Strictly confidential Montreal 17 August '67 My dear Sir, Absence from this place has prevented me from earlier receiving and acknowledging yours of the 22d Ulto. Having always been very reluctant to give an account of my own deeds it has resulted that the sketches so far as I have seen them of my life anterior to my entrance into congress are very defective and often erroneous. In the last two years several notices of my service on the northern frontier have been published in the newspapers, the minuteness of which show that they must have been written by some one who served with me. One of them announced the object of showing how events deemed of sufficient interest to be preserved had been passed over as though nothing had occurred to distinguish the service from that of the ordinary life at a frontier post. I do not know that there was any thing in current proceedings of the Senate which does sufficiently appear in the debates of the period concerning which you first inquire viz 1857-8-9. [2] You will recollect that in 1850 the party opposed to the "extension of slavery" as was denominated the asserted right to take slaves into the territories of the U.S. refused to recognize the Mo. Compromise, and that they were joined by those who claimed for the inhabitants of the common territory the right to decide whether slave property should be taken to and held in such territory. When the territory of Kansas was to be organized those who under the name of "popular sovereignty" had voted with the abolitionists in 1850 and defeated the efforts of southern men to preserve and apply the "Mo. Comp." preserved that consistency in the organization of Kansas by repealing the Mo. Comp. restriction. The southern men having seen that "Compromise" repudiated by the North in 1850 and having then yielded to the legislation which decreed it to be a nullity voted with those who subsequently advocated a general declaration of its nullity. It was but the consequence logically flowing from the acts of 1850. It has been as unjust to charge it to the Representation of the South, as to the Administration of Mr. Pierce. The first struggled hard against the acts which necessarily produced it and the second knew nothing of the measure until it had [3] been agreed upon by the committees of the two Houses of Cong. on territories. The change thus produced between my resignation from and return to the Senate - 1851-1857 is the only thing to which I can refer you as explanatory of whatever may have suggested to you the idea of an under current. The committee specially raised Sep 1860-1 by the Senate to consider the "Crittenden Compromise" and to devise if practicable the means of pacification, submitted a report of their proceedings which was ordered to be printed. I left the Senate before it was issued and have not seen it. I suppose you may readily obtain a copy of it, and it is to be regretted that the debates in Committee were not also reported. The propositions and votes will however show that the southern members were ever ready to accept any proposition which saved the honor of the South; and with the exception of Douglass the northern members rejected every proposition which it could by any one have been supposed would allay the discontent, remove the distrust and prevent the passage of ordinances of secession by many of the Southern states. Mr. Crittenden and myself frequently went together from the Com. room and he was indignant and [4] often times hotly denunciatory of what we both regarded as a purpose to prevent any adjustment which either of us believed would have a pacifying effect on the country. Few believed as fully as myself that a long and bloody war would surely follow the exercise of the sovereign right of the state revocation of its grants and withdrawal from the Union. Hence it followed that I was not only as you observe conciliatory in spirit but was deeply anxious to avoid the issue if it could be consistently done with due regard to the rights the safety and the honor of the South. There was a time when some who are now favored by those who still persecute me, criticized censoriously my avowed attachment to the constitutional Union of our Fathers. My hope of an honorable peaceable settlement was not abandoned until the report of the Com. to which reference was made above. You will see in a speech of Mr. Douglass about that time reference to my votes and declarations in Com. and his arraignment of the other side for their rejection of every proposition and their refusal to propose any thing. As nothing had been done to prevent secession or to remove the impression that it was a necessary resort, it was forseen that the state by whose commission I sat in the U.S. Senate would soon notify me of her withdrawal from the Union. I waited to perform the duty of announcing that fact and formally to vocate the seat which was a sign of the equality and sovereignty of the states as well as of the adherence of each to the league by which she voluntarily united to the others. It has been said that the southern Senators should have remained because with their northern allies they could have controlled the hostile administration soon to be inaugurated. To admit that the people had chosen their Executive in hostility to the South is to fix the responsibility of the separation where those referred to did not intend to place it. The majority in the House already and soon it would be the same in the Senate reduces the plan to a war on the govt. by persons holding trusts in it and accredited [5] by the States to it. My view of the position of a Senator would not have permitted me to pursue that line of conduct. In the debates (I think of 1850) I stated my theory of the obligation of one representing a state in the congress of the States; and holding it to be a point of honor not to occupy such relation with the object of hostility to the govt. I announced in connection with an allusion to a secret slander and covert insinuations that I would answer in monosyllables any one who charged me with being a disunionist. To represent a state adhering to the Union and use the position to make war on the govt. or to retain a seat in Congress when the states had by its sovereign fist revoked its grants and withdrawn from the league, were either of them such offenses as belong to the last stage of decadence in political morality & personal honor. The first congress of the confederation defined treason, and there was unmistakably declared the doctrine to which the founders of the Union steadily adhered, the paramount allegiance of the citizen to his state. The departure from that creed has been the source of all our ills. [6] The proceedings of the Sen. Com. of 1860- I will show you that I was willing to accept the Crittenden compromise if northern men would in good faith adjust on that plan. The votes there and the debates in the two Hos. of Cong. will show that the great body of northern members were inflated by the success of their sectional campaign and would make no terms with the threatened South. I have not seen the article of Thos. Jordan to which you refer, and am only surprised that he should have come so near to the truth as appears from your citation. In the fall of 1860 after the Legislature of Miss. had been called to meet in extraordinary session, as was understood to consider the propriety of ordering a convention to provide for the security of the state by separation from the Union or otherwise; and before the day for its meeting, I received a telegram from two of Mr. Buchanan's cabinet urging me to come at once to Washington. The motive, as subsequently appeared, was to obtain my aid in connection with the Presdt's message. I saw Mr. Buchanan and was invited by him to read the rough draft of his message. It was unnecessary to assure him of my desire to preserve and defend the constitutional Union. I think no one who knew me, would have believed that I would attend the session of Cong. with any different feeling. Mr. Buchanan kindly listened to all my suggestions and so far as I saw or believed had the same purpose in view which animated me. The relation was confidential and I can only say that I regretted when his message was sent to congress to find that it differed in some respects from the draft as I last saw it. The remarks made by me on his message show how unfortunate I deemed some of those new passages. I have no books to which to refer and write from memory entirely. You will readily understand how difficult it is to recall events accurately except in their main features, and I have therefore only attempted to state the substance generally. Writing in haste and being now so near the hour of closing the mail that I cannot revise, I fear that you may find my letter less clear and satisfactory than is desirable, but your knowledge of the events referred to, will I hope render the statements intelligible to you. Thanking you for the personal interest evinced in my defense, I am very truly yours Jefferson Davis F. H. Alfriend Esqr.