Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
Your dispatch is received, and if genuine, which its extraordinary character leads me to doubt, I have to say in reply that I regard the levy of troops made by the administration for the purpose of subjugating the States of the South as in violation of the Constitution and a gross usurpation of power. I can be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country, and this war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina. I will reply in detail when your call is received by mail.
EXECUTIVE OFFICE,
Little Rock, Ark., April 22, 1861.
Honorable SIMON CAMERON,
Secretary of War, Washington City:
In answer to you requisition for troops Arkansas to subjugate the Southern States, I have to say that none will be furnished. The demand is only adding insult to injury. The people of this commonwealth are freemen, not slaves, and will defend to the last extremity their honor, lives, and property against Northern mendacity and usurpation.
EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, Jefferson City, Mo., April 17, 1861.
Honorable SIMON CAMERON,
Secretary of War:
SIR: Your dispatch of the 15th instant, making a call on Missouri for four regiments of men for immediate service, has been received. There can be, I apprehend, no doubt but the men are intended to form a part of the President's army to make war upon the people of the seceded States.
Your requisition, in my judgment, is illegal, unconstitutional, and revolutionary in its object, in human and diabolical, and cannot be complied with. Not one man will the State of Missouri furnish to carry on any such unholy crusade.
EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, Richmond, Va., April 16, 1861.
Honorable SIMON CAMERON,
Secretary of War:
SIR: I received your telegram of the 15th, the genuineness of which I doubted. Since that time I have received your communication, mailed the same day, in which I am requested to detach from the militia of the State of Virginia "the quota designated in a table" which you append, "to serve as infantry or riflemen for the period of three months, unless sooner discharged."
In reply to this communication I have only to say that the militia of Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or purpose as they have in view. Your object is to subjugate the Southern States, and requisition made upon me for such an object--an object, in my judgment, no within the purview of the Constitution or the act of 1795-will not be complied with. You have chosen to inaugurate civil war, and having done so, we will meet it in a spirit as determined as the Administration has exhibited toward the South.
SIR: Your dispatch of 15th instant, informating me that Tennessee is called upon for two regiments of militia for immediate service, is received. Tennessee will not furnish a single man for purpose of coercion, but 50,000, if necessary, for the defense of our rights and those of our Southern brethren.
EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, Nashville, Tenn., April 20, 1861.
Honorable SIMON CAMERON,
Secretary of War:
SIR: In refusing to comply with the demand which you have made upon me as Governor of the State of Tennessee for two regiments of militia to aid the Federal Government in subjugating those States which by formal act of their people have dissolved their former Federal relations and instituted for themselves others, I deem it proper that I should state briefly the grounds upon which my action is based.
The sages and patriots of the Revolution, when in the act of severing their connection with the mother country and establishing the great cardinal principles of free government, solemnly declared before the world that governments were instituted among men to secure their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, deriving their just powers form the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to abolish it and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evincing a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their (right to) throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future safety.
Recognizing and adopting these great principles, the people of Tennessee, in forming their constitution as a free and independent sovereignty preparatory to admission into the Federal Union, incorporated into their Declaration of Rights, as the basis of their superstructure, "That all power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and established for their peace, safety, and happiness. For the advancement of these ends they have at all times an inalienable and indefeasible right to alter, reform, or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper," and "that, government being instituted for the common benefit, the doctrine of non resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind."
These truths were recognized by the other States of the Union as being in perfect conformity to the genius and character of our federative system by their assenting to the admission of Tennessee as a member of the confederacy.
Having adopted these principles and claimed these rights for her own people, it would not be consistent with common honesty, much less magnanimity, to deny them to the free people of every other sovereign State; and applying these principles to the facts as thy exist in the States named by the President in his recent proclamation, Tennessee can regard the present coercive policy of the Federal Government in no other light than a wanton and alarming usurpation of power, at war with the genius of our republican institutions, and, so far as it may be successful, subversive of civil liberty. The loyalty of Tennessee to the Federal Government when constitutionally administered; the readiness with which her gallant sons have on all occasions responded to its call when threatened or invaded by a foe vindicate her in the eyes of the civilized world, while the duplicity of the present Administration in its manner of inaugurating this unjust, unnecessary, and unnatural warfare will be consigned to history's darkest page. In such unholy crusade no gallant son of Tennessee will ever draw his sword.
Respectfully,
ISHAM G. HARRIS.
