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Letter from Secretary Floyd.

Hon. John B. Floyd writes a letter to the Richmond Enquirer, in reply to one from the editors of that paper. He thinks the time has passed when ‘"the counsels of any one can arrest the precipitate currents of events or avert the result which an exasperated and excited public feeling has rendered inevitable."’

The agitation of the slavery question, which has been so long and wantonly persisted in by Northern men has produced the sectional alienation which is about to find its natural result in the destruction of a Confederacy that was voluntary in its origin, and can only be perpetuated by the voluntary assent of its members. When that amity, which is generally found to exist even between nations foreign to each other, ceases to exist between confederated States; when those comities, which enlightened nations delight to extend to each other, are refused to sister States by members of a fraternal Confederacy; when sectional strife and crimination usurp the place of charity and kindness in the hearts of a confederated people; when hatred and defamation mark all the relations between neighbors and partners, then separation becomes not only the natural and rightful, but the inevitable resort. The States of the South, having the right to secede, not only from the very nature of a federal compact, but by express reservation on the part of some of them at the time of entering the Confederacy, are, in five or six instances, preparing to secede from their Union with partner States which have converted the legislative branch of the Federal Government into a more theatre for agitating the slavery question — into a rostrum from which to pour forth over the world denunciations and calumnies against their social institutions. Patrick Henry, one of the wisest amongst the founders of free institutions in this country, feared and predicted their overthrow by the agency of the Federal Government. If he could have foreseen the use which one section of the Confederacy would make of the House of Congress, for assailing the other — employing entire sessions, to the neglect of nearly all other business, in the work of agitation — expending large sums of the public money in the publication of incendiary debates, and burdening the public mails in distributing thousands of inflammatory speeches over the land, until the mere fact of the meeting of Congress is felt by a whole section as a public calamity — he would not only have resisted the establishment of the Federal Government as he did, but he would have defeated it at the cost of precipitating the country into a second revolution, before the echoes of the first had died away.

There is no doubt that Mr. Lincoln was elected by his party as ‘"an extreme antislavery man, and bitter opponent of the South."’ The North has set the example of doing without the South in the election of a common President. The South is about answering this by allowing them to do also without her in the Union. The people acting in mass will not stop in crisis to draw distinctions and split hairs, but rush headlong to extreme conclusions. The Southern peoples' answer to the North will be as demonstrative and defiant, in one direction, as the election of Mr. Lincoln, on the part of the North, was in the other. If all the Southern States shall put it to popular vote, to say what shall be done in the present crisis, the position of probably every one of them will be extreme. If a few secede and all efforts at reconciliation fall, all must sooner of later secede. Virginia would not, other border States could not, stand neutral between North and South.

For one, I am not for secession as long as any honorable effort can be made to preserve the Union on a constitutional basis, guaranteeing equality, justice and protection to the negro property of the South. I shall not undertake, in this place, to particularize all the measures or reform and policy which should be incorporated into a settlement of the present differences between the North and the South. I cannot conceive how harmony can be permanently secured as long as Congress continues to be made a mere debating club for agitation and incendiary appeal. The acts of the several Northern States, nullifying the fugitive slave law, being subversive of the Constitution, violative of the plighted faith of confederates, and in conflict with the comity of States, ought to be repealed; and an amendment to the Constitution must forever prevent their re-enactment.

But even though the principles of a settlement of the present troubles could be agreed upon, there would be very great difficulty in procuring their early ratification by the people of the two sections. The Northern masses cannot be brought at once to recede from the extreme, and aggressive positions they have assumed towards the South; while the South, tired of broken compromises, and smarting from repeated and never-ending insult, will be slow and both to accede to new compacts.--Moreover, every manifestation by the South of a willingness to accept terms of reconciliation, is at once construed by the North into a proof of timidity, and made the occasion of new insult and injury.

I believe, however, that the great material interests of the country demand a reconciliation of the sections, and the preservation of the Union; and I rely much upon the slow, but certain, the silent, but potential influence of this great agency to bring about a settlement of our present troubles. The main study of all should be to prevent any collision between the sections, and most especially the shedding of the first drop of blood. If we can but succeed in averting these calamities, the great, practical business interests of the country may, perchance, sooner or later, bring about a re-construction of the Union and a restoration of harmony between the sections.

It is earnestly to be hoped that these great interests, aided by the disinterested promptings of a sincere patriotism, may rise in their power and with potential authority require of the fanaticism of the North to abandon an agitation which must lead to certain and swift destruction. If this shall be done, who can doubt that a returning sense of confidence will be felt by the injured and exasperated South, and that peace and the Union will be restored.

The American people are eminently practical in their temper and judgment, and also in their action, when they can be brought to deliberate. They must see that no interest — not one in the whole extent of the American continent — can fail to be materially injured, and some of them utterly annihilated, by a dissolution of the Union. If there is nothing in the majestic power of our great Confederacy that can excite a feeling of just pride in the hearts of our people — if our self-interests have ceased to value the solid advantages which accrue to all from the respect and protection that follow our flag over the surface of the whole globe — surely the desolation and misery which the dullest apprehension must see will follow in the track of civil war, and the contempt which such an event will be certain to excite for us in the mind of all Europe, ought at least to prompt to a careful and wise deliberation before a fend is commenced which shall become irreconcilable.

