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EXECUTIVE
DEPARTMENT,
Frankfort, Ky., December 28, 1860.
Hon.
S. F. HALE,
Commissioner from the State of Alabama:
Your
communication of the 27th instant, addressed to
me by authority of the State of Alabama, has been attentively
read. I concur with you in the opinion that the grave political
issues yet pending and undetermined between the slave-holding and
non-slave-holding States of the Confederacy are of a character to
render eminently proper and highly important a full and frank
conference on the part of the Southern members, identified, as
they undoubtedly are, by a common interest, bound together by
mutual sympathies, and with the whole social fabric resting on
homogeneous institutions. And coming as you do in a spirit of
fraternity, by virtue of a commission from a sister Southern
State, to confer with the authorities of this State in reference
to the measures necessary to be adopted to protect the interests
and maintain the honor and safety of the States and their
citizens, I extend you a cordial welcome to Kentucky.
You
have not exaggerated the grievous wrongs,
injuries, and indignities to which the slave-holding States and
their citizens have long submitted with a degree of patience and
forbearance justly attributable alone to that elevated patriotism
and devotion to the Union which would lead them to sacrifice
well-nigh all save honor to recover the Government to its
original integrity of administration and perpetuate the Union
upon the basis of equality established by the founders of the
Republic. I may even add that the people of Kentucky, by reason
of their geographical position and nearer proximity to those who
seem so madly bent upon the destruction of our constitutional
guarantees, realize yet more fully than our friends farther south
the intolerable wrongs and menacing dangers you have so
elaborately recounted. Nor are you, in my opinion, more keenly
alive than are the people of this State to the importance of
arresting the insane crusade so long waged against our
institutions and our society by measures which shall be certainly
effective. The rights of African slavery in the United States and
the relations of the Federal Government to it, as an institution
in the States and Territories, most assuredly demand at this time
explicit definition and final recognition by the North. The
slave-holding States are now impelled by the very highest law of
self-preservation to demand that this settlement should be
concluded upon such a basis as shall not only conserve the
institution in localities where it is now recognized, but secure
its expansion, under no other restrictions than those which the
laws of nature may throw around it. That unnecessary conflict
between free labor and slave labor, but recently inaugurated by
the Republican party as an element in our political struggles,
must end, and the influence of soil, of climate, and local
interests left unaided and unrestricted save by constitutional
limitations to control the extension of slavery over the public
domain. The war upon our social institutions and their guaranteed
immunities waged through the Northern press, religious and
secular, and now threatened to be conducted by a dominant
political organization through the agency of State Legislatures
and the Federal Government must be ended. Our safety, our honor,
and our self-preservation alike demand that our interests be
placed beyond the reach of further assault.
The
people of Kentucky may differ variously touching
the nature and theory of our complex system of government, but
when called upon to pass upon these questions at the polls I
think such an expression would develop no material variance of
sentiment touching the wrongs you recite and the necessity of
their prompt adjustment. They fully realize the fatal result of
longer forbearance, and appreciate the peril of submission at
this juncture. Kentucky would leave no effort untried to preserve
the union of the States upon the basis of the Constitution as we
construe it, but Kentucky will never submit to wrong and
dishonor, let resistance cost what it may. Unqualified
acquiescence in the administration of the Government upon the
Chicago platform, in view of the movements already inaugurated at
the South and the avowed purposes of the representative men of
the Republican party, would, I feel assured, receive no favor in
this State. Whether her citizens shall, in the last resort, throw
themselves upon the right of revolution as the inherent right of
a free people never surrendered, or shall assert the doctrine of
secession, can be of little practical import. When the time of
action comes (and it is now fearfully near at hand) our people
will be found rallied as a unit under the flag of resistance to
intolerable wrong, and being thus consolidated in feeling and
action, I may well forego any discussion of the abstract theories
to which one party or another may hold to cover their resistance.
It
is true that as sovereign political communities the
States must determine, each for itself, the grave issues now
presented; and it may be that, when driven to the dire extremity
of severing their relations with the Federal Government, formal,
independent, separate State action will be proper and necessary.
But resting, as do these political communities, upon a common
social organization, constituting the sole object of attack and
invasion, confronted by a common enemy, encompassed by a common
peril--in a word, involved in one common cause, it does seem to
me that the mode and manner of defense and redress should be
determined in a full and free conference of all the Southern
States, and that their mutual safety requires full co-oper-ation
in carrying out the measures there agreed upon. The source whence
oppression is now to be apprehended is an organized power, a
political government in operation, to which resistance, though
ultimately successful (and I do not for a moment question the
issue), might be costly and destructive. We should look these
facts in she face, nor close our eyes to what we may reasonably
expect to encounter. I have therefore thought that a due regard
to the opinions of all the slave-holding States would require
that those measures which concern all alike and must ultimately
involve all should be agreed upon in common convention and
sustained by united action.