Governor of Tennessee
When the Lord calls up earth's heroes
To stand before his face,
O, many a name unknown to fame
Shall ring from that high place!
And out of a grave in the Southland,
At the just God's call and beck,
Shall one man rise with fearless eyes,
And a rope about his neck.
(Poem on the statue of Sam Davis in Nashville, Tenn.)
Sam Davis was hanged because he refused to give up the name
of the leader of "Coleman's Scouts, an elite group from Tennessee
who entered Yankee-controlled territory to gather information.
He refused to give up that information, instead, replying,
"You may hang me a thousand times but I would not betray my friends."
Sam Davis was about seventeen years old.
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We have no disposition, says the Lynchburg Virginian, to obtrude old party issues upon the people now, believing that everything of the kind should be deprecated and avoided. Our people are united, as they ought to be, in opposition to Black Republican oppression and tyranny. Yet, we occasionally hear some indiscreet persons reproaching those who were more reluctant to anticipate the issue now forced upon them by others--with being the authors of the mischief we are now suffering. Such persons assume--and it is the merest assumption--that if we had presented a united front in the beginning of the present troubles, there would have been no conflict. They forget that it was simply impossible to bring our people to that point, and that, if even a majority had been found willing to separate from the Union one month ago, a very large minority would have been restless and dissatisfied. The moral force of our action would have been impaired, if no worse consequence had ensued. But, by our patient efforts in behalf of the Union, compromise and peace, we forced Lincoln to a development of his policy, and such a development as has united us to a man. This is the best vindication that could be given of the wisdom of our policy. In confirmation of this view, we submit the following from the Richmond "Examiner," a journal that lampooned the Convention and the Union men with unwonted severity.--the "Examiner" says:
"The bug-bear of civil war need not frighten no one. We are not engaged in Virginia civil war, and, thank heaven all danger of that most dreadful of human scourges is past. It almost reconciles us to the delay of the Convention.-- That delay has made Virginia a unit--has made the whole South a unit. The natives of the South are leagued and confederated to repel Northern invasion, and establish Southern independence."
And the "delay" of the late Union men brought about this "league" and hearty confederation of Southern men. This shall be our consolation amidst all the sorrows that may await us.
Declaration by the People of the Cherokee Nation of the Causes
Which Have Impelled Them to Unite Their Fortunes With Those of the
Confederate States of America.
When circumstances beyond their control compel one people to sever the ties which have long existed between them and another state or confederacy, and to contract new alliances and establish new relations for the security of their rights and liberties, it is fit that they should publicly declare the reasons by which their action is justified.
The Cherokee people had its origin in the South; its institutions are similar to those of the Southern States, and their interests identical with theirs. Long since it accepted the protection of the United States of America, contracted with them treaties of alliance and friendship, and allowed themselves to be to a great extent governed by their laws.
In peace and war they have been faithful to their engagements with the United States. With much of hardship and injustice to complain of, they resorted to no other means than solicitation and argument to obtain redress. Loyal and obedient to the laws and the stipulations of their treaties, they served under the flag of the United States, shared the common dangers, and were entitled to a share in the common glory, to gain which their blood was freely shed on the battlefield.
When the dissensions between the Southern and Northern States culminated in a separation of State after State from the Union they watched the progress of events with anxiety and consternation. While their institutions and the contiguity of their territory to the States of Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri made the cause of the seceding States necessarily their own cause, their treaties had been made with the United States, and they felt the utmost reluctance even in appearance to violate their engagements or set at naught the obligations of good faith.
Conscious that they were a people few in numbers compared with either of the contending parties, and that their country might with no considerable force be easily overrun and devastated and desolation and ruin be the result if they took up arms for either side, their authorities determined that no other course was consistent with the dictates of prudence or could secure the safety of their people and immunity from the horrors of a war waged by an invading enemy than a strict neutrality, and in this decision they were sustained by a majority of the nation.
That policy was accordingly adopted and faithfully adhered to. Early in the month of June of the present year the authorities of the nation declined to enter into negotiations for an alliance with the Confederate States, and protested against the occupation of the Cherokee country by their troops, or any other violation of their neutrality. No act was allowed that could be construed by the United States to be a violation of the faith of treaties.
