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.
We hold, with Jefferson, to the inalienable right of communities to alter or abolish forms of government that have become oppressive or injurious; and, if the cotton States shall decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary right, but it exists nonetheless; and we do not see how one party can have a right to do what another party has a right to prevent. We must ever resist the asserted right of any State to remain in the Union and nullify or defy the laws thereof: to withdraw from the Union is quite another matter. And, whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep her in. We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets.
We sympathize with and justify the South as far as this: their rights have been invaded to the extreme limit possible within the forms of the Constitution; and, beyond this limit, their feelings have been insulted and their interests and honor assailed by almost every possible form of denunciation and invective; and , if we deemed it certain that the real animus of the Republican party could be carried into the administration of the Federal Government, and become the permanent policy of the nation, we should think that all the instincts of self-preservation and of manhood rightfully impelled them to a resort to revolution and a separation from the Union, and we would applaud them and wish them godspeed in the adoption of such a remedy....
If South Carolina or any other State, through a convention of her people, shall formally separate herself from the Union, probably both the present and the next Executive will simply let her alone and quietly allow all the functions of the Federal government within her limits to he suspended. Any other course would be madness; as it would once enlist all Southern States in the controversy and plunge the whole country into a civil war....As a matter of policy and wisdom, therefore, independent of the question of right, we should deem resort to force most disastrous.
Each State is organized as a complete government, holding the purse and wielding the sword, possessing the right to break the tie of the confederation as nation might break a treaty, and to repel coercion as a nation might repel invasion.... Coercion, if it were possible, is out of the question.
"We regard every man who does not boldly declare that he believes African slavery to be a social, moral, and political blessing as an enemy to the institutions of the South."
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
"A duty to my countrymen; to the memory of those who died in defense of a cause consecrated by inheritance, as well as sustained by conviction; and to to those who, perhaps less fortunate, staked all, and lost all save life and honor, in its behalf, has impelled me to attempt vindication of their cause and conduct. For this purpose I have decided to present an historical sketch of the events which preceded and attended the struggle of the Southern states to maintain their existence and their rights as sovereign communities – the creators, not the creatures, of the general government.
The social problem of maintaining the just relation between constitution, government, and people has been found so difficult that human history is a record of unsuccessful efforts to establish it. A government, to afford the needful protection and exercise proper care for the welfare of a people, must have homogeneity in its constituents. It is this necessity which has divided the human race into separate nations, and finally has defeated the grandest efforts which conquerors have made to give unlimited extent to their domain. When our fathers dissolved their connection with Great Britain, by declaring themselves free and independent states, they constituted thirteen separate communities, and were careful to assert and preserve, each for itself, its sovereignty and jurisdiction.
At a time when the minds of men are straying far from the lessons our fathers taught, it seems proper and well to recur to the original principles on which the system of government they devised was founded. The eternal truths which they announced, the rights which they declared “unalienable,” are the foundation-stones on which rests the vindication of the Confederate cause.
He must have been a careless reader of our political history who has not observed that, whether under the style of “United Colonies” or “United States,” which was adopted after the Declaration of Independence, whether under the articles of confederation or the compact of union, there everywhere appears the distinct assertion of state sovereignty, and nowhere the slightest suggestion of any purpose on the part of the states to consolidate themselves into one body. Will any candid, well-informed man assert that, at any time between 1776 and 1790, a proposition to surrender the sovereignty of the states and merge them in a central government would have had the least possible chance of adoption? Can any historical fact be more demonstrable than that the States did, both in the confederation and in the union, retain their sovereignty and independence as distinct communities, voluntarily consenting to federation, but never becoming the fractional parts of a nation? That such opinions should find adherents in our day may be attributable to the natural law of aggregation; surely not to a conscientious regard for the terms of the compact for union by the states.
In all free governments the constitution or organic law is supreme over the government, and in our federal union this was most distinctly marked by limitations and prohibitions against all which was beyond the expressed grants of power to the general government. In the foreground, therefore, I take the position that those who resisted violations of the compact were the true friends, and those who maintained the usurpation of undelegated powers were the real enemies of the constitutional union."
A Female Soldier.--Among the strange, heroic, and self-sacrificing acts of women in this struggle for our independence, we have heard of none which exceeds the bravery displayed and hardships endured by the subject of this notice, Mrs. Amy Clarke. Mrs. Clarke volunteered with her husband as a private, fought through the battles of Shiloh, where Mr. Clarke was killed--she performing the rites of burial with her own hands. She then continued with Bragg's army in Kentucky, fighting in the ranks as a common soldier, until she was twice wounded--once in the ankle and then in the breast, when she fell a prisoner into the hands of the Yankees. Her sex was discovered by the Federals, and he was regularly paroled as a prisoner of war, but they did not permit her to return until she had donned female apparel. Mrs. C. was in our city on Sunday last, en route for Bragg's command.
__________________ Thea
No one has permission to use any material from any of my posts on any CWT forum, the archives, or any other forum without my express written permission.
