The Speaker laid before the House on the 24th, a letter signed by Messrs. M'Queen, Bonham, Boyce, and Ashmore, of South Carolina, as follows:
SIR,- We avail ourselves of the earliest opportunity since the official communication of the intelligence, of making known to your honorable body that the people of the State of South Carolina, in their sovereign capacity, have resumed the powers heretofore delegated by them to the Federal Government of the United States, and have thereby dissolved our connection with the House of Representatives.
In taking leave of those with whom we have been associated in a common agency, we, as well as the people of our Commonwealth, desire to do so with a feeling of mutual regard and respect for each other- cherishing the hope that, in our future relations, we may better enjoy that peace and harmony essential to the happiness of a free and enlightened people.
“South Carolina is too small to be a country and too large to be an insane asylum” - James Pettigru, December 1860