heartily cooeperated with us,
there were several members from the Border States whose expressions
were not less friendly, although they did not think it expedient to
act with us. Our committee made all the representations and
explanations which were deemed necessary; and having performed my duty
in that connection, in the earnest hope that we had influenced the
action of Congress in the right direction, I was about to return home
with my colleagues, when I received a telegraphic despatch requesting
me to attend the meeting of this Conference. I obeyed the summons; and
since I received it, I have been laboring with all the ability,
strength, and power with which GOD has blessed me, to secure the
adoption of some plan here, that would settle our difficulties and
avert from our beloved country the evils with which she is now
threatened.

Sir, there has not one moment passed since I came here, during which I
have not felt a deep and overpowering sense of the grave
responsibility which rests upon myself and the other members of this
Conference. I am accustomed to the trials, vexations, cares, and
responsibilities of business; I know how to meet and grapple with them
calmly. But I do not feel so here. My days are anxious and excited--my
nights are wakeful and sleepless. In all the weary watches of last
night, I could not close my eyes in slumber. The reason was, because I
saw from a point of view which you do not, the certain and inevitable
ruin that is threatening the business, commercial interests of this
country, and which is sure to fall with crushing force upon those
interests, unless we come to some arrangement here.

I speak to you now as a business man--as a merchant of New York, the
commercial metropolis of the nation. I am no politician, I have no
interest except such as is common to the people. But let me assure
you, that even I can scarcely realize, much less describe, the
stagnation which has now settled upon the business and commerce of
that great city, caused solely by the unsettled and uncertain
condition of the questions which we are endeavoring to arrange and
settle here.

I tell you what I do not get from second hands, but what I know
myself, when I assure you that had not Divine Providence poured out
its blessings upon the great West in an abundant harvest, and at the
same time opened a new market for that harvest in foreign lands,
bringing it through New York in its transit, our city would now
prese