Posted on 02/19/2002 3:18:50 PM PST by Dawgsquat
Davis--Inaugural Address
[Montgomery, February 18, 1861 ]
Called to the difficult and responsible station of Chief Executive of the Provisional Government which you have instituted, I approach the discharge of the duties assigned to me with an humble distrust of my abilities, but with a sustaining confidence in the wisdom of those who are to guide and to aid me in the administration of public affairs, and an abiding faith in the virtue and patriotism of the people.
Looking forward to the speedy establishment of a permanent government to take the place of this, and which by its greater moral and physical power will be better able to combat with the many difficulties which arise from the conflicting interests of separate nations, I enter upon the duties of the office to which I have been chosen with the hope that the beginning of our career as a Confederacy may not be obstructed by hostile opposition to our enjoyment of the separate existence and independence which we have asserted, and, with the blessing of Providence, intend to maintain. Our present condition, achieved in a manner unprecedented in the history of nations, illustrates the American idea that governments rest upon the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish governments whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established .
The declared purpose of the compact of Union from which we have withdrawn was "to establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity;" and when, in the judgment of the sovereign States now composing this Confederacy, it had been perverted from the purposes for which it was ordained, and had ceased to answer the ends for which it was established, a peaceful appeal to the ballot-box declared that so far as they were concerned, the government created by that compact should cease to exist. In this they merely asserted a right which the Declaration of Independence of 1776 had defined to be inalienable; of the time and occasion for its exercise, they, as sovereigns, were the final judges, each for itself. The impartial and enlightened verdict of mankind will vindicate the rectitude of our conduct, and He who knows the hearts of men will judge of the sincerity with which we labored to preserve the Government of our fathers in its spirit. The right solemnly proclaimed at the birth of the States, and which has been affirmed and reaffirmed in the bills of rights of States subsequently admitted into the Union of 1789, undeniably recognize in the people the power to resume the authority delegated for the purposes of government. Thus the sovereign States here represented proceeded to form this Confederacy, and it is by abuse of language that their act has been denominated a revolution. They formed a new alliance, but within each State its government has remained, the rights of person and property have not been disturbed. The agent through whom they communicated with foreign nations is changed, but this does not necessarily interrupt their international relations.
Sustained by the consciousness that the transition from the former Union to the present Confederacy has not proceeded from a disregard on our part of just obligations, or any failure to perform every constitutional duty, moved b! no interest or passion to invade the rights of others, anxious to cultivate peace and commerce with all nations, if we may not hope to avoid war, we may at least expect that posterity will acquit us of having needlessly engaged in it. Doubly justified by the absence of wrong on our part, and by wanton aggression on the part of others, there can be no cause to doubt that the courage and patriotism of the people of the Confederate States will be found equal to any measures of defense which honor and security may require.
An agricultural people, whose chief interest is the export of a commodity required in every manufacturing country, our true policy is peace, and the freest trade which our necessities will permit. It is alike our interest, and that of all those to whom we would sell and from whom we would buy, that there should be the fewest practicable restrictions upon the interchange of commodities. There can be but little rivalry between ours and any manufacturing or navigating community, such as the Northeastern States of the American Union. It must follow, therefore, that a mutual interest would invite good will and kind offices. If, however, passion or the lust of dominion should cloud the judgment or inflame the ambition of those States, we must prepare to meet the emergency and to maintain, by the final arbitrament of the sword, the position which we have assumed among the nations of the earth. We have entered upon the career of independence, and it must be inflexibly pursued. Through many years of controversy with our late associates, the Northern States, we have vainly endeavored to secure tranquillity, and to obtain respect for the rights to which we were entitled. As a necessity, not a choice, we have resorted to the remedy of separation; and henceforth our energies must he directed to the conduct of our own affairs, and the perpetuity of the Confederacy which we have formed. If a just perception of mutual interest shall permit us peaceably to pursue our separate political career, my most earnest desire will have been fulfilled. But, if this be denied to us, and the integrity of our territory and jurisdiction be assailed, it will but remain for us, with firm resolve, to appeal to arms and invoke the blessings of Providence on a just cause.
