Mr. Slidell.  I send to the Secretary a paper, which I desire to have read.

The Secretary read, as follows: 

"An Ordinance to dissolve the union between the State of Louisiana and other States united with her, under the compact entitled 'The Constitution of the United States of America.’

"We, the people of the State of Louisiana, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the ordinance passed by us in convention on the 22d day of November, in the year 1811, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America, and the amendments of said Constitution, were adopted, and all laws and ordinances by which the State of Louisiana became a member of the Federal Union, be, and the same are hereby, repealed and abrogated; and that the union now subsisting between Louisiana and other States, under the name of the United States of America,' is hereby dissolved.

"We do further declare and ordain, that the State of Louisiana hereby resumes all rights and powers heretofore delegated to the Government of the United States of America; that her citizens are absolved from all allegiance to said Government; and that she is in full possession and exercise of all those rights of sovereignty which appertain to a free and independent State.

"We do further declare and ordain, that all rights acquired and vested under the Constitution of the United States, or any act of Congress, or treaty, or under any law of this State and not incompatible with this ordinance, shall remain in force and have the same effect as if this ordinance had not been passed.

"The undersigned hereby certifies that the above ordinance is a true copy of the original ordinance adopted this day.  by the convention of the State of Louisiana.

"Given under my hand and the great seal of Louisiana, at Baton Rouge this 26th day of the month of January, in the year of our Lord 1861.

"[l.  s.] A.  MOUTON, President of the Convention.

“J.  Thomas Wheat, Secretary of the Convention."

Mr. Slidell.  Mr. President, the document which the Secretary has just read, and which places on the files of the Senate official information that Louisiana has ceased to be a component part of these once United States, terminates the connection of my colleague and myself with this body.  The occasion, however, justifies, if it does not call for, some parting words to those whom we leave behind, some forever, others we trust to meet again and to participate with them in the noble task of constructing and defending a new Confederacy; which, if it may want at first the grand proportions and vast resources of the old, will still possess the essential elements of greatness, a people bold, hardy, homogeneous in interests and sentiments, a fertile soil, an extensive territory, the capacity and the will to govern themselves through the forms and in the spirit of the Constitution under which they have been born and educated.  Besides all these, they have an advantage which no other people seeking to change the Government under which they had before lived have ever enjoyed; they have to pass through no intervening period of anarchy; they have in their several State Governments, already shaped to their hands, everything necessary for the preservation of order, the administration of justice, and the protection of their soil and their property from foreign or domestic violence.  They can consult with calmness and act with deliberation on every subject, either of immediate interest or future policy.

But, if we do not greatly mistake the prevailing sentiment of the Southern mind, no attempt will be made to improve the Constitution; we shall take it such as it is; such as has been found sufficient for our security and happiness, so long as its true intent and spirit lived in the hearts of a majority of the people of the free States, and controlled the action not only of the Federal but of the State Legislatures.  We will adopt all laws not locally inapplicable or incompatible with our new relations; we will recognize the obligations of all existing treaties—those respecting the African slave trade included.  We shall be prepared to assume our just proportion of the national debt; to account for the cost of all the forts and other property of the United States, which we have been compelled to seize in self-defense, if it should appear that our share of such expenditure has been greater than in other sections; and above all, we shall, as well from the dictates of natural justice and the principles of international law as of political and geographical affinities and of mutual pecuniary interests, recognize the right of the inhabitants of the valley of the Mississippi and its tributaries to its free navigation; we will guarantee to them a free interchange of all agricultural productions without impost, tax duty, or toll of any kind; the free transit from foreign countries of every species of merchandise, subject only to such regulations as may be absolutely necessary for the protection of any revenue system we may establish, and for purposes of police.

