The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1864-07-16
Union Meeting i'm Alabama.

An important Union meeting has been held a.
Huntsville, Ala, which was addressed by Hon.
Jere Clemens. formerly United States Senator
from Alabama, and who resisted the secession
movement until it could not be resisted longer
and by Judge Humphreys, one of the ablest
members of the southern bar and was a delegate
10 the Charleston Convention.
Mr.. Clemens said The object of the meeting
is the restoration of civil government-to bring
US law and order-to secure peace. We were
hurried into revolution against our earnest pro-
test This people was for the Union. Madison
county gave 800 majority against secession .
yet we were carried away without support. We
had no arms. buchanan was in the Presidential
chair. Day has at last come, thank God, and
we can say that we take shelter under the Stars
and Stripes. Falsehood, fraud and crime took
us out OF the Union. They told US that secession
was necessary to save slavery. During the ten
years preceding the rebellion, the State of Ala
bama had not lost ten slaves a year. We had
rebellion, and the consequence now is that there
is not one man in the State of Alabama who can
say he has the title to a single niger. Not ali
of US have a title to anything. The practical
result is emancipation. Cotton, they said, was
King-wOuld secure US recognition and indepen-
dence. The result Is, Confederate money is
worth five cents on the dollar. They said that
civil liberty and State rights would be secured by
secession. The first act OF the Confederate Con-
gress deprived the people of the right to select
their President. If a man owned twenty ne
groes, he was excused from military duty. If a
man had ten starving children, he was not. The
man who owned the negroes could stay at home
with his wealth the man with starving children
must leave them and 90 to the battlefield. You
and | may have some fear of the success of the
COnfederacy. Thank Goo there is now no pros
pect of its succeeding.
Judge Humphreys followed in a long and able
speech, in the course of which he said
Alabama should at once rescind the ordinance
of secession. L believe the institution of slavery
is gone as a permanent thing-overthrown by
the action of the Southern States. | believe in
case of a return to the Union we would receive
political cooperation so as to secure the manage
ment Of that labor by those who were slaves.
There is really no difference, in my opinion,
whether we hold them as absolute slaves or OBJ
tain that labor by some other method. OF course
not now before US. What we want now is such
political action as will put Alabama right where
she belongs-back in the Union. Have your
boys not struggled long enough, suffered enough,
fought on enough battle fields. for you to take
some action? | do not believe that q restoration
of the Union will be humiliating to the South.
If we take action in the right way we will secure
at once peace, law and order. When | returned
from the Charleston Convention. in 1860, the
people met in this courtyard. There were then
upon the minds of some of us apprehensions of
a not far distant trouble-of the horrors of civil
war. Disunion followed-war came and ruin
swept over our Southern land. Our fields are
buildings burned, our sons have fallen
in battle and the land is full of widows and Or
phans. What has disunion to weigh against this