Conventions usurping the powers of the people, and sending delegates
over whom they will lose all control in the establishment of a
Provisional Government, which is the plan of the dictators.

"'This Caucus also resolved to take the most effectual means to dragoon
the Legislatures of Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and
Virginia into following the Seceding States. Maryland is also to be
influenced by such appeals to popular passion as have led to the
revolutionary steps which promise a conflict with the State and Federal
Governments in Texas.

"'They have possessed themselves of all the avenues of information in
the South--the telegraph, the press, and the general control of the
postmasters. They also confidently rely upon defections in the army and
navy.

"'The spectacle here presented is startling to contemplate. Senators
entrusted with the representative sovereignty of the States, and sworn
to support the Constitution of the United States, while yet acting as
the privy councillors of the President, and anxiously looked to by their
constituents to effect some practical plan of adjustment, deliberately
conceive a Conspiracy for the overthrow of the Government through the
military organizations, the dangerous secret order, the 'Knights of the
Golden Circle,' 'Committees of Safety,' Southern leagues, and other
agencies at their command; they have instituted as thorough a military
and civil despotism as ever cursed a maddened Country.

"'It is not difficult to foresee the form of government which a
Convention thus hurriedly thrown together at Montgomery will irrevocably
fasten upon a deluded and unsuspecting people. It must essentially be