CONGRESS, U. S. 



133 



the country was thus stated : " "When the ec- 

 centric movements of secession and disunion 

 shall have ended, in whatever form that end 

 may come, and the angry excitements of the 

 hour shall have subsided, and calmness once 

 more shall have resumed its accustomed sway 

 over the public mind, then, and not until then 

 one. two, or three years hence I should 

 cheerfully advise a convention of the people, to 

 be assembled in pursuance of the Constitution, 

 to consider and decide whether any and what 

 amendments of the organic national law ought 

 to be made/' 



On the conclusion of Mr. Seward's remarks 

 the Senate immediately adjourned, and no ac- 

 tion took place upon the message. 



The States of Florida and Alabama, having 

 retired from the Union, so far as any action on 

 the part of their State conventions could effect 

 it, the next step was taken by their Senators 

 and Representatives in Congress, who with- 

 drew from their seats. The Senators from 

 South Carolina resigned before the session of 

 Congress commenced. They had not, there- 

 fore, been in their seats. The Senate was 

 called to witness this novel scene for the first 

 time on the 21st of January. 



Mr. Yulee, from Florida, taking the floor, 

 said : " Mr. President, I rise to make known to 

 the Senate, that in consequence of certain pro- 

 ceedings, which have lately taken place in the 

 State of Florida, my colleague and myself are 

 of the opinion that our connection with this 

 body is legally terminated. 



" The State of Florida has, through a conven- 

 tion of her people duly assembled, decided to 

 recall the powers delegated to this Govern- 

 ment, and to assume the full exercise of all her 

 sovereign rights as an independent and separate 

 ;omiminity. 



" I am sure that I truly represent her, when 

 say that her people have not been insensible 

 the many blessings they have enjoyed under 

 e Constitution of the United States, nor to 

 e proper advantages of a Union directed to 

 e great purposes of ' establishing justice, in- 

 suring domestic tranquillity, promoting the gen- 

 eral welfare, and securing the blessings of lib- 

 erty to themselves and their posterity.' They 

 have held in patriotic reverence the memories 

 that belong to the Union of American States in 

 its origin and progress, and have clung with a 

 fond assurance to the hope that its wise plan, 

 and the just principles upon which it was based, 

 would secure for it a perpetual endurance and 

 transcendent usefulness. 



" They have decided that their social tran- 

 quillity and civil security are jeoparded by a 

 longer continuance in the Union, not from the 

 contemplated or necessary operation of the 

 Constitution, but from the consequences, as they 

 conc<Mve, of an unjust exercise of the powers 

 it conferred, and a persistent disregard of the 

 spirit of fraternity and equality in which it 

 was founded. Recent events have impressed 

 them with the belief that the peace of their 

 13 



homes and the preservation of their community 

 interest can only be secured by an immediate 

 withdrawal from the dangers of a perverted 

 and hostile employment of the powers of the 

 Federal Government. They are not willing to 

 disturb the peace of their associates by an in- 

 flamed and protracted struggle within the Union, 

 for rights they could never, with self-respect 

 or safety, surrender, and against a policy of 

 administration which, although sanctioned and 

 authorized by the late decision of a majority 

 of the States, they regard to be hostile to their 

 best interests, and violative of the legitimate 

 duty and trusts of the Government. They have 

 preferred to abandon all the hopes they rested 

 upon the common growth and common power 

 of the Union, and to assume the serious respon- 

 sibilities of a separate existence and new and 

 untried relations. It is only under a deep sense 

 of duty to themselves and their posterity that 

 so important a step has been taken. I am sure 

 that the people of Florida will ever preserve 

 a grateful memory of their past connection with 

 this Government, and a just pride in the con- 

 tinued development of American society. They 

 will also remember that although, to their 

 regret, a majority of the people in the States 

 of the Northern section of the Union have seen 

 their duty to lie in a path fatal to the safety of 

 Southern society, they have had the sympathies 

 of a large array of noble spirits in all those 

 States, whose sense of justice, and whose brave 

 efforts to uphold the right, have been not the 

 less appreciated, nor will be the less remem- 

 bered, because unsuccessful. 



'' "VTe have not been wanting in timely warn- 

 ing to our associates of the unhappy tendency 

 of their policy. It was in the unhallowed pur- 

 suit, as we thought, of sectional aggrandize- 

 ment, and the indulgence of unregulated senti- 

 ments of moral duty, that the equilibrium of 

 power between the sections, which had been 

 maintained until then, was ruthlessly and un- 

 wisely destroyed by the legislation of 1850. 

 The injustice and danger of those proceedings 

 were considered by a large portion of the South 

 to be so flagrant, that we resorted to an unusual 

 formality in bringing our views and apprehen- 

 sions to the attention of the country. Upon 

 our official responsibility, a number of the Sen- 

 ators, those of Florida among them, giving ex- 

 pression to the opinions of their constituents, 

 presented a written protest against the wrong 

 to which our section was subjected, and a fra- 

 ternal warning against the dangerous tendency 

 of the policy which incited to that wrong. 

 That protest was refused a place in the jour- 

 nals of this body, contrary, as we thought, to 

 the express duty enjoined by the Constitution ; 

 but it went before the public, and I think it 

 proper to recall the attention of this body to its 

 contents, in the hour when the apprehensions 

 it expressed are fatally realized.* 



* The following is the protest referred to in Mr. Tulee's 

 remarks, and which was presented in the Senate by Mr. 



