call. I will serve you anywhere where it will not degrade and dishonor my country. Make my name infamous forever, if you will, but save Georgia. I have pointed out your wrongs, your danger, your duty. You have claimed nothing but that rights be respected and that justice be done. Emblazon it on your banner - fight for it, win it, or perish in the effort.

...My object is not to stir up strife, but to allay it; not to appeal to your passions, but to your reason. Let us, therefore, reason together. It is not my purpose to say aught to wound the feelings of any individual who may be present; and if in the ardency with which I shall express my opinions, I shall say anything which may be deemed too strong, let it be set down to the zeal with which I advocate my own convictions. There is with me no intention to irritate or offend.

I do not, on this occasion, intend to enter into the history of the reasons or causes of the embarassments which press so heavily upon us all at this time. In justice to myself, however, I must barely state upon this point that I do think much of it depended upon ourselves. The consternation that has come upon the people is the result of a sectional election of a President of the United States, one whose opinions and avowed principles are in antagonism to our interests and rights, and we believe, if carried out, would subvert the Constitution under which we now live. But are we entirely blameless in this matter, my countrymen? I give it to you as my opinion, that but for the policy the Southern people pursued, this fearful result would not have occurred.

The first question that presents itself is, shall the people of Georgia secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think that they ought. In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen to that high office, is sufficient cause to justify any State to separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the Constitution of the country. To make a point of resistance to the Government, to withdraw from it because any man has been elected, would put us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Constitution. Many of us have sworn to support it. Can we, therefore, for the mere election of any man to the Presidency, and that, too, in accordance with the prescribed forms of the Constitution, make a point of resistance to the Government, without becoming the breakers of that sacred instrument ourselves, by withdrawing ourselves from it? Would we not be in the wrong? Whatever fate is to befall this country, let it never be laid to the charge of the people of the South, and especially the people of Georgia, that we were untrue to our national engagements. Let the fault and the wrong rest upon others. ...

But it is said Mr. Lincoln's policy and principles are against the Constitution, and that, if he carries them out, it will be destructive of our rights. Let us not anticipate a threatened evil. If he violates the Constitution, then will come our time to act. ...

My honorable friend who addressed you last night [Toombs], and to whom I listened with the profoundest attention, asks if we would submit to Black Republican rule? I say to you and to him, as a Georgian, I would never submit to any Black Republican aggression upon our Constitutional rights.

I will never consent myself, as much as I admire this Union, for the glories of the past or the blessings of the present; as much as it has done for civilization; as much as the hopes of the world hang upon it; I would never submit to aggression upon my rights to maintain it longer; and if they can not be maintained in the Union standing on the Georgia Platform, where I have stood from the time of its adoption, I would be in favor of disrupting every tie which binds the States together. I will have equality for Georgia, and for the citizens of Georgia, in this Union, or I will look for new safeguards elsewhere. This is my position. The only question now is, can this be secured in the Union? That is what I am counseling with you tonight about. Can it be secured? In my judgment it may be, yet it may not be; but let us do all we can, so that in the future, if the worst comes, it may never be said we were negligent in doing our duty to the last. ...

There are defects in our Government, errors in our administration, and shortcomings of many kinds, but in spite of these defects and errors, Georgia has grown to be a great State. Let us pause here a moment. In 1850 there was a great crisis, but not so fearful as this, for of all I have ever passed through, this is the most perilous, and requires to be met with the greatest calmness and deliberation.

There were many amongst us in 1850 zealous to go at once out of the Union -- to disrupt every tie that binds us together. Now do you believe, had that policy been carried out at that time, we would have been the same great people we are today? It may be that we would, but have you any assurance of that fact? Would we have made the same advancement, improvement, and progress, in all that constitutes material wealth and prosperity, that we have? ...

When I look around and see our prosperity in everything -- agriculture, commerce, art, science, and every department of progress, physical, mental and moral -- certainly, in the face of such an exhibition, if we can, without the loss of power, or any essential right or interest, remain in the Union, it is our duty to ourselves and posterity to do so. Let us not unwisely yield to this temptation. Our first parents, the great progenitors of the human race, were not without a like temptation when in the garden of Eden. They were led to believe that their condition would be bettered -- that their eyes would be opened -- and that they would become as Gods. They, in an evil hour, yielded -- instead of becoming Gods, they only saw their own nakedness.

