in it. The North can preserve the Union, easily preserve it by the observance of constitutional obligations and a due regard for the principles from which the Union arose, the South may possibly preserve the Union by union and the firm maintenance of their rights; not by submission to wrong, not by blind worship of a name, not by peans over the corpse when the animating spirit has filed. Accept, gentlemen, my thanks for the very grateful manner in which you have communicated the invitation to which this is a reply; like yourselves I am a friend of the Nashville Convention, indeed it has been strange to me that whilst Conventions are constantly held at the North to destroy our security, our prosperity, our character, and pass to a great extent unrebuked, the first proposition to prepare for defence, to counteract the assailants is met by wide spread condemnation, and even some in the South join in the unjust cry. When Abolitionists convene for our destruction it is the sacred right peaceably to assemble, but if Southern men convene for defence, it is denounced by the ignorance and hollow hearted as treason. Such is too apt to be the fate of a minority in a Government as powerful to reward as our own. From the aroused attention of the people I hope for a just appreciation of our condition; from their patriotism and judgment for the proper measures in the present and all future contingencies. Please, gentlemen, present me in acceptable terms to those with whom you are associated, and believe me very truly, your friend and fellow-citizen, JEFFERSON DAVIS. To messrs. S. Coburn, J. B. Thrasher, Jno. C. Humphreys, Dr. S. F. R. Abbay, R. T. Archer, J. J. Wood, J. Jeffries, D. Cameron, J. M. Magruder. (Introduction to questions and answers in the two letters following.) The letter of Col. Jefferson Davis, copied below, is in reply to the following questions, lately propounded to him at JackLet every true Southerner carefully read it, and then ask himself if Col. Davis does not, in this letter, set forth the true and proper cause to be pursued by the Southern States: son. B. D. Nabors and others to Jefferson Davis. (From Woodville Republican, December 3, 1850.) 1st. Are you in favor of dissolution of the Union now or hereafter, because of the legislation at the late session of Congress? 2nd. Are you in favor of the establishment of a Southern Confederacy, now or hereafter, because of the late session of Congress ? 3d. Are you in favor of a secession of the State of Mississippi from the Union now or hereafter, because of the legislation of the late session of Congress? 4th. Are you in favor of resistance, of any and what kind, to the recent acts of Congress? If so, please state the character, the manner and time of such resistance. Signed. B. D. NABORS, C. F. HEMINGWAY, GEO. H. FOOTE, W. BROOKE, JAS. E. SHARKEY, A. M. WEST. Jefferson Davis to B. D. Nabors and Others. Jackson, Nov. 19, 1850. Gentlemen: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of yesterday, which came to hand last night, under circumstances which you must have known precluded anything more than a brief reply. The questions you propound, except the last, seem to have been copied from a letter addressed to a Senator of Louisiana, by a citizen of that State, which, I trust explains the nature of the enquiries. No one, who has taken so much interest in my opinions as gravely to ask for them, could have failed to find, in my public course, sufficient reason for the modification of those questions, so as to conform to my well known position, had he been preparing questions for my own particular case. If any have falsely, and against the evidences before them, attempted to fix on me the charge of wishing to dissolve the Union, under existing circumstances, I am sure your information and intelligence has enabled you to detect the shallow fraud. If any have represented me as seeking to establish a Southern Confederacy on the ruins of that which our revolutionary fathers bequeathed to us, my whole life, and every sentiment I have ever uttered, in public or private, give them the lie. If any have supposed, gratuitously, (they could not otherwise,) that my efforts in the Senate were directed to the secession of Mississippi from the Union, their hearts must have been insensible to the obligations of honor and good faith, which I feel are imposed upon me, by the position of an accredited agent from Mississippi, to the Federal Government. Your fourth question, therefore, is the only one which I feel you could have addressed to me, as your Representative, for any other kind purpose, than to give me an opportunity thus summarily to dispose of baseless slanders against me. The responsibility of a Representative is for the course he has pursued; the issue between him and his constituents must be, that of approval or disapproval; the inquiry it involves is, did he truly represent those for whom he acted? was he right or wrong? To know what he would do in the future, the case must be distinctly stated; otherwise, he might answer to one supposition, when the inquiry was directed to another. It would require the gift of prophecy to tell what remote consequences may flow from the acts of the late session of Congress, and, without such gift, no one could assume to say what he might hereafter believe should be done. When a people lose the power to maintain their rights and protect their interests under the existing form of government, ordinary prudence requires that they should seek such change as will secure them against the destruction of both. The character of the aggression, the degree and imminence of the danger, will prescribe