Gentlemen, I congratulate you on being permitted by a kind Providence once more to meet together under circumstances so peculiar auspicious and ... amidst the desolating [times] in which our Country is at present suffering It is a meeting upon the results of which hangs verry[sic] great and important issues, I feel therefore that more than an ordinary weight of responsibilities rest upon us. We are attempting by this days consultation to give to the world a new moral educational and creative