ion of Lincoln.--South refuses to acquiesce.

No feature of the extraordinary winter of 1860-61 is more singular
in retrospect than the formal leave-taking of the Southern senators
and representatives in their respective Houses. Members of the
House from the seceding States, with few exceptions, refrained from
individual addresses, either of farewell or defiance, but adopted
a less demonstrative and more becoming mode. The South-Carolina
representatives withdrew on the 24th of December (1860), in a brief
card laid before the House by Speaker Pennington. They announced
that, as the people of their State had "in their sovereign capacity
resumed the powers delegated by them to the Federal Government of
the United States," their "connection with the House of Representatives
was thereby dissolved." They "desired to take leave of those with
whom they had been associated in a common agency, with mutual regard
and respect for the rights of each other." They "cherished the
hope" that in future relations they might "better enjoy the peace
and harmony essential to the happiness of a free and enlightened
people."

SOUTHERN REPRESENTATIVES WITHDRAW.

Other delegations retired from the House in the order in which
their States seceded. The leave-taking, in the main, was not
undignified. There was no defiance, no indulgence of bravado.
The members from Mississippi "regretted the necessity" which impelled
their State to the course adopted, but declared that it met "their
unqualified approval." The card was no doubt written by Mr. L. Q.
C. Lamar, and accurately described his emotions. He stood firmly
by his State in accordance with the political creed in which he
had been reared, but looked back with tender regret to the Union
whose destiny he had wished to share and under the protection of
whose broader nationality he had hoped to live and die. A few
Southern representatives marked their retirement by speeches bitterly
reproaching the Federal Government, and bitterly accusing the
Republican party; but the large majority confined themselves to
the simpler form of the card.

Whether the ease and confidence as to the future which these Southern
representatives manifested was really felt or only assumed, can
never be known. They were all men of intelligence, some of them
conspicuously able; and it seems incredible that they could have
persuaded themselves that a great government could