on the Southern Caucus assembled in the room
of the Committee on Claims. I replied that I had received no
invitation.

"I then proposed to go to the Committee-room to see what was being done.
When I entered, I found that little cock-sparrow, Governor Pickens, of
South Carolina, addressing the meeting, and strutting about like a
rooster around a barn-yard coop, discussing the following resolution:

"' Resolved, That no member of Congress, representing a Southern
constituency, shall again take his seat until a resolution is passed
satisfactory to the South on the subject of Slavery.'

"I listened to his language, and when he had finished, I obtained the
floor, asking to be permitted to take part in the discussion. I
determined at once to kill the Treasonable plot hatched by John C.
Calhoun, the Catiline of America, by asking questions. I said to Mr.
Pickens, 'What next do you propose we shall do? are we to tell the
People that Republicanism is a failure? If you are for that, I am not.
I came here to sustain and uphold American institutions; to defend the
rights of the North as well as the South; to secure harmony and good
fellowship between all Sections of our common Country.' They dared not
answer these questions. The Southern temper had not then been gotten
up. As my questions were not answered, I moved an adjournment of the
Caucus /sine die/. Mr. Craig, of Virginia, seconded the motion, and the
company was broken up. We returned to the House, and Mr. Ingersoll, of
Pennsylvania, a glorious patriot then as now, introduced a resolution
which temporarily calmed the excitement."

The remarks upon this statement, made November 4, 1861, by the National
Intelligencer, were as follows:

"However busy Mr. Pickens may have been in the Caucus after it met, the
most active man in getting it up and pressing the Southern members to go
into it, was Mr. R. B. Rhett, also a member from South Carolina. The
occasion, or alleged cause of this withdrawal from the House into secret
deliberation was an anti-Slavery speech of Mr. Slade, of Vermont, which
Mr. Rhett violently denounced, and proposed to the Southern members to
leave the House and go into Conclave in one of the Committee-rooms,
which they generally did, if not all of them. We are able to state,
however, what may not have been known to Governor Thomas, that at least
three besides himself, of those who did attend it, went there with a
purpose very different from an