We must be invaded by Davis or by Lincoln. The former can rally fifty thousand of the best and bravest sons of Virginia, who will rush with wiling hearts and ready hands to the standard that protects the rights and defends the honor of the South -- for every traitor heart that offers aid to Lincoln there will be many, many who will glory in the opportunity to avenge the treason by a sharp and certain death. Let not Virginians be arrayed against each other, and since we cannot avoid war, let us determine that together, as people of the same State, we will defend each other, and preserve the soil of the State from the polluting foot of the Black Republican invader.
The question, "where shall Virginia go?" is answered by Mr. Lincoln, She must go to war -- and she must decide with whom she wars -- whether with those who have suffered her wrongs, or with those who have inflicted her injuries.
Our ultimate destruction pales before the present emergency. To war! to arms! is now the cry, and when peace is declared, if ever, in our day, Virginia may decide where she will finally rest. But for the present she has no choice left; war with Lincoln or with Davis is the choice left us. Read the inaugural carefully, and then let every reader demand of his delegate in the Convention the prompt measures of defense which it is now apparent we must make.
The voice of the people of Virginia has yet to be heard upon the failure of the Peace Congress and upon the Inaugural of Mr. Lincoln. The result of the election for this Convention was an earnest and honest expression of Virginia's love and attachment to the Union. The much boasted "60,000" majority was the emphatic declaration of the people for a just and final settlement. The determination of the people to accept nothing but what was just and final, was as decided as the majority for the Union was overwhelming. The honest sentiment of Virginia has been misinterpreted by the North, and accepted by Mr. Lincoln as cowardice. The love and attachment of Virginia for a constitutional Union has been received as a manifestation of willingness to abide by the Union upon all or any terms. Even in the Convention among the delegates this majority is regarded as submissive willingness to any terms.
The cold, deliberate purpose of civil war indicated in the inaugural at first staggered the majority, and for a while revived the hopes of the Virginia party. But soon an apologetic spirit evinced itself: "nobody is hurt" by the inaugural -- "nobody is scared" by the voice from Washington -- was to be heard within twelve hours after the inaugural was received in Richmond. Tuesday morning there were delegates as "cool" as they were on Sunday, and who saw no reason for any immediate action by the Convention, notwithstanding the inaugural. "Precipitancy," "haste," "hurry," are words which at any precedent will drive this Convention from its propriety and force an adjournment upon the most important propositions. "Why this precipitancy?" "Why this unnecessary haste" are questions asked at any moment in the Convention, and instantly, "Mr, President, I move that this Convention do now adjourn," is heard from some quarter, and the motion is carried. Thus the Convention "drags its slow length along," without proposing anything, without acting upon anything, but with much speaking upon nothing.
Is there to be no end to waiting? Is action to be ever deferred for fear it may be precipitate? This nonsense has been heard long enough; this trifling has ? worse than contemptible, it is criminal. We tell the Convention that the game of waiting, the trick of deliberation no longer deceives the people, and they will not remain the silent dupes of such treacherous by-play. The people are beginning to speak out. We invite attention to the meeting in Albemarle -- it is the first -- the beginning of what will soon be heard from the Panhandle to the Dismal Swamp, from the Atlantic to the Ohio.
The example set by Albemarle will be followed by other counties: letters from the most earnest Union men have been received by delegates as well as ourselves, demanding action. The inaugural had not been received when the meeting in Albemarle on Tuesday was held. That address must rouse the people, they cannot, they will not assume the wicked indifference to its malignant purposes that has been evinced and uttered by delegates in Richmond. We invoke the people at their March Courts to assemble and speak their wishes.
RICHMOND, Va., Feb., 1861.
The African Church, in Broad street, was crowded to its utmost capacity last evening, with an enthusiastic audience, assembled to hear an address from the Hon. Roger A. Pryor, on the subject of secession. The Commissioners appointed by Maryland to confer with Virginia, having arrived in Richmond in the afternoon, were greeted with loud cheering when they entered the building, and were conducted to seats on the platform. Although laboring under considerable indisposition, Mr. Pryor spoke for an hour and a half in his usual fluent and eloquent strain. He argued that the Union was now in reality dissolved, and the separation of the States was eternal.