As a consequence of our new condition and with a view to meet anticipated wants, it will be necessary to provide for the speedy and efficient organization of branches of the executive department, having special charge of foreign intercourse, finance, military affairs, and the postal service.
For purposes of defense, the Confederate States may, under ordinary circumstances, rely mainly upon their militia, but it is deemed advisable, in the present condition of affairs, that there should be a well-instructed and disciplined army, more numerous than would usually be required on a peace establishment. I also suggest that for the protection of our harbors and commerce on the high seas a navy adapted to those objects will be required. These necessities have doubtless engaged the attention of Congress.
With a Constitution differing only from that of our fathers in so far as it is explanatory of their well-known intent, freed from the sectional conflicts which have interfered with the pursuit of the general welfare it is not unreasonable to expect that States from which we have recently parted may seek to unite their fortunes with ours under the government which we have instituted. For this your Constitution makes adequate provision; but beyond this, if I mistake not the judgment and will of the people, a reunion with the States from which we have separated is neither practicable nor desirable. To increase the power, develop the resources, and promote the happiness of a confederacy, it is requisite that there should be so much of homogeneity that the welfare of every portion shall be the aim of the whole. Where this does not exist, antagonisms are engendered which must and should result in separation.
Actuated solely by the desire to preserve our own rights and promote our own welfare, the separation of the Confederate States has been marked by no aggression upon others and followed by no domestic convulsion. Our industrial pursuits have received no check. The cultivation of our fields has progressed as heretofore, and even should we be involved in war there would be no considerable diminution in the production of the staples which have constituted our exports and in which the commercial world has an interest scarcely less than our own. This common interest of the producer and consumer can only be interrupted by an exterior force which should obstruct its transmission to foreign markets-a course of conduct which would be as unjust toward us as it would be detrimental to manufacturing and commercial interests abroad. Should reason guide the action of the Government from which we have separated, a policy so detrimental to the civilized world, the Northern States included, could not be dictated by even the strongest desire to inflict injury upon us; but otherwise a terrible responsibility will rest upon it, and the suffering of millions will bear testimony to the folly and wickedness of our aggressors. In the meantime there will remain to us, besides the ordinary means before suggested, the well-known resources for retaliation upon the commerce of an enemy.
Experience in public stations, of subordinate grade to this which your kindness has conferred, has taught me that care and toil and disappointment are the price of official elevation. You will see many errors to forgive, many deficiencies to tolerate, but you shall not find in me either a want of zeal or fidelity to the cause that is to me highest in hope and of most enduring affection. Your generosity has bestowed upon me an undeserved distinction, one which I neither sought nor desired. Upon the continuance of that sentiment and upon your wisdom and patriotism I rely to direct and support me in the performance of the duty required at my hands.
We have changed the constituent parts, but not the system of our Government. The Constitution formed by our fathers is that of these Confederate States, in their exposition of it, and in the judicial construction it has received, we have a light which reveals its true meaning.
Thus instructed as to the just interpretation of the instrument, and ever remembering that all offices are but trusts held for the people, and that delegated powers are to be strictly construed, I will hope, by due diligence in the performance of my duties, though I may disappoint your expectations, yet to retain, when retiring, something of the good will and confidence which welcome my entrance into office.
It is joyous, in the midst of perilous times, to look around upon a people united in heart, where one purpose of high resolve animates and actuates the whole-where the sacrifices to be made are not weighed in the balance against honor and right and liberty and equality. Obstacles may retard, they cannot long prevent the progress of a movement sanctified by its justice, and sustained by a virtuous people. Reverently let us invoke the God of our fathers to guide and protect us in our efforts to perpetuate the principles which, by his blessing, they were able to vindicate, establish and transmit to their posterity, and with a continuance of His favor, ever gratefully acknowledged, we may hopefully look forward to success, to peace, and to prosperity.
Source: CSA, Congressional Journal, 1:64-66, as reprinted in Lynda L. Crist and Mary S. Dix, eds., The Papers of Jefferson Davis (Baton Rouge, Louisana: LSU Press, 1992), 7:46-50.
