Secession movement at the South.
proclamation by the President — resignation of Secretary case--Attorney General Black to be his successor — address of Members from the cotton States to their Constituents — letter of Hon. Wm. C. Rived, &c.Gov. Moore, of Alabama, has appointed Commissioners to proceed to the Southern States for the purpose of "conferring with them upon the condition of the country and the policy of the South in the present emergency." The Commissioners, as far as appointed, are A. F. Hopkins and F. M. Gilmer, Jr. to Virginia; J. W. Garnett to North Carolina; L. P. Walker to Tennessee; John A. Elmore to South Carolina; Stephen E. Hale to Kentucky, John A. Winston to Arkansas, and E. W. Pettus to Mississippi. Hon. Jere Clemens, of Ala., has written a letter in favor of a Convention of Southern States to state their demands to the North. He opposes separate State action. A letter from Friars' Point, Mississippi, says that the Vigilance Committee have hanged three carpenters for inciting the slaves to rebellion. Other Northerners were shipped. The steamer Marion returned twelve passengers to New York Saturday, by order of the Charleston authorities.--The Governor of Mississippi has appointed Commissioners to South Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee and Louisiana.
Proclamation of the President.
Numerous appeals have been made to me by pious and patriotic associations and citizens, in view of the present distracted and dangerous condition of our country, to recommend that a day be set apart for Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer throughout the Union. In compliance with their request, and my own sense of duty, I designate Friday, the 4th day of January, 1861, for this purpose, and recommend that the people assemble on that day, according to their several forms of worship, to keep it as a solemn Fast. The Union of the States is at the present moment threatened with alarming and immediate danger — panic and distress of a fearful character prevail throughout the land — our laboring population are without employment, and consequently deprived of the means of earning their bread — indeed, hope seems to have deserted the minds of men. All classes are in a state of confusion and dismay; and the wisest counsels of our best and purest men are wholly disregarded. In this, the hour of our calamity and peril, to whom shall we resort for relief but to the God of our Fathers? His Omnipotent Arm only can save us from the awful effects of our own crimes and follies — our own ingratitude and guilt towards our Heavenly Father. Let us, then, with deep contrition and penitent sorrow, unite in humbling ourselves before the Most High, in confessing our individual and national sins, and in acknowledging the justice of our punishment. Let us implore him to remove from our hearts that false pride of opinion which would impel us to persevere in wrong for the sake of consistency, rather than yield a just submission to the unforeseen exigencies by which we are now surrounded. Let us, with deep reverence beseech him to restore the friendship and good will which prevailed, in former days, among the people of the several States; and above all, to save us from the horrors of civil war and "blood-guiltiness." Let our fervent prayers ascend to His Throne, that He would not desert us in this hour of extreme peril, but remember us as He did our fathers in the darkest days of the Revolution, and preserve our Constitution and our Union, the work of their hands, for ages yet to come. An Omnipotent providence may overrule existing evils for permanent good. He can make the wrath of man to praise Him, and the remainder of wrath He can restrain. Let me invoke every individual, in whatever sphere of life he may be placed, to feel a personal responsibility to God and his country for keeping this day holy, and for contributing all in his power to remove our actual and impending calamities.The resignation of Gen. Cass.
The Washington Constitution (Government ) of yesterday, says the President has resolved to appoint Attorney General Black to the position of Secretary of State, and that in nomination will be confirmed by the Senator to-day. Of Gen. Cass' resignation, it says. To avoid all misconstruction or mis-statement of the reasons which caused this event, we have taken pains to ascertain the true cause. It is not that Gen. Cass differed from the President in regard to any portion of his late Message. On the great question of coercing a State to remain in the Union by military force, the President and Gen. Cass were perfectly united in opinion. The difficulty arose from the fact that Gen. Cass insisted that a naval and military force should be sent immediately to Charleston, to reinforce the forts in that harbor; and that the President was of opinion that there was no necessity for any such measure, in order to secure the forts against attack. This being the Presidents conviction, he would not sanction a movement which might lead to collision and bloodshed in the present excited state of feeling in South Carolina, and other Southern States, and at a time when every friend of the Union is using his best efforts to prevent its dissolution, or if that be not possible, to avert the adoption of any measure which would render its reconstruction hopeless."of Southern Members of Congress.
