TENNESSEE. 



G77 



candidate. The total vote of the State was as 



follows: Lincoln, ; Douglas, 11,850; 



Breckinridge, 64,709 ; Bell, 69,274. The elec- 

 tion, however, having resulted in the choice 

 of Lincoln, the people of Tennessee quietly 

 acquiesced. But Isham G. Harris, the Gov- 

 ernor, holding extreme opinions upon the sub- 

 ject of slavery, warmly sympathized with the 

 secession movement, which followed in the 

 Southern slave States immediately after the 

 election, and maintained an active correspond- 

 ence with its leaders. Accordingly he called 

 a session of the General Assembly for the 7th 

 of January, 1861 ; and in his message to the 

 body, on its assembling, he stated that the pur- 

 pose of the call was, that they should deliberate 

 upon the " crisis " in the affairs of the coun- 

 try, which had been produced, as he said, by 

 " the systematic, wanton, and long continued 

 agitation of the slavery question, with the ac- 

 tual and threatened aggressions of the Northern 

 States and a portion of their people, upon the 

 well-defined, constitutional rights of the South- 

 ern citizens ; the rapid growth and increase, in 

 all the elements of power, of a purely sectional 



Earty. -whose bond of union is uncompromising 

 ostility to the rights and institutions of the 

 fifteen Southern States." After a long recital of 

 grievances, he declared that he submitted to the 

 discretion of the Legislature, " the whole ques- 

 tion of our " (the State's) " Federal relations ; " 

 and though having no doubt himself as to the 

 necessity and propriety of calling a State Con- 

 vention, he yet recommended that the law to 

 be passed should submit " to the people of the 

 State the question of convention or no conven- 

 tion." The evils complained of, he said, could be 

 obviated by certain amendments to the national 

 Constitution, which were: 1. The establish- 

 ment of a line through the territories to the 

 Pacific, all the territory north of which should 

 be forever free, and all south of itforerer slave. 

 2. Any State refusing to deliver a fugitive slave, 

 to pay the owners double his value. 3. Securi- 

 ty in the possession of slaves by masters travel- 

 ling through, or sojourning in a free State ; and 

 slaves lost, in such cases, to be paid for by the 

 State in which the escape occurred. 4. A pro- 

 hibition against the abolition of slavery in the 

 District of Columbia, and in dockyards, navy- 

 yards, arsenals, or any other district in a slave 

 State under the national jurisdiction. 5. These 

 provisions never to be changed, except by the 

 consent of all the slave States. He had, he 

 said, no hope of such concessions, for " two 

 months had passed since the development of 

 the facts which make the perpetuity of the 

 nion depend alone upon the giving to the 

 South satisfactory guarantees for her chartered 

 rights, yet no proposition at all satisfactory " 

 had been made " by any member of the domi- 

 nant and aggressive party " of the North. 



A controlling conservative sentiment mani- 

 fested itself in the Legislature, which, while it 

 endorsed the position that the grant of addi- 

 tional guarantees to the South should be made 



a condition of Tennessee's remaining in the 

 Union, determined that the State should not 

 be precipitated into secession. The bill call- 

 ing for a convention of the people of the 

 State, provided that any ordinance or resolu- 

 tion which might be adopted by said Conven- 

 tion having for its object a change of the posi- 

 tion or relation of the State to the National 

 Union, or her sister Southern States, should 

 be of no binding force or effect until it was 

 submitted to or ratified by the people, and re- 

 quired a vote equal to a majority of the votes 

 cast in the last election for Governor to ratify it. 

 Thus the people had an opportunity, in voting 

 for delegates, to declare for or against seces- 

 sion : and should the action of the Convention 

 contemplate any change in the Federal rela- 

 tions of the State, they had still the opportunity 

 of endorsing or overruling alike their former 

 decision and the action of the Convention. 

 The election for members of the Convention 

 was to be held on the 9th of February, the 

 Convention to assemble on the 25th. 



At this same date, in a public meeting, held 

 in Nashville, it was urged that the third party 

 at the last Presidential election, the " Consti- 

 tutional Union party," and its champion, John 

 Bell, had held the doctrine that the election of 

 Mr. Lincoln would be a just cause for the dis- 

 solution of the Union. Mr. Bell, -who was at 

 the meeting, rose and denied the charge. Upon 

 this, cheers rang through the hall, satisfying 

 the audience of the predominant Union feel- 

 ing in that assemblage, notwithstanding the 

 disunion element had mustered its strength. 

 Mr. Bell, before he sat down, expressed the 

 hope and conviction that all would be well 

 with the Union ; and this declaration was re- 

 ceived with great applause. 



The resolutions of the Legislature of New 

 York were replied to with moderation and also 

 with great decision, as follows : 



Setolved, That the Legislature of Tennessee has heard 

 with profound regret the resolution come to by the Leg- 

 islature of the State of New York, offering men and 

 money to the Government, in order to coerce sovereign 

 States. That the General Assembly of Tennessee sees in 

 the action of the Legislature of New York an indication of 

 the disposition to complicate existing difficulties, and 

 to force the Southern States into submission; and, so 

 regarding it, the State of Tennessee requests to inform 

 the State of New York that, if any force be sent South 

 for the purpose of subjugating the people thereof, the 

 people of the State will join as one man to resist such 

 an invasion at all hazards and to the last extremity. 



The result of the election for delegates to a 

 State convention was highly successful to the 

 friends of the Union. Even West Tennessee 

 gave a Union majority. The following returns, 

 except a few counties, show the relative strength 

 of union and disunion in the State : 



Union. Disunion. 



East Tennessee 30,903 5,577 



Middle Tennessee 36,809 9,S2S 



West Tennessee 24,091 9,344 



Total 91,803 24,749 



Union majority 67,054 



