1861. February 2.—A slight solace to one’s anxieties about home is found in the circumstances brought by successive steamers during the week. 1. The proposition of Mr. Crittenden, or “The Border States,” seems growing into favour. 2. There was a large minority on the question of secession before next 4th of March in the Georgia Convention. 3. The Alabama members of Congress have been instructed not to quit, but to wait further advices. 4. The South Carolina Commissioner, Colonel Hayne, has suspended his demand for the evacuation of Fort Sumter. 5. Charleston is suffering greatly from want of supplies. 6. Major Anderson is universally applauded. 7. Virginia has adopted as satisfactory the compromise of Crittenden. 8. Financial affairs are improving; the United States stock rose one per cent.
There would seem to be a most extraordinary departure from the chivalric honour in public life which has heretofore characterized Southern gentlemen in the disloyal treachery with which Cobb, Floyd, Thomson, Thomas, and Trescott have pursued secession in the very penetralia of Mr. Buchanan’s Cabinet. Nothing can relieve them from the charge of deceit and treachery but their having apprised the President, on entering his counsels, that, instead of recognizing as paramount their allegiance to the Union, they were governed by “a higher law” of duty to Georgia, Virginia, Mississippi, Maryland, and South Carolina respectively.
Persigny, recently appointed to the Ministry of the Interior in Paris, made a popularity-seeking plunge at his outset in relaxing restrictions on the Press. Suddenly he has turned a corner; giving, three days ago, an “avertissement” to the Cormier de Dimanche, and arbitrarily ordering the offensive writer, Ganeseo, out of the Kingdom. He says that Ganeseo is a foreigner, and cannot be allowed to criticise the principle of the Imperial Government.
