h then and long afterward continued to exist; and the practical
value of which must have been confined to Senators of States which did
not actually secede. For myself, I can only say that no advice could
have prevailed on me to hold a seat in the Senate after receiving notice
that Mississippi had withdrawn from the Union. The best evidence that my
associates thought likewise is the fact that, although no instructions
were given them, they promptly withdrew on the receipt of official
information of the withdrawal of the States which they represented.

It will not be amiss here briefly to state what were my position and
feelings at the period now under consideration, as they have been the
subject of gross and widespread misrepresentation. It is not only
untrue, but absurd, to attribute to me motives of personal ambition to
be gratified by a dismemberment of the Union. Much of my life had been
spent in the military and civil service of the United States. Whatever
reputation I had acquired was identified with their history; and, if
future preferment had been the object, it would have led me to cling to
the Union as long as a shred of it should remain. If any, judging after
the event, should assume that I was allured by the high office
subsequently conferred upon me by the people of the Confederate States,
the answer to any such conclusion has been made by others, to whom it
was well known, before the Confederacy was formed, that I had no desire
to be its President. When the suggestion was made to me, I expressed a
decided objection, and gave reasons of a public and permanent character
against being placed in that position.

Furthermore, I then held the office of United States Senator from
Mississippi--one which I preferred to all others. The kindness of the
people had three times conferred it upon me, and I had no reason to fear
that it would not be given again, as often as desired. So far from
wishing to change this position for any other, I had specially requested
my friends (some of whom had thought of putting me in nomination for the
Presidency of the United States in 1860) not to permit "my name to be
used before the Convention for any nomination whatever."

I had been so near the office for four years, while in the Cabinet of
Mr. Pierce, that I saw it from behind the scenes, and it was to me an
office in no wise desirable. The responsibilities were great; the labor,
the vexations, the disappointments, were greater. T