I look upon this country, with our institutions, as the Eden of the World, the Paradise of the Universe. It may be that out of it we may become greater and more prosperous, but I am candid and sincere in telling you that I fear if we yield to passion, and without sufficient cause shall take that step, that instead of becoming greater or more peaceful, prosperous and happy-- instead of becoming Gods, we will become demons, and at no distant day commence cutting one another's throats. This is my apprehension. Let us, therefore, whatever we do, meet these difficulties, great as they are, like wise and sensible men, and consider them in the light of all the consequences which may attend our action. Let us see, first clearly, where the path of duty leads, and then we may not fear to tread therein. ...

Now, then, my recommendation to you would be this: In view of all these questions of difficulty, let a convention of the people of Georgia be called, to which they may all be referred. Let the sovereignty of the people speak. Some think that the election of Mr. Lincoln is cause sufficient to dissolve the Union. Some think those other grievances are sufficient to justify the same; and that the Legislature has the power thus to act, and ought thus to act. I have no hesitancy in saying that the Legislature is not the proper body to sever our Federal relations, if that necessity should arise.

I say to you, you have no power so to act. You must refer this question to the people, and you must wait to hear from the men at the cross-roads, and even the groceries; for the people of this country, whether at the cross-roads or groceries, whether in cottages or palaces, are all equal, and they are the Sovereigns in this country. Sovereignty is not in the Legislature. We, the people, are sovereign. I am one of them, and have a right to be heard; and so has every other citizen of the State. You Legislators -- I speak it respectfully -- are but our servants. You are the servants of the people, and not their masters. Power resides with the people in this country. The great difference between our country and most others, is, that here there is popular sovereignty, while there sovereignty is exercised by kings or favored classes. This principle of popular sovereignty, however much derided lately, is the foundation of our institutions. Constitutions are but the channels through which the popular will may be expressed. Our Constitutions, State and Federal, came from the people. They made both, and they alone can rightfully unmake either.

Should Georgia determine to go out of the Union, I speak for one, though my views might not agree with them, whatever the result may be, I shall bow to the will of her people. Their cause is my cause, and their destiny is my destiny; and I trust this will be the ultimate course of all. The greatest curse that can befall a free people, is civil war. ...

I am for exhausting all that patriotism demands, before taking the last step. ...

...The government is the result of much toil, much blood, much anxiety, and much treasure. For nearly a century we have been accustomed to speak and boast of it as the best on earth....
Whether we shall now destroy that government or make another effort to preserve it and reform its abuses, is the question before us. Is that question not entitled to all the wisdom, the moderation, and the prudence we can command?...

We are at sea, my friends. The skies are fearfully darkened. The billows roll threateningly. Dangers are on every side. Let us throw overboard our passions, our prejudices, and our party feelings, however long or highly valued. But let us hold on - hold on to reason and moderation. These, and these alone, point always to the fixed star of truth, by whose guidance we may yet safely come to shore. ...

In the first place what are our grievances? All the speakers, thus far, even the most ultra, have admitted that the mere Constitutional election of any man is no ground for resistance. The mere election of Mr. Lincoln is on all sides admitted not to be a grievance. Our State would not be thrown on a false issue on this point.
We complain, in general terms, that the anti-slavery sentiment at the North has been made an element of political power.
In proof of this we make the following specifications:
1. That a large political party has been organized in the Northern States, the great common idea of which is to prohibit the extension of slavery by Congress, and hostility to slavery generally.
2. That this party has succeeded in getting control of many of the Northern State Legislatures and have procured the passage of acts nullifying the fugitive slave law...
3. That this party has elected governors in Northern States who refuse, some openly and others under frivolous pretexts, to do their plain Constitutional duties, when these involve the recognition of property in slaves.
4. That Northern courts, chosen by the same party, have assumed to declare the fugitive slave law unconstitutional in the teeth of the decisions of the United States courts...
5. We complain that the Northern States, thus controlled, are seeking to repudiate every Constitutional duty or provision, in favor or in recognition of slavery...The inexorable logic of this party...must array them against the whole Constitution of the United States; because that instrument, in its very frame-work, is a recognition of property in slaves. ...I could quote all night, my friends, to show that the tendency of the Republican party is to disunion. That to be a Republican is to be logically and practically against the Constitution and the Union. ...
6. We complain, in the last place, that this party, having thus acquired the control of every department of government - legislative, executive, and judicial - in several of the Northern States, and having thus used every department of the State government so acquired, in violation of the Constitution of the United States, in disregard of the laws of the Southern States, and in utter denial of the property and even liberty of the citizens of the Southern States - this party, I say, with these principles, and this history, has at least secured the executive department of the Federal Government...