At the request of Hon. Reuben Davis, of Miss. member of the Committee of States, the Southern members of Congress assembled at his rooms on Thursday night, and adjourned at 11 o'clock, at which the following declaration was made and signed by those present. It had already been presented to the Committee of Thirty-three: Washington, Dec. 13, 1860. To our Constituents: The argument is exhausted. All hope of relief in the Union, through the agency of Committees, Congressional legislation, or Constitutional amendments is extinguished, and we trust the South will not be deceived by appearances or the preference of new guarantees. The Republicans are resolute in the purpose to grant nothing that will or ought to satisfy the South. In our judgment the honor, safety and independence of the Southern people are to be found only in a Southern Confederacy--the inevitable result of separate State secession. That the sole and primary aim of each slave holding State ought to be its speedy and absolute separation from an unnatural and hostile Union. Signed by J. L. Pugh, David Clopton, Sydenham Moore, J. L. M. Curry, and J. A. Stallworth, of Ala.; J. W. H. Underwood, of Georgia, L. J. Gartrell, of Ga.; James Jackson, of Ga.; John J. Jones, of Ga.; Martin J. Crawford of Georgia; Alfred Iverson, U. S. Senator, Ga.; Geo. S. Hawkins, of Florida; T. C. Hindman, of Arkansas; Jeff. Davis, U. S. Senator, Miss.; A. G. Brown, U. S. Senator, Miss.; Wm. Barksdale, of Miss.; O. R. Singleton, of Miss.; Reuben Davis, of Miss.; Burton Craige, of North Carolina; Thos. Ruffin, of North Carolina; John Sildell, U. S. Senator, La., J. P. Benjamin, U. S. Senator, La.; Jno. M. Landrum, of Louisiana; Lewis T. Wigfall, U. S. Senator, Texas; John Hemphill, U. S. Senator, Texas; J. H. Reagan, of Texas; M. L. Honham, of S. C.; W. Porcher Miles, of S. C. John McQueen, of S. C.; John D. Ashmore, of S. C. Mr. Davis made the following statement to the caucus: Being a member of the Committee of Thirty-three, I state that the above witnessed dispatch was communicated to the committee this evening, and a resolution passed proposing no specific relief, eight Northern States dissenting, avowedly intended to counteract the effect of the above dispatch, and, as I believe, to mislead the people of the South. From information derived from Republican members of the committee and other Northern representatives, I fully concur in the above dispatch. Reuben Davis. The manifesto will be immediately communicated to the several constituencies of the gentlemen named by telegraph.Letter from Hon. Wm. C. Rives.