That the federal government would win the ACW was not written in stone. Better southern leaders could have won. It was widely thought in Europe that the north could never subdue the south. Unfortunately for the so-called seceded states, the south had the "hey-diddle-right-up-the-middle-- bury his head in the Virginia sand" Robert E. Lee and "Defend everything everywhere" Jeff Davis in charge.
Walt
Address of Hon. John H. Reagan, only surviving member of the Confederate States Cabinet, before the R. E. Lee Camp, at Fort Worth, Texas., April 19, 1903.
Well, well. I thought the winners wrote the history. John Reagan was a loser, along with the other members of the so-called Confederate states.
Let's try something more contemporary than 1903:
The secessionists made their motives plain:
"We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States... They have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
--from South Carolina Decl. of Secession)
"...[the Northern States] have united in the election of a man to high office of the President of the United States, whose opinions and purpose are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that the `Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,' and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction."
And here is what Texans thought of the Republican party:
"They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States."
--Texas Declaration of Secession.
The Mississippi secession convention began their declaration of causes with the statement, "Our cause is thoroughly identified with the institution of African slavery."
Soon to be CSA congressman Lawrence Keitt, speaking in the South Carolina secession convention, said, "Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it."
"As soon, however, as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in the Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves. . . .
Emboldened by success' the theatre of agitation and aggression against the clearly expressed constitutional rights of the Southern States was transferred to the Congress. . . . Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government' with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by al1 the States in common' whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of those rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless' and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars.
This party' thus organized' succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States... the productions in the South of cotton' rice' sugar' and tobacco' for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable.'
--Jefferson Davis 1860
From the Confederate Constitution: Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."
Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: "The Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government."
From the Georgia Constitution of 1861:"The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves." (This is the entire text of Article 2, Sec. VII, Paragraph 3.)
From the Alabama Constitution of 1861: "No slave in this State shall be emancipated by any act done to take effect in this State, or any other country." (This is the entire text of Article IV, Section 1 (on slavery).)
Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, referring to the Confederate government: "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition." [Augusta, Georgia, Daily Constitutionalist, March 30, 1861.]
On the formation of black regiments in the Confederate army, by promising the troops their freedom: Howell Cobb, former general in Lee's army, and prominent pre-war Georgia politician: "If slaves will make good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong." [Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]
A North Carolina newspaper editorial: "it is abolition doctrine . . . the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down." [North Carolina Standard, Jan. 17, 1865; cited in Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]
Robert M.T. Hunter, Senator from Virginia, "What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?"
Alfred P. Aldrich, South Carolina legislator from Barnwell: "If the Republican party with its platform of principles, the main feature of which is the abolition of slavery and, therefore, the destruction of the South, carries the country at the next Presidential election, shall we remain in the Union, or form a separate Confederacy? This is the great, grave issue. It is not who shall be President, it is not which party shall rule -- it is a question of political and social existence." [Steven Channing, Crisis of Fear, pp. 141-142.]
Senator Hunter of VA. During the Negro Soldier Bill debate on March 7, 1865, the SOUTHERN HISTORICAL SOCIETY PAPERS notes him as stating his opinion of the Bill as follows:
"When we had left the old Government he had thought we had gotten rid forever of the slavery agitation....But to his surprise he finds that this Government assumes the power to arm the slaves, which involves also the power of enamcipation....It was regarded as a confession of despair and an abandonment of the ground upon which we had seceded from the old Union. We had insisted that Congress had no right to interfere with slavery, and upon the coming into power of the party who it was known would assume and exercise that power, we seceded....and we vindicated ourselves against the accusations of the abolitionists by asserting that slavery was the best and happiest condition of the negro. Now what does this proposition admit? The right of the central Government to put slaves into the militia, and to emancipate at least so many as shall be placed in the military service. It is a clear claim of the central Government to emancipate the slaves."
"If we are right in passing this measure we were wrong in denying to the old government the right to interfere with the institution of slavery and to emancipate the slaves."
