their nominee, were elected, the States would not remain in the Union. He was truly a sectional candidate. He received no vote in the South, but was, under the provisions of the Constitution, duly elected nevertheless; for now the poll of the North was large enough to elect whom she pleased.
When the result of this election was announced, South Carolina and the Gulf States each proceeded to call a convention of her people; and they, in the exercise of their inalienable right to alter and abolish the common Government, and to institute a new one, resolved to withdraw from the Union—peaceably if they could. They felt themselves clear as to their right and thrice-armed; for they remembered that they were a Sovereign people, and called to mind those precious rights that had been solemnly proclaimed, and in which and for which we, and our fathers before us, had a most abiding faith, reverence, and belief. Prominent among them was, as we have seen, the right of each of these States to consult her own welfare and withdraw or remain in the Union in obedience to its dictates and the judgment of her own people. So they sent Commissioners to Washington to propose a settlement, the Confederate States offering to assume their quota of the debt of the United States, and asking for their share of the common property. This was refused.
In the meantime Virginia assembled her people in grand council too; but she had hitherto refused to come near the Confederate States in their councils. She had laid the cornerstone of the Union, her sons were its chief architects; and though she felt that she and her sister States had been wronged without cause, and had reason good and sufficient for withdrawing from a political association which no longer afforded domestic tranquillity, or promoted the general welfare, or answered its purposes, yet her love for the Union and the Constitution was strong, and the idea of putting down, without having first exhausted all her persuasives, and tried all means to save what had cost her so much, was intolerable. She thought the time for separation had not come, and waited first to try her own "mode and measure of redress." She considered that it should not be such as the Confederate States had adopted. Moreover, by standing firm, she hoped to heal the breach, as she had done on several occasions before. She asked all the States to meet her in a Peace Congress. They did so; and the North being