Hon. Wm. C. Rives, of Albemarle county, Va., has written a letter to Hon. Alexander R. Boteler, favoring the proposition of that gentleman for the Committee of Thirty-Three.--The writer does not believe the Union should be dissolved because of Lincoln's election, and thinks that if the rights of the South are demanded with "calm and dignified, but inflexible firmness — not with bluster and denunciation," they will be accorded. Of these concessions from the North, he says: ‘ They would not be likely to obtain the acceptance of South Carolina, who seems determined, by a foregone conclusion, to go out of the Union, in spite of every possible concession, and to drug as many of her sister States as she can after her. What success her policy of coercing other States into Disunion may have, remains to be seen. But it may, not unreasonably, be presumed that Georgia, who did not recognize her dictatorial authority in ’ 1832 and in 1851, would still prefer her own platform, laid down with so much wisdom and firmness in the latter year, and which, with one or two suggested additions, is so well adapted to meet the requisitions of the present crisis. If Georgia, true to the traditions of her former patriotic policy, should be satisfied with an adjustment, reconciling the constitutional rights of the South with the preservation of the Union, the probability is that her neighbors, Alabama and Florida, would be equally so. But, whatever might be the decision of those States, there can be little doubt that Maryland Delaware, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and, it is to be hoped, Mississippi also, would cordially unite in such a plan of adjustment. These are the natural allies of Virginia, in every great crisis of the Republic. She can never divorce herself from Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina--States which immediately surround her, and with which she has so many common interests of the most intimate and vital character. And, when it is recollected that in one-half of her territory she is a Western State, having, for that portion of her domain, her natural outlet to the ocean by the river Mississippi, she is, by that circumstance, as well as by the large number of her children who now people its magnificent valley, linked by the ties of kindred feeling and a common destiny to those flourishing and prosperous States which have risen to such magic wealth and power upon its fertile borders. It is also to be remarked that the slaveholding States of the Valley of the Mississippi, by their position on the banks of a great stream assigned by Providence as a common avenue of commerce for themselves and other powerful communities, inhabiting its upper parts and having dissimilar domestic institutions, could never lightly regard a severance of the Union by such a line — an event which would bring with it to them inevitable conflicts and the danger of national controversies and wars, as is abundantly proved by the history of the river, when its mouth was held by an independent and foreign power. While these States, therefore, are sensitively alive to whatever affects the security of their domestic institutions, or jeopards their equal constitutional rights in the Union, and are ready at all times to make every sacrifice to defend them, as the States commonly called the Border Slave States also are, they are yet not smitten — any more than these Border States--with a passion for disunion for its own sake, or disposed to rush into it heedlessly and unnecessarily. Let, then, the States I have mentioned — reinforced, it is to be hoped, by Georgia and her two neighbors — unite in their demands upon the non slaveholding States, and say to them frankly and plainly, but soberly and kindly, that the time has come when the authority of the Constitution, which is the bond of union between them, must be recognized, or that union will inevitably perish; that there must be no longer acts of State legislation, in the guise of "personal liberty" laws, to nullity and set at naught a solemn and unequivocal compact written in the Constitution; that there must be no attempts, covert or open, by Congressional legislation, to assail or undermine their domestic institutions; and that their full and perfect equality under the Constitution, as co-States of the Federal Union, must be loyally acknowledged and faithfully respected. As these were the terms, well understood on all sides, on which they came into the Union, so they are the only terms, consistent with honor or justice or self-respect, on which they can be expected to remain in it. The justice and reasonableness of such a demand, urged with the solemn earnestness and dignity which the occasion imports, cannot fail to be heeded, if not by all, by the major or most important part of our confederates. Pennsylvania and New Jersey, ever loyal and true to the Union--who have stood firmly by their Southern brethren in the most trying periods of their history, both before and since the adoption of the Constitution — would, I am persuaded, feel and acknowledge its justice. New Jersey has already given her answer, in advance, to such an appeal, by her vote in the Presidential election; and although Pennsylvania voted differently in that contest, it must be borne in mind that there were issues supposed to be involved in the election, affecting the peculiar interests of her industrial system, which, doubtless, mainly influenced her vote. Whenever an issue shall be distinctly presented on the preservation, by her good faith and loyalty, of that Union, of which it is her proudest boast to be regarded as the key-stone, no one conversant with her history can doubt where Pennsylvania will be found. Nor can I doubt, when the day of solemn decision shall arrive, that the powerful Northwestern States--taken out of the side of Virginia, whose children are still widely diffused among their bold and enterprising population — bordering, as they do, on Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Missouri, as well as on Virginia — and having a common interest with the slaveholding States occupying the banks of the Mississippi in the use of that great Mediterranean channel of intercourse and trade, will rally with those States, cordially and frankly, to a Union of equal rights, of justice and fraternity. When we turn our eyes again to the Eastward, we cannot doubt on what side will be found the imperial city, the centre of American industry and commerce — in herself a sovereign power — with all her vast connected interest and dependencies. If to the internal questions now agitating the State of New York--many of them deeply affecting the rights and interest of the city — be added the supreme one of a dissolution of the Union, it is not an improbable event, amid the revolutions of empire, that we should see the Southern portion of the State, comprehending the city, separate from the rest, and formed into a new and independent State, finally adhering to the central States of the Confederacy, slaveholding and non-slaveholding, with those of the Valley of the Mississippi. I have ever believed that if, unhappily, owing to the centrifugal and jarring tendencies sometimes manifested by the States at the extremities of the Confederacy — our present glorious Union should be broken up, the States occupying the central belt of the Continent from ocean to ocean, including those of the valley of the Mississippi, would still hold together and keep alive, with befitting dignity and power, the ancient name and proud traditions of the United States of America, and perhaps, in the end, win back to the fold those who might temporarily have strayed from it.The Committee of Thirty three.
