Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/371

Rh cause of our danger, which from my examination I believe to be that a sectional hostility has been substituted for a general fraternity and thus the government rendered powerless for the ends for which it is constituted. Then, where is the remedy? the question may be asked. In the hearts of the people, is the ready reply; and therefore it is that I turn to the other side of this chamber, to the majority section, to the section in which have been committed the acts that now threaten the dissolution of the Union. I call on you, the representatives of that section, here and now to say so if your people are not hostile, if they have the fraternity with which their fathers came to form the Union; if they are prepared to do justice; to abandon their opposition to the Constitution and the laws of the Union; to recognize, and to maintain, and to defend all the rights and benefits the Union was designed to promote and to secure. Give us that declaration; give us that evidence of the will of your constituency to restore us to our original position when mutual kindness was the animating motive and then we may hopefully look for remedies which may suffice; not by organizing armies, not so much by enacting laws, as by repressing the spirit of hostility and lawlessness, and seeking to live up to the obligations of good neighbors and friendly States united for the common welfare.

Pending the general discussion a resolution was offered to appoint the Senate committee of thirteen to consider and report on the present agitated and distracted condition of the country, which was at length adopted. The committee was appointed December 2oth, composed of Powell, Hunter, Crittenden, Seward, Toombs, Douglas, Collamer, Jefferson Davis, Wade, Bigler, Rice, Doolittle and Grimes. Mr. Crittenden also offered his celebrated resolutions, upon which the eminently patriotic senior senator hoped that peaceful agreement might be reached. These resolutions provided that certain amendments to the Constitution prohibiting slavery in all territories