--Letter from the Hon. C. C.
Clay.
With the failure of the Senate Committee of Thirteen to come to any
agreement, the last reasonable hope of a pacific settlement of
difficulties within the Union was extinguished in the minds of those
most reluctant to abandon the effort. The year 1861 opened, as we have
seen, upon the spectacle of a general belief, among the people of the
planting States, in the necessity of an early secession, as the only
possible alternative left them.
It has already been shown that the calmness and deliberation, with which
the measures requisite for withdrawal were adopted and executed, afford
the best refutation of the charge that they were the result of haste,
passion, or precipitation. Still more contrary to truth is the
assertion, so often recklessly made and reiterated, that the people of
the South were led into secession, against their will and their better
judgment, by a few ambitious and discontented politicians.
The truth is, that the Southern people were in advance of their
representatives throughout, and that these latter were not agitators or
leaders in the popular movement. They were in harmony with its great
principles, but their influence, with very few exceptions, was exerted
to restrain rather than to accelerate their application, and to allay
rather than to stimulate excitement. As sentinels on the outer wall, the
people had a right to look to them for warning of approaching danger;
but, as we have seen, in that last session of the last Congress that
preceded the disruption, Southern Senators, of the class generally
considered extremists, served on a committee of pacification, and strove
earnestly to promote its objects.
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