have assumed an arbitrary sway. Law and order seem to have yielded their beneficent officers for the safety of the contry and the welfare of the people, and in their stead revolution, in spite of its attendant horrors, has raised its hideous head. The condition of the country is most perilous, the present crisis most fearful. In this calamitous state of affiberties of the people are so imperiled and their most valued rights endangered, it behooves them in their primary meeting, and in all their other accustomed modes, to meet together, consult calmly as to their safety, and with firmness to give expression to their opinions and convictions of right. We, therefore, the delegates here assembled, representing and reflecting, as we verily believe, the opinions and wishes of a very large majority of the people of East Tennessee, do resolve and declare:

1. That the evils which now afflict our beloved country, in our opinion, are the legitimate offspring of the ruinous and heretical doctrine of secession; that the people of East Tennessee have ever been, and we believe still are, opposed to it by a very large majority.

2. That while the country is now upon the very threshold of a most ruinous and desolating civil war, it may with truth be said, and we protect before God, that the people (so far as we can see) have done nothing to produce it.

3. That the people of Tennessee, when the question was submitted to them in February last, decided by an overwhelming majority that the relations of the State toward the Federal Government should not be changed; thereby expressing their preference for the Union and Constitution under which they had lived prosperously and happily, and ignoring in the most emphatic manner the idea that they had been oppressed by the General Government in any of its ats - legislative, executive, or judicial.

4. That in view of so decided an expression of the will of the people in whom "all power is inherent and on whose authority all free governments are founded," and in the honest conviction that nothing has transpired since that time which should change that deliberate judgment of the people, we have contemplated with peculiar emotions the pertinacity with which those in authority have labored to override the judgment of the people and to bring about the very result which the people themselves had so overwhelmingly condemned.

5. That the Legislative Assembly is but the creature of the constitution of the State and has no power to pass any law or to exercise any act of sovereignty, except such as may be authorized by that instrument; and believing as we do that in their recent legislation the General Assembly have disregarded the rights of the people and transcended their legitimate powers, we fell constrained and we invoke the people throughout the State as they value their liberties to visit that hastly, inconsiderate, and unconstitutional legislation with a decided rebuke by voting on the 8th day of next month against both the act of secession and of union with the Confederate States.

6. That the Legislature of the State, without having first obtained the consent of the people, had no authority to enter into a military league with the Confederate States against the General Government, and by so doing to put the State of Tennessee in hostile array against the Government of which it then was and still is a member. Such legislation in advance of the expressed will of the people to charge their governmental relations was an act of usurpation and should be visited with the severest condemnation of the people.