Buchanan tied and disable the Republicans from
effecting any legislation which will strengthen the hands of the
incoming administration." Mr. Toombs of Georgia, speaking and voting at
his desk in the Senate, declared himself "as good a rebel and as good a
traitor as ever descended from Revolutionary loins," and said that the
Union was already dissolved,--by which assertion he made his position in
the Senate absolutely indefensible. The South Carolina senators resigned
before their State ordained itself a "foreign nation," and incurred
censure for being so "precipitate." In a word, the general desire was to
remain in office, hampering and obstructing the government, until March
4, 1861, and at a caucus of disunionists it was agreed to do so. But the
pace became too rapid, and resignations followed pretty close upon the
formal acts of secession.
On the same day on which the Peace Congress opened its sessions in
Washington, there came together at Montgomery, in Alabama, delegates
from six States for the purpose of forming a Southern Confederacy. On
the third day thereafter a plan for a provisional government,
substantially identical with the Constitution of the United States, was
adopted. On February 9 the oath of allegiance was taken, and Jefferson
Davis and Alexander H. Stephens were elected respectively President and
Vice-President. On February 13 the military and naval committees were
directed to report plans for organizing an army and navy.
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