As for such States of the Union as may not choose to unite their destinies with ours, we shall consider them, as we shall all other foreign nations, “enemies in war, in peace, friends.” We wish and we hope to part with them amicably; and, so far as depends on us, they shall have no provocation to pursue a hostile course; but in this regard we, from the necessities of the case, can only be passive; it will be for the people of the non-slaveholding States to decide this momentous question.  This declaration, however, requires some qualification.  Could the issue be fairly presented to the people of those States, we should have little doubt of a peaceful separation, with the possibility of a complete, and the probability of a partial, reconstruction on a basis satisfactory to us and honorable to them; but, with the present representations in either branch of Congress, we see nothing to justify our indulging any such expectation.  We must' be prepared to resist coercion, whether attempted by avowed enemies, or by a hand heretofore supposed friendly, by open war, or under the more insidious, and, therefore, more dangerous pretext of enforcing the laws, protecting public property, or collecting the revenue.  We shall not cavil about words, or discuss legal and technical distinctions; we shall consider that one as equivalent to the other, and shall be prepared to act accordingly.  Utroque arbitrio parati.  You will find us ready to meet you with the outstretched hand of fellowship, or in the mailed panoply of war, as you may will it; elect between these alternatives.

We have no idea that you will even attempt to invade our soil with your armies; but we acknowledge your superiority on the sea, at present, in some degree accidental, but in the main, natural, and permanent, until we shall have acquired better ports for our marine.  You may, if you will it, persist in considering us bound to you during your good pleasure; you may deny the sacred and indefeasible right, we will not say of secession, but of revolution—ay, of rebellion, if you choose so to call our action—the right of every people to establish for itself that form of Government which it may, even in its folly, if such you deem it, consider best calculated to secure its safety and promote its welfare.  You may ignore the principles of our immortal Declaration of Independence; you may attempt to reduce us to subjection, or you may, under color of enforcing your laws or collecting your revenue, blockade our ports.  This will be war, and we shall meet it, with dififerent but equally efficient weapons.  We will not permit the consumption or introduction of any of your manufactures; every sea will swarm with our volunteer militia of the ocean, with the striped bunting floating over their heads, for we do not mean to give up that flag without a bloody struggle, it is ours as much as yours; and although for a time more stars may shine on your banner, our children, if not we, will rally under a constellation more numerous and more resplendent than yours.  You may smile at this as an impotent boast, at least for the present, if not for the future; but if we need ships and men for privateering, we shall be amply supplied from the same sources as now almost exclusively furnish the means for carrying on, with such unexampled vigor, the African slave trade —New York and New England.  Your mercantile marine must either sail under foreign flags or rot at your wharves.

But, pretermitting these remedies, we will pass to another equally efficacious.  Every civilized nation now is governed in its foreign relations by the rule of recognizing Governments “de facto.” You alone invoke the doctrine of the “de jure,” or divine right of lording it over an unwilling people strong enough to maintain their power within their own limits.  How long, think you, will the great naval powers of Europe permit you to impede their free intercourse with their best customers for their various fabrics, and to stop the supplies of the great staple which is the most important basis of their manufacturing industry, by a mere paper blockade?  You were, with all the wealth and resources of this once great Confederacy, but a fourth or fifth rate naval power, with capacities, it is true, for large, and in a just quarrel, almost indefinite, expansion.  What will you be when not merely emasculated by the withdrawal of fifteen States, but warred upon by them with active and inveterate hostility?

But enough, perhaps somewhat too much of this.  We desire not to speak to you in terms of bravado or menace.  Let us treat each other as men, who, determined to break off unpleasant, incompatible, and unprofitable relations, cease to bandy words, and mutually leave each other to determine whether their differences shall be decided by blows or by the code which some of us still recognize as that of honor.  We shall do with you as the French guards did with the English at the battle of Fontenoy.  In a preliminary skirmish, the French and English guards met face to face; the English guards courteously saluted their adversaries by taking off their hats; the French returned the salute with equal courtesy.  Lord Hay, of the English guards, cried out, in a loud voice: “Gentlemen of the French guards, fire.” Count D'Auteroche replied in the same tone: “Gentlemen, we never fire first.” The English took them at their word, and did fire first.  Being at close quarters, the effect was very destructive, arid the French were, for a time, thrown into some disorder; but the fortunes of the day were soon restored by the skill and courage of Marshal Saxe, and the English, under the Duke of Cumberland, suffered one of the most disastrous defeats which their military annals record.  Gentlemen, we will not fire first.

