Ellsworth American

Southern Unionists Convention.

WASHINGTON, July 11.—The following is a call for a Convention of Southern Unionists to be held at Philadelphia, in Independence Hall, on the first Monday of September, 1866:——

TO THE PEOPLE OF THE SOUTH:

The great issue is upon us. The majority in Congress, and its supporters, firmly declare that the rights of the citizens enumerated in the Constitution and established by the supreme law, must be maintained inviolate. Rebels and rebel sympathizers assert that the rights of the citizens must belong to the states alone, and under such regulations as the respective states choose voluntarily to prescribe.

We have seen this doctrine of state sovereignty carried in practical results until all authority in Congress was denied, the Union temporarily destroyed, the constitutional rights of the citizens of the South nearly annihilated, and the land desolated by civil war. The time has come when the structure of the Southern states' Governments must be laid on constitutional principles, or the despotism grown up under an atrocious leadership be permitted to remain.

We know of no other plan than that Congress now exercises its authority to establish the principle whereby protection is co-extensive with citizenship. We maintain that no state either by its law or legislation, can make transgression on the rights of the citizen legitimate. We demand, and ask you to concur in demanding protection to every citizen in the great Republic on the basis of equality before the law; and further, that no state Government should be recognized as legitimate under the Constitution in so far as it does not by its organic law make impartial protection full and complete.

Under doctrine of State sovereignty, with rebels in the foreground controlling Southern Legislatures and embittered by disappointment in their schemes to destroy the Union, there will be no safety for the loyal element of the South. Our reliance for protection is now on Congress and the great Union party that has stood and is standing by the nationality, by the constitutional rights of the citizen, and by the beneficent principles of free Government.

For the purpose of bringing the loyal Unionists of the South into conjunctive action with the true friends of republican government of the North, we invite you to send delegates in goodly numbers from all the Southern States, including Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, to meet at Independence Hall, in the city of Philadelphia, on the first Monday of September next. It is proposed that we should meet at that time to recommend measures for the establishment of such Governments in the South as accords protect the rights of all citizens. We trust this call will be responded to by numerous delegations of such as represent the true loyalty of the South and that kind of government which gives full protection to all the rights of the citizen, such as our fathers intended, and we claim as our birthright. Either the lovers of constitutional liberty must rule the nation, or rebels and their sympathizers be permitted to misrule it. Shall loyalty or disloyalty have the keeping of the destinies of the nation! Let the responses to this call, which is now in circulation for signatures and is being numerously signed, answer No.

Notice is given that gentlemen at a distance can have their names attached to it by sending a request by letter directed to D. W. Bingham, Esq., Washington, D. C.

(Signed) W. B. STOKES, Tennessee
JOSEPH S. FOWLER, Tennessee.
JAMES GETTYS, Tennessee.
A. J. HAMILTON, Texas
GEORGE W. PASCHAL, of Texas, and 21 others.