No steps have yet been taken toward making known to the Venezuelan Government the conditional approval of the convention by the Senate. This might have been necessary if the instrument had stipulated for a ratification in the usual form and it had been ratified accordingly. Inasmuch, however, as the convention contains no such stipulation, and as some of the installments had been paid according to its terms, it has been deemed preferable to suspend further proceedings in regard to it, especially as it was not deemed improbable that the Senate might request it to be returned. This anticipation has been realized.
JAMES BUCHANAN.
WASHINGTON, February 5, 1861.
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
I have received from the governor of Kentucky certain resolutions adopted by the general assembly of that Commonwealth, containing an application to Congress for the call of a convention for proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States, with a request that I should immediately place the same before that body. It affords me great satisfaction to perform this duty, and I feel quite confident that Congress will bestow upon these resolutions the careful consideration to which they are eminently entitled on account of the distinguished and patriotic source from which they proceed, as well as the great importance of the subject which they involve.
JAMES BUCHANAN.
WASHINGTON, February 8, 1861.
To the Senate and House of Representatives:
I deemed it a duty to transmit to Congress with my message of the 8th of January the correspondence which occurred in December last between the "commissioners" of South Carolina and myself.
Since that period, on the 14th of January, Colonel Isaac W. Hayne, the attorney-general of South Carolina, called and informed me that he was the bearer of a letter from Governor Pickens to myself which he would deliver the next day. He was, however, induced by the interposition of Hon. Jefferson Davis and nine other Senators from the seceded and seceding States not to deliver it on the day appointed, nor was it communicated to me until the 31st of January, with his letter of that date. Their letter to him urging this delay bears date January 15, and was the commencement of a correspondence, the whole of which in my possession I now submit to Congress. A reference to each letter of the series in proper order accompanies this message.