6 When I look around and see our prosperity in every thing, agriculture, commerce, art, science, and every department of education, physical and mental, as well as moral advancement, and our colleges, I think, in the face of such an exhibition, if we can, without the loss of power, or any essential right or interest, remain in the Union, it is our duty to ourselves and to posterity to —let us not too readily yield to this temptation—do so. Our first parents, the great progenitors of the human race, were not, without a like temptation when in the garden of Eden. They were led to believe that their condition would be bettered—that their eyes would be opened—and that they would become as gods. They in an evil hour yielded—instead of becoming gods, they only saw their own nakedness. I look upon this country, with our institutions, as the Eden of the world, the paradise of the universe. In the Georgia State Convention, held in January, 1861, to determine the question of secession for that State, Mr. Stephens gave utterance to the following memorable words: “ This step (of secession) once taken, can never be recalled ; and all the baleful and withering consequences that must follow, will rest on the convention for all coming time. When we and our posterity shall see our lovely South desolated by the demon of war, which this act of yours will inevitably invite and call forth \ when our green fields of waving harvest shall be trodden down by the murderous soldiery and fiery car of war sweeping over our land ; our temples of justice laid in ashes ; all the horrors and desolations of war upon us; who but this Convention will be held responsible for it? and who but him who shall have given his vote for this unwise and ill-timed measure, as I honestly think and believe, shall be held to STRICT ACCOUNT FOR THIS SUICIDAL ACT BY THE PRESENT GENERATION, AND PROBABLY CURSED AND EXECRATED BY POSTERITY FOR ALL coming time, for the wide and desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this act you now propose to perpetrate ? Pause, I entreat you, and consider for a moment what reasons you can give that will even satisfy yourselves in calmer moments—what reasons you can give to your fellow-sufferers in the calamity that it will bring upon us. What reasons can you give to the nations of the earth to justify it ? They will be the calm and deliberate judges in the case; and what cause or one overt act can you name or point, on which to rest the plea of justification ? What right has the North assailed? What interest of the South has been invaded ? What justice has been denied ? and what claim, founded in justice and right, has been withheld ?• Can either of you to-day name one governmental act of wrong, deliberately and purposely done by the government of Washington, of which the South has a right to complain ? I challenge the answer. While, on the other hand, let me show the facts (and believe me, gentlemen, I am not here the advocate of the North; but I am here the friend, the firm friend and lover of the South and her institutions, and for this reason I speak thus
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