The Washington Star, of Saturday afternoon, speaking of the rumors about the Committee of Thirty-three, says: ‘ We hear it said, and have confidence in the statement, that their deliberations yesterday made it apparent that they fail to harmonize upon but a single question, that of the protection of the right of the slaveholder in the United States Territories, having already arrived at what may be regarded a common understanding with reference to the disabilities of the South in connection with the non-observance and nullification of the fugitive slave law; and, indeed, as regards all other questions than that of the rights of the South in the Territories. ’ We have further to add that matters are believed to be tending rapidly in their sessions, to the adoption by an over whelming majority of a report that will initiate prompt movements in all the Northern States for their acceptance of the Supreme Court's rulings concerning that vexed and vexatious question.--Thus do we look for its eventual peaceful settlement. Two elaborate speeches are believed to have been made in the Committee room yesterday, where they sat from noon till near 5 P. M.--by Messrs. Corwin and Kellogg--and there was, doubtless, also much conversational debate upon many of the multitude of propositions before them. If we are not greatly mistaken, the end and aim of the two speeches above referred to was to disabuse the minds of the Southern members of the Committee of the idea that the great mass of the people of the North will not evince frank readiness to redress the grievances of the South so soon as they can be ascertained, and substantial, statesmen-like remedies, based on the true principles of the Constitution, can be arranged for them.The cockades.
The cockades of some of the Southern States are thus described: South Carolina.--This cockade is made of three layers of very dark blue cloth, notched at the edges and fastened together by a gilt button, on which the following appears in relief: In the centre is the "Palmetto," with two arrows (crossed,) and fastened together at the point of crossing with a kow-knot of ribbon. The following is the motto around the button: Animis opibusque parati--"Ready with our minds and means." Virginia.--This consists of a double rosette of blue silk, with a pendant of lemon color, the whole fastened together by a gilt button, on which appears in relief the arms of Virginia, with the name of the State and its motto encircling it. The motto is--Sic semper tyrannis. Maryland.--This cockade is formed of a double rosette of blue silk, with blue pendants, and fastened the same as that of Virginia, with the State button, with the simple word "Maryland" beneath the arms. The Union Cockade.--This is also a double rosette, the centre one being of red silk, the inner one of white silk, and the pendants of blue. The gilt button that fastens the whole together shows the eagle of America, surrounded by the stars of the United States.Withdrawal of Southern Medical students in New York.
Much excitement was created in the N. York University Medical College, on Friday, by the announcement of Dr. Aylett, a Southern private instructor, (who is blind,) that he had received a letter from Prof. Draper, the President of the institution, charging him with attempting to induce Southern students to go back to the South. A meeting of Dr. A.'s pupils was held, which he addressed, saying he could no longer remain in connection with the University, and in conclusion desired to say that if his friends from the South wished to depart with him for Charleston, S. C., he would defray all their expenses and insure them diplomas from the institution with which he intended to associate himself in that city. He would, he said, guarantee them diplomas for five dollars apiece. The students adopted resolutions denouncing Prof. Draper and vindicating Dr. Aylett. The Herald states that about fifty of the Southern students intend to secede on Wednesday next, it being their intention to charter a steamer and proceed direct to Charleston, S. C., accompanied by their professor, Dr. P. A. Aylett.Commerce of South Carolina.
