hostilities had actually commenced;—that they came upon you little by little;—and that both Government and People found themselves plunged into this fearful Contest almost unawares; nor have you as yet had an opportunity of consulting together in General Convention, for the purpose of making known your opinions and wishes about the War or any of the vast issues growing out of it.
"The war has changed (for the present, at least) the character of your Government. What has become of the freedom of speech, your free press, and the inestimable right of habeas corpus?
"What, permit us to ask, are the Southern people doing beyond following the precepts and examples taught and practised by your Fathers and theirs, when they withdrew their allegiance from the Mother Country, and asserted their right to establish a Government of their own?
"The Declaration of Independence, which you hallow and celebrate every fourth day of July, asserts as self-evident, the right of the Southern people to set up a Government of their own.
"But we would ask, suppose you should at the end of another three years and a half, succeed in subduing the South and restoring the Union by force of arms, might you not then find out, when it was too late, that those pillars upon which rests your form of Government had been violently torn down, and that your own liberties had been buried in the ruins? If you will run the parallel between the South now and the Colonies in 1776, and compare the course pursued by the North now, and the Mother Country then, we think you will discover some striking resemblances; and among them, that with you now, as with the Crown then, rests the privilege of giving Peace to the American Continent.
"Why not then, without further delay, recognise the duty
