Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/112

82 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS to congress, on January 28, he deprecated a hasty resort to hostile measures. The peace convention, consisting of delegates from thirteen northern and seven border states, met at Washington on February 4 and chose Mr. Tyler as its president. Several resolutions were adopted and reported to congress, February 27; but on March 2 they were rejected in the senate by a vote of 28 to 7, and two days later the house adjourned without having taken a vote upon them. On February 28, anticipating the fate of the resolutions in congress, Mr. Tyler made a speech on the steps of the Exchange hotel in Richmond, and declared his belief that no arrangement could be made, and that nothing was left for Virginia but to act promptly in the exercise of her powers as a sovereign state. The next day he took his seat in the State convention, where he advocated the immediate passing of an ordinance of secession. His attitude seems to have been substantially the same that it had been twenty-eight years before, when he disapproved the heresy of nullification, but condemned with still greater emphasis the measures taken by President Jackson to suppress that heresy. This feeling that secession was unadvisable, but coercion wholly indefensible, was shared by Mr. Tyler with many people in the border states. On the removal of the government of the southern Confederacy from Montgomery to Richmond, in