We have often seen it charged that the present movement of the Southern States is merely the consummation of a fixed purpose, long entertained by a few intriguers for the selfish object of personal aggrandizement.  There never was a greater error —if we were not about to part, we should say a grosser or more atrocious calumny.  Do not deceive yourselves; this is not the work of political managers, but of the people.  As a general rule, the instincts of the masses, and the sagacity of those who, in private life, had larger opportunities for observation and reflection, had satisfied them for the necessity of separation long before their accustomed party leaders were prepared to avow it.  We appeal to every Southern Senator yet remaining here, whether such be not the case in his own State.  Of its truth, we can give no stronger illustration than the vote in the Louisiana convention.  Of one hundred and thirty members, every delegate being in his seat, one hundred and thirteen voted for immediate secession; and of the seventeen who voted against it, there were not more than four or five who did not admit the necessity of separation, and only differed as to the time and mode of its accomplishment.

Nor is the mere election, by the forms of the Constitution, of a President distasteful to us, the cause, as it is so often and so confidently asserted, of our action.  It is this : we all consider the election of Mr. Lincoln, with his well-known antecedents and avowed principles and purposes, by a decided majority over all other candidates combined in every non-slaveholding State on this side of the Pacific slope, noble, gallant New Jersey alone excepted, as conclusive evidence of the determined hostility of the Northern masses to our institutions.  We believe that he conscientiously entertains the opinions which he has so often and so explicitly declared, and that, having been elected on the issues thus presented, he will honestly endeavor to carry them into execution.

While now we have no fears of servile insurrection, even of a partial character, we know that his inauguration as President of the United States, with our assent, would have been considered by many of our slaves as the day of their emancipation; and that the 4th of March would have witnessed, in various quarters, outbreaks, which, although they would have been promptly suppressed, would have carried ruin and devastation to many a Southern home, and have cost the lives of hundreds of the misguided victims of Northern negrophilism.

Senators, six States have now severed the links that bound them to a Union to which we were all attached, as well by many ties of material well-being as by the inheritance of common glories in the past, and the well-founded hopes of still more brilliant destinies in the future!  Twelve seats are now vacant on this floor.  The work is only just begun.  It requires no spirit of prophecy to point to many, many chairs around us that will soon, like ours, be unfilled; and if the weird sisters of the great dramatic poet could here be conjured up, they would present to the affrighted vision of those on the other side of the Chamber, who have so largely contributed to 'the deep damnation of this taking off,” a “glass to show them many more.”  They who have so foully murdered the Constitution and the Union will find, when too late, like the Scottish Thane, that, “for Banquo's issue they have filled their minds;” “they have but placed upon their heads a fruitless crown, and put a barren scepter in their gripe, no son of theirs succeeding.”

In taking leave of the Senate, while we shall carry with us many agreeable recollections of intercourse, social and official, with gentlemen who have differed with us on this, the great question of the age, we would that we could, in fitting language, express the mingled feelings of admiration and regret with which we look back to our associations on this floor with many of our Northern colleagues.  They have, one after the other, fallen in their heroic struggle against a blind fanaticism, until now but few—alas! how few—remain to fight the battle of the Constitution.  Several even of these will terminate their official career in one short month, and will give place to men holding opinions diametrically opposite, which have recommended them to the suffrages of their States.  Had we remained here, the same fate would have awaited, at the next election, the four or five last survivors of that gallant band; but now we shall carry with us at least this one consoling reflection: our departure realizing all their predictions of ill to the Republic, opens a new era of triumph for the Democratic party of the North, and will, we firmly believe, reestablish its lost ascendency in most of the non-slaveholding States.