at they should
not share in the apprehensions which pervade the country; to expect
that they should not begin to look after the safety of their interests
and their institutions, were to expect something superhuman. Something
must be done to save the country, to allay these apprehensions, to
restore a broken confidence. Virginia steps in to arrest the progress
of the country on its road to ruin. She steps in to save the country.
I am here in part to represent her. I utter no menace; intimidation
would be unworthy of Virginia, but if I perform my duty I must speak
freely. The danger is imminent, _very_ imminent.

Our national affairs cannot longer remain in their present condition;
it is impossible, absolutely impossible that they should. My
Republican friends, will you not take warning? Were there not
pretended prophets of old, who cried, "Peace! Peace! when there was no
peace"? Political prophets to-day say there is no danger. Have their
counsels been wise heretofore? Can you not see that there is danger,
and imminent danger in them, now?

Look, sir, at our position! I mean the position of the loyal South. By
the secession of these States we are reduced to an utterly helpless
minority; a minority of seven or eight States to stand in your
national councils against an united North! It is not in the nature of
the Anglo-Saxon race thus to stand in the face of a dominant and
opposition party. Were the case reversed, you would not do it
yourselves. We cannot hold our rights by mere sufferance, and we will
not; we do not ask you to hold yours in that way. If the other States
had kept on with us--had remained in the Union--we might have secured
our rights in a fair contest. Now other paths are open to us, and one
of these we must follow.

I desire to say a word in answer to the propositions of my honorable
friend from Connecticut. What did he tell us? He said that this was a
self-sustaining Government; a Government that possessed the power of
securing its own perpetuity, and one that must not yield or make
concessions. Sir, let me say that ideas, that principles, that
statements of that kind have led to the downfall of every Government
on earth which has ever fallen. What but ideas and language of this
kind, forced our colonies into rebellion, and lost America to the
British crown?

Sir, I have had some experience in revolutions in another
hemisphere--in revolutions produced by the same causes that are now
operating among