amending it, if necessary, has never been attempted by those who
have urged the State on to this destructive measure. The State might
have proposed a call for a general convention to the other States, and
Congress, if a sufficient number of them concurred, must have called it.
But the first magistrate of South Carolina, when he expressed a hope
that, "on a review by Congress and the functionaries of the general
government of the merits of the controversy," such a convention will be
accorded to them, must have known that neither Congress, nor any
functionary in the general government, has authority to call such a
convention, unless it be demanded by two-thirds of the States. This
suggestion, then, is another instance of the reckless inattention to the
provisions of the Constitution with which this crisis has been madly
hurried on; or of the attempt to persuade the people that a
constitutional remedy has been sought and refused. If the legislature of
South Carolina "anxiously desire" a general convention to consider their
complaints, why have they not made application for it in the way the
Constitution points out? The assertion that they "earnestly seek" it is
completely negatived by the omission.

This, then is the position in which we stand. A small majority of the
citizens of one State in the Union have elected delegates to a State
convention; that convention has ordained that all the revenue laws of
the United States must be repealed, or that they are no longer a member
of the Union. The governor of that State has recommended to the
legislature the raising of an army to carry the secession into effect,
and that he may be empowered to give clearances to vessels in the name
of the State. No act of violent opposition to the laws has yet been
committed, but such a state of things is hourly apprehended, and it is
the intent of this instrument to PROCLAIM, not only that the duty
imposed on me by the Constitution, "to take care that the laws be
faithfully executed," shall be performed to the extent of the powers
already vested in me by law, or of such others as the wisdom of Congress
shall devise and intrust to me for that purpose; but to warn the
citizens of South Carolina, who have been deluded into an opposition to
the laws, of the danger they will incur by obedience to the illegal and
disorganizing ordinance of the convention--to exhort those who have
refused to support it to persevere in their determination to uphold th