Here, then, is a party seeking to administer the government on principles which must destroy the government - proposing to preserve the Union upon a basis on which the Union, in the very nature of things, cannot stand; and offering peace on terms which must produce civil war.
Now, my friends, the next question is, shall these grievances be resisted? I know of no man who says they ought not to be resisted. For myself, I say, and say with emphasis, they ought to be resisted - resisted effectively and at all hazards. ...

These grievances are our real complaint. They have advanced to a point which makes a crisis: and that point is the election of Lincoln. We dare not, we will not let this crisis pass without a settlement. That settlement must wipe out existing grievances, and arrest threatened ones. We owe it to our Constitution, to our country, to our peace, to our posterity, to our dignity, to our self-respect as Union men and Southern men, to have a cessation of these aggressions and an end to these disturbances. I do not think we should wait for any further violation of the Constitution. The Constitution has already been violated and even defiled. These violations are repeated every day. We must resist, and to attempt to resist and not do so effectively - even to the full extent of the evil - will be to bring shame on ourselves, our State, and our cause. ...

Who shall inaugurate this resistance? Who shall determine the mode, the measure, and the time of this resistance?
My reply is: The people through their delegate convention duly assembled. ...

there are really but two modes of resistance proposed. One method is to make no further effort in the Union, but to assume that the Union either cannot or ought not to be preserved, and secede at once and throw ourselves upon the consequences. The other method is to exhaust certain remedies for these grievances in the Union, with the view of preserving our rights and the Union with them, if possible; looking, however, to and preparing for secession as an ultimate resort, certainly to be had, if those grievances cannot be remedied and completely remedied and ended in the Union....

The advocates of the first mode declare that these grievances are the fruits of an original, innate anti-slavery fanaticism....

The advocates of the second mode of resistance, of whom I am humbly one, reason after another fashion: We say, in the first place, that while it is true that this anti-slavery sentiment has become fanatical with many, yet it is not necessarily so in its nature, nor was it so in its origin. Slavery has always existed in some form. It is an original institution. Besides, we say the agitation now upon us did not originate in fanaticism or philanthropy but in cupidity. ...

while the anti-slavery sentiment has spread in the North, the pro-slavery sentiment has also strengthened in America. In our early history the Southern statesmen were anti-slavery in feeling. So were Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Randolph, and many of that day, who had never studied the argument of the cotton gin, nor heard the eloquent productions of the great Mississippi Valley. ...

we urge for believing that all the enumerated grievances - the results of slavery agitation - are curable by remedies within the Union. ...

Let us try these remedies, and if we fail, this failure will establish the truth of the positions of the advocates of immediate secession, and we shall join in that remedy.
For let it be understood, we are all agreed that these grievances shall be resisted - shall be remedied - most effectively remedied; and if this cannot be done in the Union, then the Union must go. ...

Let the Georgia Convention meet. Let her not simply demand but command that this war on slavery shall cease - that these unconstitutional acts and proceeding shall be repealed and abandoned by the States, or repudiated and redressed by the Federal Government. ...

let the fifteen Southern States join in this demand, and let the penalty of refusal, even to the demand of one State, be the abandonment of the Union, and any other, even harsher remedy, each State may think her rights and honor require. ...

I believe we can make Lincoln enforce the laws. If fifteen Southern States will take that Constitution and the laws and his oath, and shake them in the face of the President, and demand their observance and enforcement, he cannot refuse. Better make him do it than any one else. It will be a magnificent vindication of the power and the majesty of the law, to make the President enforce the law...

If we secede now, in what condition are we? Our secession will either be peaceable or otherwise. If peaceable, we have no ships to take off our produce. We could not get and would not have those of the government from which we had just seceded. We have no treaties, commercial or otherwise, with any other power. We have no postal system among our own people. Nor are we prepared to meet any one of the hundred inconveniences that must follow, and all of which can be avoided by taking time.
But suppose our secession be not peaceable. In what condition are we for war? No navy, no forts, no arsenal, no arms but bird guns for low trees. Yet a scattered people, with nothing dividing us from our enemy but an imaginary line, and a long sea and a gulf coast extending from the Potomac to Galveston Bay, if all should secede. In what condition are we to meet the thousand ills that would beset us, and every one of which can be avoided by taking time. "We have more to do than to go up the hills and come down." Secession is no holiday work.
While we are seeking to redress our wrongs in the Union, we can go forward, making all necessary preparations to go out if it becomes necessary. We can have a government system perfect, and be prepared, ready for the emergency, when the necessity for separation shall come.
Again, if we fail to redress in the Union, that very failure will united the people of our State. The only real ground of difference now is: some of us think we can get redress in the Union, and others think we cannot. Let those of us who still have faith make that effort which has never been made, and if we fail, then we are ready to join you. ...