the means and indicate the necessity. To the debates of the Senate, and such of my public addresses as you may have heard, since my return to Mississippi, I refer you for the cause and reasons of my opposition to the measures adopted at the last session of Congress. You ask me if I am "in favor of any and what kind of resistance" to those acts. As your Representative, I declined to enter on that branch of the question in the U. S. Senate; in that capacity, I took the position that it was not for me to make an issue for the State. Your question is not, I think, one which directs itself to my official position; but, as I intend to answer, it is unnecessary to argue that point, and I mention it as leading to the statement that it is as a citizen, not as a Senator, of Mississippi, that I give you my opinion of our duty in the present crisis. I am in favor of the execution of the plan indicated by the State Convention of October, 1849, the address of that Convention to the slaveholding States, and by the Legislation of the State at its last session, which I consider may be stated thus: to submit the question to the people, in a law, for the assembling of a Convention of the State, to consider of and decide on our present condition and future prospects, and the measures which should be adopted. To prepare for the defence of the State, armed if need be. To propose a convention of the slave-holding States, to be composed of formally elected delegates, which should unite all those States who were willing to assert their equality, and right to equal protection in, and equal enjoyment of, the common property. The States thus united should, in my opinion, demand of the other States such guarantees as would secure to them the safety, the benefits, the tranquility which the Union was designed to confer. If granted, the minority could live in equality under the temple of our federal compact; if refused, it would be conclusive evidence of the design of the majority, to crush all paper barriers beneath the heel of power; the gulf of degradation would yawn before us. The equality to which we were born being denied, and the alternative of slavish submission or manly resistance being presented to us, I shall be in favor of the latter. Then, if full provision has been made, in the preparation of arms, of munitions of war, of manufacturing establishments, and all the varieties of agriculture to which our climate and soil are adapted, the slaveholding States, or even the planting States, may apply the last remedy -the final alternative of separation, without bloodshed or severe shock to commercial interests. Painful under any circumstances it must be to those who have through life cherished the hope of perpetuity to our Union, to see it destroyed; but faithful history will record our many sacrifices to preserve it, and the responsibility of its destruction must attach to those who, by assailment of the constitution, which they had the power to violate and not the will to observe, have stifled in the Union the breath of its existence. A most unfair attempt has been made to put in the foreground the question of Union or Disunion, by those who were violating or surrendering our constitutional rights. To yield to aggression is to produce, certainly in the future, that condition from which dissolution must, and civil war probably will spring; unless it be assumed, that the Southern minority will hereafter consent to occupy such position, towards the Northern majority, as the colonies of North America, on the 4th of July, 1776, determined not to hold towards the Kingdom of Great Britain. The destruction of that equilibrium, which would have prevented the overthrow of the constitution by the construction of an interested majority, may be charged to the generous concessions of the South in ceding the North West territory, in permitting the Missouri Compromise, and by other less noted acts which accumulated power in the North, by transfer from the South. Concession and sacrifice have not secured to us the good feeling of the North; submission to wrong will not more probably command their respect. To preserve the Union, the principles, the spirit of the Constitution must be preserved. I do not think the North has given us reason to expect this service from that quarter; how shall the South effect it? This, to my mind, is the question to which we should direct our investigation. Whatever can effect that end will give perpetuity to the Union; if it cannot be reached, then the Government changes its character; there might remain an Union but not the Union. For myself, I have no hesitation to inform you, that I prefer to go out of the Union, with the Constitution, rather than abandon the Constitution, to remain in an Union. I believe, gentlemen, I have answered your inquiry, as far as it was possible for me to do so, without further information than your letter affords; and have the pleasure to subscribe myself, very respectfully, your fellow-citizen, etc., JEFFERSON DAVIS. Messrs. B. D. Nabors, Charles B. Ames, C. F. Hemmingway, W. D. Lyle, C. R. Crusoe, Geo. H. Foote, W. Brooke, James E. Sharkey, A. M. West. Resolutions of the Mississippi Legislature commending the conduct of Senator Davis and censuring the conduct of Senator Foote. Dec. 19, 1850. Mr. FOOTE. Mr. President, I hold in my hand certain resolutions of censure upon my own course as a member of this body, adopted recently by the Legislature of the State of Mississippi, which I will submit with a single remark. I have no feeling at all relative to the proceedings of that body. The gentlemen who compose it are doubtless very respectable gentle |