shall secure to the owners of slaves the
right of transit with their slaves between and through the
non-slaveholding States or Territories, constitute the basis
of such an adjustment of the unhappy controversy which now
divides the States of this Confederacy, as would be
accepted by the people of this Commonwealth."

From this resolution, it is clear that the General Assembly,
in its declared opinion of what would be acceptable to the
people of Virginia, not only required the Crittenden
propositions as a basis, but also held the modifications
suggested in addition essential. In this the undersigned
fully concurs. But, in his opinion, the propositions
reported by the majority do not give, but materially weaken
the Crittenden propositions themselves, and fail to accord
the modifications suggested. The undersigned therefore,
feels it his duty to submit and recommend, as a substitute,
the resolutions referred to, as proposed by the Hon. JOHN J.
CRITTENDEN, with the incorporation of the modifications
suggested by Virginia explicitly expressed, and with some
alterations on points which, he is assured, would make them
more acceptable to that State, and, as he hopes, to the
whole Union. The propositions submitted are appended, marked
No. 1.

The undersigned, while contenting himself, in the spirit of
the action taken by the General Assembly of his State, with
the proposal of that substitute for the majority report,
would be untrue to his own convictions, shared, as he
believes, by the majority of the commissioners from
Virginia, and to his sense of duty, if he did not
emphatically declare, as his settled and deliberate
judgment, that for permanent safety in this Union, to the
slaveholding States, and the restoration of integrity to the
Union and harmony and peace to the country, a guarantee of
actual power in the Constitution and in the working of the
Government to the slaveholding and minority section is
_indispensable_. How such guarantee might be most wisely
contrived and judiciously adjusted to the frame of the
Government, the undersigned forbears now to inquire. He is
not exclusively addicted to any special plan, but believing
that such guarantee might be adequately afforded by a
partition of power in the Senate between