Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

1 See page 164.

2 The politicians more directly under the influence of Slidell seem to have had the management of the Convention. It had been all arranged beforehand, apparently, that Mouton should be made President of that body. He was elected on the first ballot. As early as the 14th of the month (January), nine days before the Convention assembled, a letter written by Slidell, and signed by himself and Judah P. Benjamin, and Representatives J. M. Landrum and J. G. Davidson, of Louisiana, was addressed, from the Capitol at Washington, “To the Convention of the State of Louisiana,” directed to “Hon. Alexander Mouton, President of the Convention,” &c. This letter (the original is before me) occupies six pages of large foolscap paper, and contains an expression of the views of the arch-conspirator and his colleagues on the great topic of the hour. It urges the necessity of immediate and energetic action; and after referring to the fact, that many of the people of the State were unwilling to accept secession as a remedy for grievances, because it seemed like revolution, it avers the right of a people to resist oppression, and says:--“You may well treat the difference between secession and revolution as one more of words than of substance — of ideas rather than of things.” It denounces Holt as “the unconstitutional head of the War Department--an open and virulent enemy of the South” --who had submitted a plan to the Government “of a campaign on a gigantic scale for the subjugation of the seceding States.” They confess that they united in a recommendation to the Governor, on the accession of Holt, to “take possession at once of the forts and arsenals of the United States within the jurisdiction of Louisiana.” They recommend “immediate and unqualified secession,” and express a belief that every Slaveholding State, except Maryland and Delaware, will join in the revolutionary movement. “Without slavery, we perish!” they exclaim. They then express an earnest desire that the Convention should fully recognize the right of navigating the Mississippi freely by all citizens on its borders, and the lands watered by its tributaries, with “a wish and lope,” they say, “to reconstruct our Confederacy with such materials as are not irreconcilably hostile.” It was the delusive dream of some of the conspirators, and the hope of the politicians of Louisiana, that the people of the Western and Northwestern States, governed by self-interest alone, would become partners in their revolutionary schemes.²

“It had been a subject of earnest deliberation,” they say, “among the delegations of the States wherein Conventions had been held, whether, even after their States had seceded, they might not possibly render better service to their constituents by remaining here, and opposing the passage of any measures tending to strengthen the incoming Administration in a policy of coercion.” It says that they came to the conclusion that no certainty existed of their being able to do so. See extract of Yulee's letter, on page 166. A fac-simile of the above paragraph (the whole letter is in Slidell's handwriting) is given on this page. I am indebted to the Hon. Mark D. Wilbur, afterward in the National military service at Baton Rouge, for the original.

3 A year earlier than this, a Cincinnati paper noticed the fact, that “agents of the politicians of the Gulf States had been in that city, consulting with leading politicians of the Buchanan party, and endeavoring to create a sentiment among business men favorable to the establishment of a Confederacy, leaving out Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and all New England. Free trade was to be the basis of union. These agents, it asserted, were in all of the Northwestern States, and their aim was to spring the issue soon among the citizens of those States.” --McPherson's Political History of the Great Rebellion, page 42.