Extra session of the U. S. Senate.
Washington, March 7.
--Mr. Wigfall, the resolution to print the Inaugural being up, argued that its policy was war. He said the representatives from the Confederate States were accredited to this Government to make a treaty for a peaceable separation and division of the public property and debt.
It was nonsense to talk, as Lincoln did, of an unbroken Union, when seven States were out, never more to return.
If this Government does not remove the troops at Forts Sumter and Pickens, the Confederate States will soon do it for it. The old Union is dead, and the only question is, shall it be buried in a respectable Protestant manner, or by an Irish wake?
Mr. Douglas, in rejoinder, reiterated his positions of yesterday, that the Inaugural was indicative of peace.
He learned, from the best military authority, it would take 10,000 men, and the entire navy, to reinforce Sumter.
Mr. Mason said it was unusual to print an inaugural, as it was not a Senate document, but merely a disquisition on political views.
He took issue with Mr. Douglas, arguing that it was plainly a proclamation of war, only omitting the time when the military forces were to be used for the purposes stated therein.
There was a wicked omission, too, of the fact, that the Union was broken.
As for Virginia, he could not say whether she would take common cause with her sister States against coercion.
Adjourned. 