Excerpt from Resolutions and Address, Adopted by the Southern Convention: Held at Nashville, Tennessee, June 3d to 12th Inclusive, in the Year 1850

Stability of the Union, an effort was made, supported by a large portion of the Northern Representatives, to suppress it by a. Rule in the House of Representatives, which provided, that all petitions on the subject of slavery, should be neither considered, printed, or referred. This rule was assailed by the people of the Northern States, as violating that clause of the Constitution which prohibits Congress from passing laws to prevent the people trom peaceably assembling and petitioning for a redress of grievances. In December, 1844, this rule fell before the almost unanimous voice of the North; and thus the unlimited power ofin troducing and considering the subject of slavery in Congress, was asserted. In the mean time, the course of the Nirthern people showed clea1ly, that the agitation cl slavery in Congress was only one of the means they 1elied on to overthiow this ln stitution throughout the Union. Newspapers were set up amongst them, and lecturers were hired to go abroad to excite them against slavery in the Southern States. Organizations were formed to carry off slaves from the South, and to protect them by violence from recapture. Although the Constitution requires that fugitive slaves, like fugitives fromjustice, should be rendered up by the States to which they may have fled, the legis latores of almost every Northern State, faithless to this treaty stipulation between the States, passed laws designed and calcula ted entirely to defeat this provision of the Constitution, without which the Union would never have existed, and by these laws virtually nullified the act of 1794, passed by Congress to aid its enforcement. Not content with the agitation of slavery in po litical circles, the Northern people forced it also into the re ligious associations extending over the Union, and produced a separation of the Methodist and Baptist churches. The result of all these various methods of assailing slavery in the South ern States, was, that it became the grand topic of interest and discussion in Congress and out of Congress, and one of the most important elements of politics in the Union. Thus an institu tion, belonging to the Southern States exclusively, was wrested from their exclusive control; and instead of that protection which is the great object of all governments, and which the Constitution of the United States guarantees to all the States and their institutions, the Northern States. And Congress un der their control, combined together, to assail and destroy slavery in the South. The Southern States did nothing to vindicate their rights and arrest this course of things. The Mexican war broke out; and instead of that patriotic co opetation of all sec tions 0! Tiie Union, which would have taken place in the better days of the Republic, to hting it to a just and honmable conclu sion, in the ve1y first appropriation bill to carry it on. The N01 th cndi avmed to thrust the subject of slavely. Throughout the war, they kept up the agitation; thus clearly misnilc
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