and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation by dividing the burden on a greater number of coadjutors." This warning, like those other warnings of Jefferson and Washington above mentioned, of course went unheeded by the Negro-exclusionists of the North and North-west.
Nullification, or State veto subject to federal referendum, was practicable in 1833; practicable and successful. In 1860-61 Abraham and Lot Again it was not practicable, because a State could not exercise her veto power out in the common territories, where the sectional, Northern party that had just been elected to power threatened anti-Southern legislation. Hence, when peace with honor was no longer possible within the union of States, the Southern States turned to the only possible peaceable alternative, secession, or complete withdrawal from that inter-State compact of government already so flagrantly violated, in act and in promise of further acts to come, by their Northern sisters.
That the voice and efforts, the counsels and measures of the Southland were still for peace, the record abundantly proves.
Sturdy little South Carolina, faithful to the spirit of her departed Hayne and Calhoun, was the first State to withdraw. On her invitation, delegates from five other of the "cotton States" that followed her in withdrawing, and later those from a sixth, Texas, met her own delegates in a Congress at Montgomery, Alabama, February 4, 1861. By this Congress was framed the provisional constitution of the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was chosen provisional President of the new union.
On February 15, 1861, before the arrival of Mr. Davis at Montgomery to take the oath of office, the Congress passed a resolution providing, (41) "that a commission of three persons be appointed by the President-elect as early as may be convenient after his inauguration, and sent to the government of the United States, for the purpose of negotiating friendly relations between that government and the Confederate States of America, and for the settlement of all questions of disagreement between the two governments, upon principles of right, justice, equity and good faith."