The South should remember, that in dissolving the Union she annihilates a mighty army of true, unselfish and devoted friends at the North, who battle forever for the constitutional rights of the slave States. Without this great and efficient aid, the power of abolition fanaticism would be unbroken and unchecked — would indeed ‘"surround the South with a wall of fire. "’ It would do more. New England would consort with Old England in devising means by which the cruel and inhuman philanthropy practiced by the latter in the West India islands should be repeated here. That religious zeal which turned away from all rational hope of progress in Christian faith half a million of Africans to the savageism of fetish worship, and converted the fairest islands of the sea into a desert and waste — that English justice which seized upon a thousand millions of her subjects' property and vaunted herself before the world for having paid one-tenth of its value — would find surely and speedily ample room, in conjunction with New England abolitionism, for the practice of her pharisaical virtues amidst the fields of Virginia and Louisiana. If the hate of New England abolitionists to the South is sleepless and malignant — if they hope by fraud and indirection, by agitation and theft, to harass the South and to impair the security and value of her slave property — all combined would, in my belief, be justice, honesty and fair dealing compared with the inexorable hate and majestic fanaticism of England directed against the slavery of a dismembered Union and a feared and hated commercial rival.

Twenty-five years more of Union and harmony will concentrate the controlling commercial power of the world in the waters of New York. Then, the decline of England becomes as certain as was that of Alexandria and Venice, and for the same cause. Instead of the first, she becomes a third rate European power. But let disunion take place — let civil war and discord distract this country, and England well knows that the ships of the North must rot at their wharves, and the busy hum of their manufactories must cease forever. Then, indeed, would England feel again that she was mistress of the seas, without a rival, secure in a commerce that no power could ever shake.

It is a fatal error to suppose that the interest of England would prompt her to foster the planting interests of the South. From the Prince Consort, who sat silently by and witnessed the deliberate insult of an American minister by a British peer, before the congregated intelligence of all Christendom simply because slavery existed in the United States, down to the wretched cockney himself, forty times the slave to suffering and circumstances beyond what any negro is to law, there is not an Englishman who does not in his heart abhor slavery, if he does not also abhor the country where it exists. England will have margin enough to supply her wants for cotton, even with a large diminution of our present production — if the demand of the North for it is out off, as it would be by disunion and civil war. But England, safe in her commercial ascendancy, does not always follow that line of policy which others might think conducive to her interest. She sacrifices much and largely to gratify a hatred, to vindicate a blunder, or cater to a sentiment. Without caring much about the opinions of others, she values very highly her own, and with a laudable desire to appear righteous in her own eyes, perpetrates any act of cruelty or oppression, under the pious pretence of evangelizing and civilizing the heathen, or reforming the heresies of the Christian. She ravages Chief because they unwittingly brutalize their nation by eating opium. She desolates India because that benighted people are averse to rendering up their independence and their rupees in exchange for Bibles and a crushing military despotism. But it is not the Mongol or Tartar race alone that experience the tender mercies of England in enforcing the blessings of liberty and the saving grace of the Thirty-Nine Articles. It is in vain that Ireland points to the illustrious pages of history--English history — enacted by her sons. It is in vain that the most renowned periods of her senatorial fame have drawn their peculiar lustre from the genius of Ireland, or that the topmost rounds of her military celebrity have been reached under the leadership of the same race; neither of these considerations, nor all combined, have been able to save that unfortunate nation from a perpetual impalement, compared with which the worst forms of African slavery are mercy and a blessing. A few years ago, only a few years ago, England, with her mighty resources, with that empire upon which the sun in his daily course, it is boasted, never ceases to shine stood a calm spectator from her own happy shores and looked with Christian complacency across the Irish Channel at the torture of their people writhing in the agony of starvation; a million of whom, it is computed, died from famine, and its accompanying diseases. During this period, English philanthropy found emissaries and means enough to dispatch to America for the purpose of stirring up the spirit of abolitionism, to overthrow the Union, and incite the negro to insurrection. The shrieks of famishing multitudes of her own subjects have never pierced the heart of England like the fancied wrongs of the African race in the cotton fields of the South--though it may be truly asserted that no slave has ever died of starvation on our continent.

The South can never count upon the friendship of England, or upon her toleration of evils not her own. Once within the reach of her power, she will fix upon us forever the very badge of inferiority which we are now ready to destroy the Union to escape; and will foster our products so far, and so far only, as may be absolutely necessary to supply her wants. England would insist upon making good her record upon the slavery question.--To sacrifice the interests of a class, or even to starve to death a few hundred thousands of her subjects in the laudable task, would constitute a very small obstacle to her policy.

But with all these consequences attending the measure of disunion, and multitudinous others, which readily occur to every mind, no option is left now but, either to choose to encounter them or to secure those guarantees which must stop at once and forever the aggressions and agitation to which the North has been so long addicted, on the subject of slavery. With proper guarantees of this sort, which could be given by amendments to the Constitution, we may go on in a happy and cordial Union, made so from a mutuality of pecuniary interests, and a consciousness which union will give us of power to maintain all our rights and command the respect of the world.

I am of opinion that the Legislature of Virginia should immediately call a convention of the people of the State, with a view of referring all these momentous questions to the arbitrament of a convention of all the States, such as is provided for in the Federal Constitution, and that, in the meantime, Virginia should use all her influence to calm the exasperated feelings of the country, and to prevent, if possible, a hostile collision in any quarter or from any cause.

With high regard, I am, very truly, your obedient servant, John B. Floyd.

Nat. Tyler, Esq., Richmond, Va.

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