I
have before expressed the belief and confidence, and
do not now totally yield the hope, that if such a convention of
delegates from the slave-holding States be assembled, and, after
calm deliberation, present to the political party now holding the
dominance of power in the Northern States and soon to assume the
reins of national power, the firm alternative of ample guarantees
to all our rights and security for future immunity or resistance,
our just demands would be conceded and the Union be perpetuated
stronger than before. Such an issue, so presented to the Congress
of the United States and to the Legislatures and people of the
Northern States (and it is practicable, in abundant time before
the Government has passed into other hands) would come with a
moral force which, if not potent to control the votes of the
representative men, might produce a voice from their constituents
which would influence them. But if it fail, our cause would
emerge, if possible, stronger fortified by the approbation of the
whole conservative sentiment of the country and supported by a
host of Northern friends who would prove, in the ultimate issue,
most valuable allies. After such an effort every man in the
slave-holding States would feel satisfied that all had been done
which could be done to preserve the legacy bequeathed us by the
patriots of '76 and the statesmen of '89, and the South would
stand in solid, unbroken phalanx a unit. In the brief time left
it seems to me impracticable to effect this object through the
agency of commissioners sent to the different States. A
convention of authorized delegates is the true mode of bringing
about co-operation among the Southern States, and to that
movement I would respectfully ask your attention, and through you
solicit the co-operation of Alabama.
There
is yet another subject upon which the very highest
considerations appeal for a united Southern expression. On the
4th of March next the Federal Government, unless contingencies
now unlooked for occur, will pass into the control of the
Republican party. So far as the policy of the incoming
administration is foreshadowed in the antecedents of the
President elect, in the enunciations of its representative men
and the avowals of the press, it will be to ignore the acts of
sovereignty thus proclaimed by Southern States, and of coercing
the continuance of the Union. Its inevitable result will be civil
war of the most fearful and revolting character. Now, however the
people of the South may differ as to the mode and measure of
redress, I take it that the fifteen slave holding States are
united in opposition to such a policy, and would stand in solid
column to resist the application of force by the Federal
authority to coerce the seceding States. But it is of the utmost
importance that before such a policy is attempted to be
inaugurated the voice of the South should be heard in potential,
official, and united protest. Possibly the incoming
Administration would not be so dead to reason as after such an
expression to persist in throwing the country into civil war, and
we may therefore avert the calamity. An attempt "to enforce
the laws" by blockading two or three Southern States would
be regarded as quite a different affair from a declaration of war
against 13,000,000 of freemen; and if Mr. Lincoln and his
advisers be made to realize that such would be the issue of the
"force policy," it will be abandoned. Should we not
realize to our enemies that consequence and avert the disastrous
results? But if our enemies be crazed by victory and power and
madly persist in their purpose, the South will be better prepared
to resist.
You
ask the co-operation of the Southern States in
order to redress our wrongs. So do we. You have no hope of a
redress in the Union. We yet look hopefully to assurances that a
powerful reaction is going on at the North. You seek a remedy in
secession from the Union. We wish the united action of the slave
States, assembled in convention within the Union. You would act
separately; we unitedly. If Alabama and the other slave States
would meet us in convention, say at Nashville or elsewhere, as
early as the 5th day of February, I do not doubt shall we would
agree in forty-eight hours upon such reasonable guarantees, by
way of amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as
would command at least the approbation of our numerous friends in
the free States, and by giving them time to make the question
with the people there, such a reaction in public opinion might
yet take place as to secure us our rights and save the
Government. If the effort failed the South would be united to a
man, the North divided, the horrors of civil war would be averted
(if anything can avert the calamity). And if that be not possible
we would be in a better position to meet the dreadful collision.
By such action, too, if it failed to preserve the Government, the
basis of another confederacy would have been agreed upon, and the
new government would in this mode be launched into operation much
more speedily and easily than by the action you propose.
In
addition to the foregoing, I have the honor to
refer you to my letter of the 16th ultimo to the editor of The
Yeoman and to my letter to the Governors of the slave States,
dated the 9th of December, herewith transmitted to you, which,
together with what I have said in this communication, embodies,
with all due deference to the opinions of others, in my judgment,
the principles, policy, and position which the slave States ought
to maintain. The Legislature of Kentucky will assemble on the
17th of January, when the sentiment of the State will doubtless
find official expression. Meantime, if the action of Alabama
shall be arrested until the conference she has sought can be
concluded by communication with that department of the
government, I shall be pleased to transmit to the Legislature
your views. I regret to have seen in the recent messages of two
or three of our Southern sister States a recommendation of the
passage of laws prohibiting the purchase by the citizens of those
States of the slaves of the border slave-holding States. Such a
course is not only liable to the objection so often urged by us
against the abolitionists of the North of an endeavor to prohibit
the slave-trade between the States, but it is likewise wanting in
that fraternal feeling which should be common to States which are
identified in their institutions and interests. It affords me
pleasure, however, to add, as an act of justice to your State,
that I have seen no indication of such a purpose on the part of
Alabama. It would certainly be considered an act of in justice
for the border slave-holding States to prohibit, by their
legislation, the purchase of the products of the cotton-growing
States, even though it be founded upon the mistaken policy of
protection to their own interests. I cannot close this
correspondence without again expressing to you my gratification
in receiving you as the honored commissioner from your proud and
chivalrous State, and at your courteous, able, dignified, and
manly bearing in discharging the solemn and important duties
which have been assigned to you.
I
have the honor to be, with sentiments of high
consideration, your friend and obedient servant,
B.
MAGOFFIN.
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