cals, satisfied with their success in the first skirmish, again
secured the appointment of a committee to report at the next meeting on
the subject of reopening the slave-trade.[7] This next meeting assembled
May 10, 1858, in a Gulf State, Alabama, in the city of Montgomery.
Spratt of South Carolina, the slave-trade champion, presented an
elaborate majority report from the committee, and recommended the
following resolutions:--

1. _Resolved_, That slavery is right, and that being right,
there can be no wrong in the natural means to its formation.

2. _Resolved_, That it is expedient and proper that the foreign
slave trade should be re-opened, and that this Convention will
lend its influence to any legitimate measure to that end.

3. _Resolved_, That a committee, consisting of one from each
slave State, be appointed to consider of the means, consistent
with the duty and obligations of these States, for re-opening
the foreign slave-trade, and that they report their plan to the
next meeting of this Convention.

Yancey, from the same committee, presented a minority report, which,
though it demanded the repeal of the national prohibitory laws, did not
advocate the reopening of the trade by the States.

Much debate ensued. Pryor of Virginia declared the majority report "a
proposition to dissolve the Union." Yancey declared that "he was for
disunion now. [Applause.]" He defended the principle of the slave-trade,
and said: "If it is right to buy slaves in Virginia and carry them to
New Orleans, why is it not right to buy them in Cuba, Brazil, or Africa,
and carry them there?" The opposing speeches made little attempt to meet
this uncomfortable logic; but, nevertheless, opposition enough was
developed to lay the report on the table until the next convention, with
orders that it be printed, in the mean time, as a radical campaign
document. Finally the convention passed a resolution:--

That it is inexpedient for any State, or its citizens, to
attempt to re-open the African slave-trade while that State is
one of the United States of America.[8]

83. ~Commercial Convention of 1859.~ The Convention of 1859 met at
Vicksburg, Mississippi, May 9-19, and the slave-trade party came ready
for a fray. On the second day Spratt called up his resolutions, and the
next day the Committee on Resolutions recommended that, _"in the opinion
of this Convention, all laws, State or Federal,