like groundless fiction. A foreign prince, who served for a time in the
Federal Army, and has since undertaken to write a history of "The Civil
War in America"--a history the incomparable blunders of which are
redeemed from suspicion of willful misstatement only by the writer's
ignorance of the subject--speaks of the Southern representatives as
having "kept their seats in Congress in order to be able to paralyze its
action, forming, at the same time, a center whence they issued
directions to their friends in the South to complete the dismemberment
of the republic."[108] And again, with reference to the secession of
several States, he says that "the word of command issued by _the
committee at Washington was_ promptly obeyed."[109]

Statements such as these are a travesty upon history. That the
representatives of the South held conference with one another and took
counsel together, as men having common interests and threatened by
common dangers, is true, and is the full extent of the truth. That they
communicated to friends at home information of what was passing is to be
presumed, and would have been most obligatory if it had not been that
the published proceedings rendered such communication needless. But that
any such man, or committee of men, should have undertaken to direct the
mighty movement then progressing throughout the South, or to control,
through the telegraph and the mails, the will and the judgment of
conventions of the people, assembled under the full consciousness of the
dignity of that sovereignty which they represented, would have been an
extraordinary degree of folly and presumption.

The absurdity of the statement is further evident from a consideration
of the fact that the movements which culminated in the secession of the
several States began before the meeting of Congress. They were not
inaugurated, prosecuted, or controlled by the Senators and
Representatives in Congress, but by the Governors, Legislatures, and
finally by the delegates of the people in conventions of the respective
States. I believe I may fairly claim to have possessed a full share of
the confidence of the people of the State which I in part represented;
and proof has already been furnished to show how little effect my own
influence could have upon their action, even in the negative capacity of
a brake upon the wheels, by means of which it was hurried on to
consummation.

As for the imputation of holding our seats as a vantage-