A commercial writer, in a New York paper, makes a pertinent reply to a late article in the Charleston Mercury in reference to the prospective commerce of South Carolina as an independent Power. We extract as follows: ‘ "The Mercury commits some obvious, though not unnatural errors. Vessels sailing from Charleston for Liverpool or Havre, after as before the 18th December, will be required before they can discharge cargo in either of those ports to present a proper clearance, signed by a United States officer. If they have no such clearance they will probably be seized and detained as suspicious craft. Neither the Government of Great Britain nor that of France will recognize any South Carolina collectors. South Carolina is not and will not for some time be known in Europe as an independent nation. And any vessel which goes to sea under her flag, and with papers signed only by her officials, will be a lawful prize by any cruiser, and will not be suffered to enter any commercial port. Until the Government of the United States shall recognize the independence of South Carolina, she can not carry on any foreign trade with any commercial nation under the sun. "The Mercury makes an appeal to the foreign Consuls at Charleston. It is apparently unaware of the fact that these Consuls are accredited to the United States, and that their functions cease the instant Charleston ceases to be a United States port. From the hour of the secession of South Carolina it will not contain a single foreign Consul within its borders. It the United States Government should resolve to suffer the revenue laws to be evaded with impunity at the port of Charleston, there will be nothing, after secession, to prevent a smart import trade at that port. But the merchants of Charleston may as well understand at once that, from the hour the United States Collector resigns to the day the independence of South Carolina is recognized by the United States and by the rest of the world, not a bale of cotton or a dollar's worth of any other produce can be exported from Charleston." ’The losses by the Panic.
The New York Herald gives the following recapitulation of the estimated losses by depreciation at the North and South consequent on the present crisis: ‘| Cotton | $18,000,000 |
| Rice, tobacco and naval stores | 2,000,000 |
| Railroad shares, bonds, stocks and other securities | 10,500,000 |
| Depreciation in lands and negroes | 159,000,000 |
| Total | $180,500,000 |
| Flour at tide water, New York | $1,000,000 |
| Wheat at tide water, New York | 800,000 |
| Corn at tide water, New York | 360,000 |
| Flour in the interior | 20,000,000 |
| Wheat in the interior | 10,000,000 |
| Old and new corn in the interior | 10,000,000 |
| Pork in the interior | 750,000 |
| Imported and domestic articles, iron, woollens, &c., | 20,000,000 |
| Loss to manufacturers by suspensions, hall work, less interest on money, &c. | 10,000,000 |
| Decline in railroad shares and bonds, State, county and city bonds, bank capital and shares | 102,000,000 |
| Decline in wool | 3,700,000 |
| Loss on real and personal estate in New York | 150,000,000 |
| Loss on real and personal estate in the interior free States and cities | 150,000,000 |
| Total | $478,620,000 |
| Grand total of losses in the North and South | $659,120,000 |
Lincoln's Cabinet.
Springfield, Ill., Dec. 13.
--The following paragraph appeared at the head of this morning's Journal, Lincoln's organ.
It is known to have emanated direct from the President: ‘
We hear such frequent allusions to a supposed purpose on the part of Mr. Lincoln to call into his Cabinet two or three Southern gentlemen from the parties opposed to him politically, that we are prompted to ask a few questions:
- First--Is it known that any such gentlemen of character would accept a place in the Cabinet!
- Second--If yea, on what terms does he surrender to Mr. Lincoln, or Mr. Lincoln to him, on thepolitical differences between them, or do they enter upon the administration in open opposition to each other?