He reviewed the course of the Republicans in Congress, and pointed out the policy of the present Republican Administration. Pouring out the vials of his invective upon the submissionists in the Convention, he disclosed the procrastinating programme of that body. Doubting the sincerity of the proposition of their Majority Report recommending a border State Convention, he said Virginia must either submit to humiliation at the footstool of the North, or unite her fortunes with the Southern Confederacy; and he said he would rather be dragged at the tail of South Carolina than to be laid in chains on the triumphal ear of Massachusetts. In speaking of Eastern and Western Virginia, he said he did not think Western Virginia was faithfully represented by the delegates from that section in the State Convention. If it should be the demonstrated purpose of Western Virginia, by the despotism of brute force, to hold the Eastern portion of the Commonwealth under the bondage of a Black Republican majority, he for one would raise the standard of revolution. His address was received with great enthusiasm.
An episode, during its delivery, caused by the entrance of a large delegation from Petersburg, bearing a beautiful flag of the Southern Confederacy, the sight of which was the signal for rapturous cheering, produced a fine effect.
It was announced that the Rev. Dr. Carter of Texas would address the citizens of Richmond on the subject of secession at the same place on Monday evening.
The importance of Abraham Lincoln is vastly overrated by the Black Republicans of the North, and the Submissionists of the South. They endeavor to impress upon the people the idea that he holds in his hand the issue of life or death to the South, and that he has fully made up his mind to speak the life giving word to our section! Many presses and politicians of the South declare for Submission and against Secession, upon the ground that Lincoln will give the country a "conservative administration." Does any reflecting man, of any section, really believe that the present opinions or intentions of Abraham Lincoln, whether right or wrong, ought to have the slightest influence in deciding the question of the relations of the border-slave States to the two confederacies between which they are now compelled to make choice? No considerate mind can view Lincoln, in the position to which he was called last November, in any other light than that of a mere "feather on the tide" of Abolitionism. The people of the South have no fears of the feather, but they ought to be alive to the importance of protecting themselves against the torrent of Abolition fanaticism which threatens to engulf them.
So say the Abolitionists of the North and the Submissionists of the South, in speaking of the seceding States. Does any considerate man, of either section, really think so? Can any intelligent individual, with the lights now before him, believe in the possibility of th eearly return, or even the final return, of the "Confederate States of the South" to the Union controlled by the abolition power of the North? Surely not. Those States withdrew from the Union upon grounds which amply justified them, in the opinion of a candid world. Their Government is in successful operation, and its permanent establishment is conceded as a fixed fact by foes as well as friends. It is daily gaining-strength and influence, and bids fair to become, at an early-day, the great power of America. The notion, therefore, that the Southern Confederacy will soon come to an end, is ridiculous in the extreme. The man who expects to witness the return of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisians, Florida, Mississippi and Texas, or any one of them, to the government of New England, must be nearly related to the Egyptian traveller who waited on the banks of the Nile for all the water to pass by that he might walk over to the other side without wetting his feet. The idea that a stream so rapid as the Nile must soon discharge all its waters, its about as sensible and as philosophic as any which can be advanced in support of the probability of the early death of the Southern Confederacy. Like the famed river of Egypt, the Southern Confederacy has a pure and never failing source, and is destined in its course to irrigate for the most useful purposes, political, social, commercial and moral, a vast land. -- And if we cannot hope that it has a long a time to run as the charter of nature gives to the river of Egypt, we may yet reasonably expect that, founded as it is, upon the eternal principles of right and justice adn strengthened and sustained by an unfaltering trust in Divine Providence, the Southern Confederacy established in 1861, will long live. We may even hope that, in duration, it will exceed the pryamids, which, after the lapse of more than forty centuries, still stand erect and unshaken above the floods of the Nile.