Beschreibung:

Resolutions Offered by Phineas T. Scruggs, of Marshall, Amendments to the Resolutions proposed by the Committee of Thirteen.
Nashville: June 1850]. Small handbill (195 x 147 mm). Contemporary ink crossouts and corrections. Condition : burn hole from the ink manuscript corrections, creases. a unique survival from the nashville convention of 1850: a fore-warning of secession. The text of the handbill: “Resolved, That the voluntary associations of our fellow-citizens of the non-slaveholding States, for the purpose of agitating the subject of domestic slavery … is in the judgement of this Convention, fraught with immenent danger to the stability of the Government … Resolved, That, in view of the unanimity and promptness with which the slave-holding States have acted, in support of the late acts of Congress, known as the ‘adjustment or compromise measures,’ it is in the opinion of this Convention the duty of the non-slaveholding States, if they wish to preserve the union of these States … to do the same thing; and that we cannot regard their failure to do so, otherwise than as an omen of evil.” Little information has been found about Phineas T. Scruggs, but he was evidently a delegate (from Texas? or Mississippi?) to the Nashville Convention. The Committee of Thirteen mentioned here refers to the Senate committee which drafted the border of Texas as part of Henry Clay’s plan which resulted in the Compromise of 1850. In June 1850, nine slave-holding states held a convention at Nashville to determine a course of action if slavery was banned in the new territories, including the possibility of secession, and to discuss the proposed Compromise. The resolutions passed by the Convention would lead to the passage of the Compromise: namely, that the 1820 Missouri Compromise line of demarcation would be extended to the Pacific.