e of rock and tempest's roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,
Are all with thee,--are all with thee."

Mr. WHITE:--I shall not occupy much of the time of the Conference. All
the speeches that have been made, and all the declamation that has
been uttered on this floor, have not made a single convert. Last of
all would I wish to follow the gentleman who has just taken his seat.
He proposes to postpone action, asserts that we are acting without
consideration, in haste, and without due deliberation. I look upon
this subject from a different point of view. I believe the motive of
Pennsylvania in first responding to the invitation of Virginia was to
induce the States to meet here in council, and remove that peril which
now threatens our common country.

Pennsylvania had another reason. She is a border State; she has a
deeper and more vital interest in the present unhappy differences than
New York or the North. If there is to be war; civil, unnatural war,
whose country is to be devastated, whose fields laid waste and
trampled down? They are those of the border States--of Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, and possibly New Jersey. These are
the States that are to suffer. Gentlemen from New York and the North
East, in the bosom of their families, their towns and cities not in
the least danger, may be as impassive as the granite rocks that bind
their shores. We have a deeper, a more vital interest; therefore we
feel and speak. When Pennsylvania received the invitation of Virginia,
South Carolina, Georgia, and other States had seceded. Dangers were
accumulating. Then it was that the old conservative Keystone State
threw herself into the breach. She sent her delegation here to save
the country and not to change the Constitution--not to alter it, but
to explain it and to give our Southern sisters the guarantees they
once did not ask and did not need. We believed that the great majority
of the people of the Southern States were Union loving men, who choose
to sail under the flag of the Union, rather than under any piratical
and treasonable banner. We knew there were rebels within those States,
as there is a faction at the North composed of men as much rebels as
they are. We knew, also, that there was a large body of men at the
So