February 13, 1861; The Charleston Mercury
MONTGOMERY, February 10, 1861.
The Provisional Constitution being disposed of, I understand that yesterday a committee was raised, of two from each State, to frame and report a Permanent Constitution for the Confederacy. The members of this committee from your State, I learn, are Mr. RHETT and Mr. CHESNUT. Not much was done in the Provisional Constitution by way of improvement on the abandoned United States Constitution. The taxing power seems as vague as in the United States Constitution; whilst there is an implied stigma on the institution of slavery, by going beyond the Constitution of the United States, which only authorized Congress, after a certain time, to prohibit the African slave trade; whereas, it is prohibited in the Provisional Constitution itself. All debates on the Constitution being secret, the course of your delegation is unknown; but the Conventions of Alabama and Georgia both instructed their delegates to prohibit it in the Constitution. I suppose it to be a beg to the frontier States, which is about as respectable as the present course of those States, who are begging the Abolitionists. So far, the Abolitionists have shown most decidedly the highest and most consistent spirit in vindicating their positions and principles. As the Congress has adopted all the nine volumes of the United States laws, tariff and all, I do not see what is to keep the Congress long here. If there is to be no war, they can certainly rise by the 4th of March, and by that time this fact will be known, if it is to exist. I believe it will not exist. If the frontier States do not join us, and join their Northern confederates, they will control them, and then there will be no war; and if they join us there will be no war. In either event, therefore, there will be no war. War from Fort Sumter, since Col. HAYNE return is followed by no action, is here considered as past hoping for. Fighting in South Carolina is confined to the Poet’s Corner in the MERCURY – that is what an Alabamian said to me today.