A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention / For Proposing Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, Held at Washington, D.C., in February, A.D. 1861

by L. E. Chittenden

Informed by the newspapers of this morning that five of my associates in the Peace Convention, after waiting nearly three weeks, made yesterday to the Legislature a communication purporting to be an answer to the note which I thought it my duty to append to the report, explaining why the vote of New York was not given at a particular time, I beg leave to submit the following in reply:

I do not perceive that my associates impugn a single statement of fact contained in my note. My engagement in Court, the importance of the engagement, the necessity for my keeping it, the meeting of the delegation in contemplation of it, their resolution directing how the vote should be cast in my absence, the neglect so to cast it, are all, by silence, admitted. Nor do I perceive any denial of the proposition that the delegation had a right to pass the resolution, which thus became binding on all its members until reconsidered and reversed.

Perhaps I ought to make one exception to this use of admissions. My associates apparently wish to have it believed, yet hesitate to assert, that the Convention made a decision respecting the right to vote. In one place they say, "that an appeal had been made to the Convention, and refused by its President;" in another, that "it was under the decision of the Convention alone that the vote was declared to be divided;" and in a third, that the objection of the minority was made after notice to me that it would be made, and the "Convention sustained it, hence the vote was lost," by my absence. They should have reflected that there could have been no "decision of the Convention" if the appeal to it was "refused by its President." The truth beyond question is, that although my associates imagined that the Convention decided something, it did in fact decide nothing.

My associates say further, that I argue to show that my duty to my client was paramount to my "duty as Commissioner of the State of New York, in a question involving constitutional principles." This is an idle calumny. My note can be read as well as theirs; and in general will be read by the same persons, and there is not a word in it to justify or excuse their assertion. I never thus argued. I claimed that I had two duties to perform, and that I performed both. I did not claim that my duty to my State was subordinate to any other duty whatever.

When my associates assert that their Chairman left the Convention "with full knowledge of the effect of his absence on the vote about to be taken," if they mean that I knew or supposed that they intended to reverse their own action, or that Mr. King would not announce the vote as it had been resolved, or would declare the vote divided, or that they would support him in it, or that the Convention would overrule the delegation, then they assert what they could not know to be true, and what is not true in fact. My note sets forth what I was told, and what I replied.

My associates argue that I failed to discharge my duty, because I did not obtain leave of the Convention before going into the Supreme Court. Though I do not remember to have heard before of leave granted by a deliberative body to a member to go out for half an hour, or for one or two hours, I will observe, by this Convention absence was expressly allowed, if it did not "interrupt the representation of the State." My associates do indeed claim that, when I left the hall, the State ceased to be represented, ten Commissioners only remaining behind. The argument of this strange position appears to be, that a State is not represented when its vote can be divided, and that the vote of New York was divided. Here is a double fallacy. To say that the vote was divided, begs the question. It was not divided so long as the resolution passed by the delegation remained valid, and its validity is not denied. The other part of the proposition is equally fallacious. A State is represented when there are in the body delegates authorized to represent it, whatever be their number. The arguments of my associates seem to be, that a State could only be represented in the Peace Convention by odd numbers, and that if it sent eight or ten representatives, it would have no representatives at all.

But what shall I say to the following sentences:—"Nor is the opinion of Mr. Field entitled to consideration, when he imputes to the majority a want of fidelity to him, in not claiming and adhering to the vote which had been taken when all were present, and which was afterwards rendered null by his absence. They did adhere to it, and endeavored to cast the vote accordingly. It was his duty to have been present, and to have thus given effect to that which had been previously agreed to." Would any one imagine that the authors were speaking of a vote, given in expectation of my absence, and to determine what should be done when I was away? The vote was taken because I was to be absent, and directed the Chairman how to act in that event, but it is nevertheless pretended that the moment I became absent, the vote became null. They might better have said that the vote would have become null, or rather that there would have been no occasion for it in case of my continued presence. Then they say that they adhered to it. How did they adhere? The resolution directed the Chairman to cast the vote in the negative. He did not obey the resolution. His associates and mine did not insist that he should. Nobody prevented his answering "no," when the vote was called. No reason has ever been given for his not so answering. That he should instead have entered voluntarily into a discussion with Mr. Tyler on the subject, and that his associates should have looked quietly on, can only be accounted for by supposing them indifferent or bewildered.

It is not an agreeable task to write thus of old friends; but I must defend myself when attacked, and defence cannot always be made pleasant to an assailant.

My late friends profess to think me responsible for the loss of the vote of New York on a certain occasion. I think them responsible for it. Which side is right the Legislature and the people of the State will judge.

DAVID DUDLEY FIELD.