accordingly communicated to
Congress on the same day. In the Senate, they were referred to a
committee, and were recommended for adoption by a majority of that
committee; but Messrs. Seward and Trumbull, a minority of the
committee, reported against the amendments, and in favor of a National
Convention; thus following out and approving the proposition which had
been made in the Convention by your Commissioners, and the entire
minority of that party, nearly three weeks before, and for which the
majority which controlled it, if it had chosen to do so, could at any
time have obtained an unanimous vote. The amendment of the Convention,
however, failed to secure the approval of either branch of Congress.

The labors of your Commissioners having thus terminated, it is due to
those whom they represented, and to themselves, that the majority
should state briefly the reasons why the proposed amendments to the
Constitution did not meet their approbation.

_First._--In their judgment, no amendment of that sacred instrument in
the interest, and for the purpose of the extension and perpetuation of
the slave power--an interest which has wielded the whole political
power of the United States during almost the entire existence of the
Government--was either expedient or necessary. They preferred it
should remain and continue just as it came from the hands of our
revolutionary fathers; a Constitution establishing freedom and not
slavery.

_Second._--The Convention would scarcely listen to, much less adopt,
any amendment in the interest of freedom or of free labor, or of the
rights of citizens of the free States; the only one of that
character--that in relation to securing to the citizens of each State
the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several
States--having been voted down as a direct proposition when offered by
Mr. Wilmot, and only adopted in an indirect way at the end of the
section requiring payment to be made by Congress for rescued slaves.
In like manner the absolute right of secession in every State as
inherent under the Constitution of the United States was claimed to
exist by members of the Convention from the slave States, accompanied
by a denial of any right in the General Government to coerce obedience
to it, or to enforce the laws for the collection of revenue. And
although all the delegates from the slave States did not take this
ground, yet in several instances a majority of the delegates from
several of