At the close of [Wirt's] address, the Assembly, and the large crowds in the lobbies and galleries, greeted the Mississippi Commissioner and his sentiments with loud applause.

Lieutenant-Governor Hyams then invited the Commissioner from Mississippi to ascend the Speaker's stand, and with great earnestness addressed him in the following speech:

Sir:—I welcome you, as the Commissioner from the State of Mississippi, to the Halls of the Legislature of Louisiana, assembled in joint session for the occasion—to take counsel together this day, when a ruthless majority of the people of the Northern States, regardless of the rights of the Southern States, are about to inaugurate a policy which utterly subverts their equality in the Union, and will at no distant day culminate in reducing them to a condition far worse than colonial vassalage. After a long train of injuries, abuses and usurpations, our sturdy ancestry broke the yoke of British domination, and established with their blood the independence of the States, and subsequently adopted the Constitution of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, “promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity.” How have a majority of the people of the Northern States kept the bonds? We have under the forms of the Constitution elevated to the Presidency of the United States, (united only for the great purposes expressed in the Constitution.) a citizen of the North, as the representative of principles so destructive to the rights, liberties, property and lives of the people of fifteen of the sovereign States of the confederacy, that if promulgated in person to their slave population, in the spirit of the party to which he owes his elevation, would subject him to condign punishment—and in Louisiana, by her statutes, to imprisonment for life, or death, at the discretion of her courts.

Can any citizen of the South, or any true American contemplate the humiliating spectacle and not hide his head with shame, if he does not resist and throw off such disgraceful yoke at all hazards, and at every cost?

Sir, this revolution is determined upon by all true Southern men, and the best means of its accomplishment is the Union of the South for the sake of the South, and to further that great end, we understand to be the object of jour mission. Louisiana, therefore, welcomes the Commissioner from Mississippi to her councils, to prepare for and maintain Southern independence, and like our fathers of old, we will pledge in the cause, “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honors.”