[254] Our sea-board and our ports being in the enemy's hands we can not rely upon supplies of arms and other munitions of war from abroad, and our means of producing them at home, already limited, are daily decreasing. The loss of Selma and of Columbus, where much valuable machinery for the construction of ordnance and ordnance stores was collected, must materially circumscribe our ability in this respect. Our currency is nearly worthless, and will become utterly so with further military disasters, and there is no hope that we can improve it. The arms of the United States have rendered the great object of our struggle hopeless, have conquered a reconstruction of the Union, and it becomes your duty to secure to the people, as far as practicable, life, liberty, and property. The propositions signed by the opposing generals are more favorable to these great objects than could justly have been anticipated. Upon you, with a more thorough knowledge of the condition of our country, the character and sentiments of our people, and of our means and resources, than is possessed by others, is devolved the responsibility of promptly accepting or of promptly rejecting them. I advise their acceptance; and that, having notified General Johnston of your having done so, you promptly issue, so soon as you shall learn the acceptance thereof by the authorities of the United States, a proclamation to the people of the Confederate States, setting forth clearly the condition of the country, your inability to resist the enemy's overwhelming numbers, or to protect the country from his devastating and desolating march, the propositions submitted to you, and the reasons which, in your judgment, render their acceptance by the States and the people wise and expedient. You can not, under the Constitution, dissolve the Confederacy and remit the States composing it to the Government of the United States. But the Confederacy is conquered. Its days are numbered. Virginia is lost to it, and North Carolina must soon follow, and State after State, under the hostile tread of the enemy, must renter the old Union. The occasion, the emergency, the dire necessities and misfortunes of the country, the vast interests at stake, were never contemplated by those who framed the Constitution. They are all outside of it, and in the dissolution of the Confederacy and the wreck of all their hopes, the States and the people will turn to you, whose antecedents and whose present position and powers constitute you, more than any other living man, the guardian of their honor and their interests, and will expect you not to stand upon constitutional limitations, but to assume and exercise all powers which to you may seem necessary and proper to shield them from useless war, and to save from the wreck of the country all that may be practicable of honor, life, and property. If time were allowed for the observance of constitutional forms I would advise the submission of these propositions to the executives of the several States to the end that, through the usual legislative and conventional action, the wills of the people of the States respectively might be known. But in
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Cincinnati: Wilstach, Baldwin & Co. 1875.
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