Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume Two).djvu/79

Rh President Lincoln and Colonel John B. Baldwin, then a member of the Virginia Convention that finally adopted the Ordinance of Secession, President Lincoln assured Mr. Baldwin that he would evacuate Fort Sumter if the fort could be provisioned and the Virginia Convention would adjourn sine die.

Colonel Baldwin’s voluntary and qualified denial is of no value in presence of President Lincoln’s report of the interview as given by Mr. Botts and in presence of the testimony that Mr. Baldwin did not deny the truthfulness of Mr. Botts’ limited statement, when it was asserted by Mr. Botts in the presence of Lewis.

Upon the death of Mr. Calhoun the task of maintaining the extreme doctrine of State Rights, as that doctrine had been taught by Mr. Calhoun fell upon Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens. That doctrine was carried to its practical results in the ordinances of secession as they were adopted by the respective States under the lead of Mr. Davis.

If Mr. Stephens advised against secession, the advice given was not due to any doubt of the right of a State to secede from the Union, but to doubts of the wisdom of the undertaking.

In form of proceedings Mr. Stephens was examined by the Committee on the Judiciary, the 11th and 12th days of April, 1866, but in fact I was the only member of the committee who was present, and I conducted the examination in my own way, and without help or hindrance from others.

It was the opinion of Governor Clifford of Massachusetts, that the examination of Mr. Stephens gave the best exposition of the doctrine of State Rights that had been made. I was then ignorant of the fact, that in the convention of 1787 the form of the Preamble to the Constitution was so changed