At the same moment when the Southern seceding States are uniting in convention at Montgomery to create a new government for a new Union, the border States are holding another convention at Washington City for the purpose of restoring, if possible, the old order of things.
Original passage & context
"At the same moment when the Southern seceding States are uniting in convention at Montgomery to create a new government for a new Union, the border States are holding another convention at Washington City for the purpose of restoring, if possible, the old order of things. [...] The preservation of the Union by any of the forms of the present constitution is so plainly impossible that the first and fundamental idea of any convention which looks to a further association of these thirty-four States under one government must be that the old constitution is suspended in fact as to six of the States [...] They have taken positions from which it is impossible to retreat if they desired it."
Two conventions sit in the same week: one at Montgomery building a government, one at Washington trying to save the old one. The Picayune — a conservative New Orleans daily, no fire-eater — reports the symmetry and calls the Washington effort already lost. The Peace Conference would sit until Feb 27; Congress declined to act on its proposals. Non-contiguous sentences from the one editorial joined with [...].