Year: 1860

The inaugural message of Gov Letcher, o
| Virginia, and the resolutions of the Alaham,
democratic Convention are unmista kable eviden
ces Of the crystallization of Southern opinion
into some form of resistance to the sectional ma
Jority which now controls the North and threat


ems to seize upon the Federal Government. Gov


I.etcher speaks for Virginia as the greatest o


the Southern States and Virginia speaks for th,
South as section. The Alabama Convection rep.
resents the party organization which pr0tesses
to express Southern sentiment in the conduct Of
the sectional controversy. The Importance OF
the positions assumed in both these cases cannot
be estimated. The States Rights Democracy
would have had no reason for despondency had
the result in both instances been different. II
might reasonably have been anticipated that Vir-
| ginia, the most conservative of the Southern
States, the one most firmly welded to party forms,
and to the abstract idea of union, merely for the
sake of union, would have been slow to recon-
mend any measure in the slightest degree radcal
or revolutionary.


1t might also have been supposed that the con-
vention of a party which delights call itself a
"natonal" party, which assumes to be in COM
munion with an organization in the North idcn-
tical, ut least. in name, and which may have
heretofore pursued party success as the sole and
ultimate object of party policy, would refuse to
occupy position which might sever the nation
al organization by making Impossible any union
on a common platform and common candidate.


But Virginia, the most conservative of South
ern States is about to place herself at the head
Of the column of Southern movement. and the
Democratic party, the only national party in ex-
istence, seems about to assume tho championship
of the sectional rights of the South The voice
of Virginia will have powerful effect on the
Southern States the voice of the Alabama Con-
vention will have powerful effect on the South
ern Democracy Virginia protests against a
sectional administration of the Government. and
declares that to such an administration heSouth
cannot and will not submit. The Alabama De-
mocracy protests against the decentralization of
the national Democratic party, and declares that
to such sectionalization the Southern Democracy
will never submit.


These positions are identical with those long
ago assumed by the Delta, and supported by us
with undertaking persistency up to the moment
when they have become recognized as the only
safe and honorable ground on which the South can
stand In the Union, or on which the Southern
democracy can stand within the national party
We have always insisted that if standardization
of the Federal Government be good cause for a
disruption of the national Union, a sectionaiza-
tion of the Democratic party would be good
cause r a disruption of the national Damocrat
ic party. From all the indications around us,
from the messages of Southern Governors. the
proceeds of Southern legislatures, the resolutions
of Democratic conventions, it has become plain
that no such result that of submission either
in the one case or the other is any longer to be
feared.-Dclta.