s, ay,
even the fierce struggle over Kansas, would sink into insignificance,
and Mr. DAVIS, with that political prescience for which he was always
remarkable, seemed to discern the first sign of the coming storm. The
winds had been long sown, and now the whirlwind was to be reaped. The
thirty-sixth Congress, which had opened so inauspiciously, and which his
vote had saved from becoming a perpetuated bedlam, met for its second
session on the 3d of December, 1860, with the clouds of civil war fast
settling down upon the nation. In the hope that war might yet be
averted, on the fourth day of the session, the celebrated committee of
thirty-three was raised, with the lamented Corwin, of Ohio, as chairman,
and Mr. DAVIS as the member from Maryland. When the committee reported,
Mr. DAVIS sustained the majority report in an able speech, in which,
after urging every argument in favor of the report, he boldly proclaimed
his own views, and the duties of his State and country. In his speech of
7th February, 1861, he said:

"I do not wish to say one word which will exasperate the already
too much inflamed state of the public mind; but I will say that the
Constitution of the United States, and the laws made in pursuance
thereof, _must be enforced_; and they who stand across the path of
that enforcement must either _destroy_ the _power_ of the _United
States_, or it will _destroy them_."

For such utterances only a small part of the people of his State was on
that day prepared. Seduced by the wish, they still believed that the
Union could be preserved by fair and mutual concessions. They were on
their knees praying for peace, ignorant that bloody war had already
girded on his sword. His language was then deemed too harsh and
unconciliatory, and hundreds, I among the number, denounced him in
unmeasured terms. Before the expiration of three months events had
demonstrated his wisdom and our folly, and other paragraphs from that
same speech became the fighting creed of the Union men of Maryland. He
further said, on that occasion:

"But, sir, there is one State I can speak for, and that is the
State of Maryland. Confident in the strength of this great
government to protect every interest, grateful for almost a century
of unalloyed blessings, she has fomented no agitation; she has done
no act to disturb the public peace; she has rested in the
consciousness that if there be wrong