Finally, my friends, we shall have secured, by this policy, the good opinion of all mankind and of ourselves. We shall have done our duty to history, to our children, and to Constitutional liberty, the greatest experiment of self-government. ... Above all we shall have found good consciences, and secured that, either in the Union or out of it, which is dearer to us than any Union, and more to be desired than all constitutions however venerated - that which is the end of all our efforts, and the desire of all our hearts, our equality as States, our rights as citizens, and our honor as men.

...Much as I deplore the election of Lincoln, it is an event which I confidently expected, from the moment of the disruption of the Chat'n [Charleston] Convention. It requires all the energies of a united Democracy to elect a President; with a divided Democracy, it is impossible. To that schism therefore, must be ascribed our defeat. ...

We are therefore indebted to an error in (sic) our own, for our signal defeat - it elected Lincoln. Hence, as we are not entirely blameless, it behooves us to temper our exasperation by calm reflection and prudent counsels. Hasty action is always unwise: it is superlative folly, when prompted by passion for which, our own indiscretion has created the existing occasion. ...

I do not think the election of Lincoln a sufficient cause for secession. No man deprecates it more than I do. None is more implacably hostile to the avowed principles and policy of the Republican party. I trust I am second to no one, in an intelligent devotion to the rights and honor of the South. But he is legitimately elected - elected in strict accordance with the Constitution...
If he obey[s] the Constitution, in his administration, we shall have suffered no injury by his election: if he violate[s] it, by aggressing upon our rights, we will resist it and the justice of that resistance will rally the united hearts and hands of all true patriots.
But is is contended by many, that we must anticipate aggression - assumed that it will come, and secede from the Union immediately to avoid it. I do not approve of such a course. But anticipating that it may come, prudence suggests that we begin, at once, to prepare to resist it.
I believe however, that, under the existing circumstances, it cannot come. The President is powerless, without the concurrence of both houses of Congress. But both are known to be opposed to the federal principles and policy of the Republican party. How is it possible then for Lincoln to commit any aggression upon the South?...but if the complexion of Congress shall change to that of hostility to my section, knock off his fetters and violate our rights, I will defy them all: and if I cannot obtain redress in the Union, then, trusting to the reserved sovereignty of the State, I will strike for separate independence out of the Union.
But the South has grievances of which to complain, far more galling than the bare election of a Republican to the Presidency. The surrender of fugitive slaves is a constitutional obligation upon every State in the Union. Without such a guaranty the Union would never have been formed. It cannot long survive its continued and persistent disregard by the non slaveholding States. ... Amidst the almost unmixed evil, which I apprehend from the election of Lincoln, I see one good result, and that is, the awakening of the South to these great grievances. They ought no to be permanently submitted to; but promptly redressed, upon the united demand of the South. Let the appeal be made to the delinquent States.
Having presented these general views, I will venture a few suggestions as to the best course to be pursued. ...

These are my opinions now, so far as they are applicable to the existing circumstances. I am opposed to dissolution now, by secession or otherwise...

Then I would say:
1. Let this Legislature call a convention of the people, at such time as may be deemed most convenient, to consider and determine what the State should do; and also, in the meantime, put the State in a condition to meet any emergency.
2. Let that Convention reaffirm the "Georgia Platform" [see link] of 1850 and demand the repeal of all laws passed by any of the non-slaveholding States, which obstruct the execution, in good faith, of the act of Congress for the rendition of fugitive slaves.
3. Let that Convention appeal to the Northern States to suppress by all legitimate measures the slavery agitation, as subversive of the peace and fraternity between the States of this Union.
4. Let that Convention ask a consultation with the other Southern States, either in a Congress for that purpose, or in such other manner as may be best calculated to secure concert of action. ...

I should hope that a firm and earnest appeal by the South to the Northern States would be heeded; that they would, under a sense of Constitutional obligation, repeal their "personal liberty bills," and cease to hinder the surrender of fugitive slaves. - I repeat, a continued and persistent disregard our rights, in this particular, by the non-slaveholding States, cannot and ought not to be submitted to. It is time for the South to demand exemption from the agitation of slavery, from unjustifiable interference with our domestic peace and security, from further aggressions upon our rights and the faithful observances by the Northern States of the requirements and guarantees of the Constitution. Let the business of redress be begun now and prosecuted to a final consummation. Let every effort be made and every means be exhausted to restore the Union back to what it was intended to be, by its founders. If we fail in this, which I will not anticipate, then the interest, rights, peace and honor of the South will require a dissolution of the Union. ...