As the Convention had been in session
several days when the Massachusetts delegation appeared, we were
assigned to seats that were remote from the chair.
The convention was composed of three classes of men. Secessionists,
led by John Tyler, the president of the convention, Seddon of Virginia,
and Davis and Ruffin of North Carolina; border State men from Virginia,
Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Kentucky, who had faith in
differing degrees that the Union might be saved, and war averted; and
radical men who had no faith that anything could be done by which the
Union could be saved, except through war. Soon after my arrival in
Washington, I called on a Sunday upon Mr. Seddon. We had a free
conversation. He said:
"It is of no use for us to attempt to deceive each other. You have one
form of civilization, and we have another. You think yours is the best
for you, and we think that ours is the best for us. But our culture is
exhausting, and we must have new lands. One part of your people say
that Congress shall exclude slavery from the territories, and another
set of men say that it will be excluded by natural laws. Under either
theory, somebody must go, and if we can't go with our slaves, we must
go without them and our country will be given up to the negroes."
With the system of slavery, and in the absence of knowledge of the
value of manufactured fertilizers, this was not an unreasonable view.
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