CHARLESTON MERCURY, February 5, 1863, p. 1, c. 3-4
We find in the London Times another long letter from Mr. Lawley, its correspondent in the South. We make some interesting extracts:
Culpeper Court House, Va.,
November 14, 1862.
. . . Meanwhile, in the shelter of the dense woods about Culpeper, in wonderful spirits, with physique greatly improved since the bloody day at Sharpsburg, are clustered the tatter-demalion regiments of the South. It is a strange thing to look at these men, so ragged, slovenly, sleeveless, without a superfluous ounce of flesh upon their bones, with wild matted hair, in mendicants rags, and to think when the battle flag goes to the front, how they can and do fight. "There is only one attitude in which I never should be ashamed of your seeing my men, and that is when they are fighting." These were General Lee's words to me the first time I ever saw him; they have been confirmed by every other distinguished officer in the Confederacy. There are triumphs of daring which these poor, ragged men have attempted, and attempted successfully in this war, which have never been attempted by their Sybarite opponents. Again and again they have stormed batteries formidably defended at the point of the bayonet; nothing of the kind has ever been attempted by the Federals.
Again and again has Gen. Stuart's cavalry surprised Federal camps at night; no Confederate camp has been surprised since the beginning of the war. One or two regiments of these tattered men will stand firm, though attacked by overwhelming numbers of the enemy, and will constantly under such circumstances successfully hold their ground. Reverse the conditions, and see how long Federal regiments would bear such a blunt. Lastly, even a small body of these men, under a favorite commander like Stonewall Jackson, have again and again thrown themselves on the flank or rear of immense armies of the Federals and done desperate execution. Where has anything of the kind ever been attempted by their opponents? It is a never failing source of wonder and admiration to the observer to see these men, so miserably found in every respect, so sparsely fed, so destitute of blankets, and yet so cheerful and light-hearted under every privation, so resolute and indomitable in suffering and in doing, so irresistible in the field. It is a lesson in the duty of every day life which no man can watch without improvement and advantage. Say what anybody likes, these are the true heroes of the memorable struggle for Southern independence. No one would wish to deny to the commanding Generals their full mead of praise for the conduct of operations in the field; but they would be the last men to deny that higher praise is due to the suffering but indomitable rank and file who have borne cold and hunger and inadequate food and endless privations without a murmur, and yet have never bated a jot of heart or hope. . . .
__________________ Thea
No one has permission to use any material from any of my posts on any CWT forum, the archives, or any other forum without my express written permission.
No one has permission to use any material from any of my posts on any CWT forum, the archives, or any other forum without my express written permission.
Thea and all. I want to take a moment to thank you all for these wonderful posts of period newspaper articles. I remember spending almost entire weekends viewing microfiched SC newspapers from the 1860's. I fully understand how fascinating and time consuming it can be.
Bravo, and thanks.
__________________ Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
"I had been long a resident of Washington before the secession of the Confederate States, and, from my intimate acquaintance with public men and public measures under the old government, had peculiar and exceptional means of watching the progressive development of the designs of these Leaders of opinion in the Federal States, which, as I had long foreseen, would necessarily end in forcing on a separation.
Much of my information upon this subject had been derived from the intercourse of society in the Federal capital; and would therefore have been unsuitable to be made public, if the relations of the North and the South had continued as they used to be - subjects of political discussion and party contest. But the Federal leaders have now carried the matter far beyond this point. After repeated and intolerable aggression upon the rights of these States - accompanied and aggravated by an insulting tone of moral superiority, until a union with such communities was no longer to be endured by any high-spirited people - they at length stirred up a furious and desolating war. For two years a torrent of blood has flowed between their
people and my people. The noble State of Virginia, with which I am most nearly connected, has been devastated by hosts of barbarous invaders - always overthrown indeed in the field before Southern valour, but always destroying and plundering where they found the country unprotected; whilst my own dear native State of Maryland has been subject to a still more stinging and maddening oppression, in the utter destruction of all her liberties, and in the establishment of a brutal and vulgar military despotism, which has reduced the gallant old State to the debased condition of Poland or Venetia; and such 'order reigns in Baltimore,' as that moral death which tyrants call 'order' in Warsaw or in the beautiful City of the Sea.
To me, therefore, the days of my former abode in Washington seem to belong almost to another state of being. That time - when I, in common with all our people, looked up with pride and veneration to the banner of the stars and stripes - appears to be now with the years before the Flood. I look back to the scenes of that period through a haze of blood and horror. Those men whom I once called friends - who have broken bread at my table - have since then stirred up and hounded on host after host of greedy invaders, and precipitated them upon the beloved valleys where my kindred had their peaceful homes. Many who were dear to me have been slain, or maimed for life, fighting in defence of all that makes life of value. Instead of friends, I see in those statesmen of Washington only mortal enemies. Instead of loving and worshipping the old flag of the stars and stripes, I see in it only the symbol of murder, plunder, oppression, and shame! and, like every other faithful Confederate, I dwell with delight on the many glorious fields where this dishonoured standard has gone down before the stainless battle-flag of the Confederacy."
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