But Providence rules the destinies of nations, and events, by inexorable necessity, overrule human resolutions. The number of the Confederate States has increased to eleven, and their Government is firmly established and consolidated. Maintaining in the field an army of 200,000 men, the war became for them but a succession of victories. Disclaiming any intention to invade the Northern States, they sought only to repel invaders from their own soil and to secure the right of governing themselves. They claimed only the privilege asserted by the Declaration of American Independence, and on which the right of <ar19_504> the Northern States themselves to self-government is founded, of altering their form of government when it became no longer tolerable and establishing new forms for the security of their liberties.
Throughout the Confederate States we saw this great revolution effected without violence or the suspension of the laws or the closing of the courts. The military power was nowhere placed above the civil authorities. None were seized and imprisoned at the mandate of arbitrary power. All division among the people disappeared, and the determination became unanimous that there should never again be any union with the Northern States. Almost as one man all who were able to bear arms rushed to the defense of an invaded country, and nowhere has it been found necessary to compel men to serve or to enlist mercenaries by the offer of extraordinary bounties.
But in the Northern States the Cherokee people saw with alarm a violated Constitution, all civil liberty put in peril, and all the rules of civilized warfare and the dictates of common humanity and decency unhesitatingly disregarded. In States which still adhered to the Union a military despotism has displaced the civil power and the laws became silent amid arms. Free speech and almost free thought became a crime. The right to the writ of habeas corpus, guaranteed by the Constitution, disappeared at the nod of a Secretary of State or a general of the lowest grade. The mandate of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was set at naught by the military power, and this outrage on common right approved by a President sworn to support the Constitution. War on the largest scale was waged, and the immense bodies of troops called into the field in the absence of any law warranting it under the pretense of suppressing unlawful combination of men. The humanities of war, which even barbarians respect, were no longer thought worthy to be observed. Foreign mercenaries and the scum of cities and the inmates of prisons were enlisted and organized into regiments and brigades and sent into Southern States to aid in subjugating a people struggling for freedom, to burn, to plunder, and to commit the basest of outrages on women; while the heels of armed tyranny trod upon the necks of Maryland and Missouri, and men of the highest character and position were incarcerated upon suspicion and without process of law in jails, in forts, and in prison-ships, and even women were imprisoned by the arbitrary order of a President and Cabinet ministers; while the press ceased to be free, the publication of newspapers was suspended and their issues seized and destroyed; the officers and men taken prisoners in battle were allowed to remain in captivity by the refusal of their Government to consent to an exchange of prisoners; as they had left their dead on more than one field of battle that had witnessed their defeat to be buried and their wounded to be cared for by Southern hands.
Whatever causes the Cherokee people may have had in the past, to complain of some of the Southern States, they cannot but feel that their interests and their destiny are inseparably connected with those of the South. The war now raging is a war of Northern cupidity and fanaticism against the institution of African servitude; against the commercial freedom of the South, and against the political freedom of the States, and its objects are to annihilate the sovereignty of those States and utterly change the nature of the General Government.
The Cherokee people and their neighbors were warned before the war commenced that the first object of the party which now holds the powers of government of the United States would be to annul the institution of slavery in the whole Indian country, and make it what they term free territory and after a time a free State; and they have been also warned by the fate which has befallen those of their race in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oregon that at no distant day they too would be compelled to surrender their country at the demand of Northern rapacity, and be content with an extinct nationality, and with reserves of limited extent for individuals, of which their people would soon be despoiled by speculators, if not plundered unscrupulously by the State.
Urged by these considerations, the Cherokees, long divided in opinion, became unanimous, and like their brethren, the Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, determined, by the undivided voice of a General Convention of all the people, held at Tahlequah, on the 21st day of August, in the present year, to make common cause with the South and share its fortunes.
In now carrying this resolution into effect and consummating a treaty of alliance and friendship with the Confederate States of America the Cherokee people declares that it has been faithful and loyal to is engagements with the United States until, by placing its safety and even its national existence in imminent peril, those States have released them from those engagements.
Menaced by a great danger, they exercise the inalienable right of self-defense, and declare themselves a free people, independent of the Northern States of America, and at war with them by their own act. Obeying the dictates of prudence and providing for the general safety and welfare, confident of the rectitude of their intentions and true to the obligations of duty and honor, they accept the issue thus forced upon them, unite their fortunes now and forever with those of the Confederate States, and take up arms for the common cause, and with entire confidence in the justice of that cause and with a firm reliance upon Divine Providence, will resolutely abide the consequences.
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