"He now believed....that arming and emancipating the slaves was an abandonment of this contest - an abandonment of the grounds upon which it had been undertaken."
You know old John Reagan served in the Yankee Congress after the war. How did he stand himself?
Walt
"hey-diddle-right-up-the-middle-- bury his head in the Virginia sand" Robert E. Lee
Who whipped how many Union generals? LOL!!!
"Defend everything everywhere" Jeff Davis in charge.
Nonsensical statement. You would have had a better plan? What was he to do? Concede ground? Perhaps his greatest failure was to entrust the western theater to Braxton Bragg. The war was lost in the west.
So did Lincoln.
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that ?- I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.First Inaugural Address March 4, 1861.
So maybe something else drove the South to leave the Union.
At the 1860 Republican National Convention, Abraham Lincoln became the Presidential nominee. The Republican platform specifically pledged not to extend slavery and called for enactment of free-homestead legislation, prompt establishment of a daily mail service, a transcontinental railroad and support of the protective tariff.Republican National Platform, 1860 .
BTW: You might want to visit this thread to see how AOL is ripping off customers - sounds like a Yankee carpetbagger scam! LOL
You are a piece of work!!
Thank you! :-)
Gosh, it sounds like you can't get away from the Southern concern with the extension and preservation of slavery. Areas settled by Southerners would vote with the South on issues like the tariff. Why was it necessary that they have slavery too?
The truth is that Southerners from Jefferson and Jackson on had learned how to get their way by making common cause with the agrarians of the West and the workers and later ethnic minorities of the Eastern cities. This strategy had kept the low tariff Democrat party in power for most of the time up until 1860. What happened to change this? The answer was that Southern demands for the extension of slavery to the territories and its protection through fugitive slave legislation alienated many of the South's natural sympathizers in other regions. The South threw away its victories on the tariff question to pursue the defense of slavery. Congress passed higher tariffs only after seven states had seceded.
It sounds like a nice idea to blame the war on cultural or economic differences, but just which differences were bitter enough to lead to war? Why could this particular war have occured when it did without the explosive issue of slavery? It's in the nature of things to resolve questions of taxation politically where political institutions exist and all are represented. The war may have happened because North and South were two radically different societies with different economic bases, but one has to consider that slavery was a large part of that basis in one region, and much of the difference can be traced to its existence.
Why did the war happen when it did, rather than fifty years earlier, or fifty or one hundred years later? What was it about the 1850s and 1860s that made the atmosphere so poisonous? Why didn't differences between the industrialized East and agricultural West lead to war? Why was the Middle West so firmly in the Northern camp, rather than with their agraarian brothers to the South?
Of course not every Southerner fought for slavery, most, like soldiers in every war fought for home and family. Most Northern soldiers fought for the same reasons. The North as a whole, fought not for abolition but for the Union, as did many Unionists from the South itself, but that doesn't mean that slavery was less important.
Some would like to see the war as part of an eternal struggle between North and South. It can be seen in that light. But it does pay to understand that when you say "Our Southern way of life" now and when Davis said it in 1861, there were different implications. It's not just an unchanging our side against their side. Davis's and ours are two very different worlds.
Someone may deliver fine words about Bush threatening "our rights" or "our way of life." Maybe he's right and maybe he's wrong. I'd have to find out first just what rights and what way of life he was talking about, rather than assume that he was talking sense. If he talked about seceding to protect our right to secede, I'd have to look into things a lot more closely to see if there was anything real at the bottom of the rhetoric.
Of course, every war has more than one cause or reason. We can state the reason for the Second World War and the Holocaust in two words -- Adolph Hitler -- yet historians write thousands of pages and millions of words each year trying to explain just exactly why and how war and genocide came. About as much ink has been spent on the Civil War with no end in sight. But it's hardly possible to write a history of the origins of that war without mentioning slavery, and all the conflicts surrounding slavery carry more weight than those involving tariffs.
One can point to a lot of arrogance, ill-will and folly North and South, but questions of praise or blame or guilt or shame come afterwards, and shouldn't influence our trying to find out what happened, why and how.
The matter was decided basically on the basis of population. The North won because their economic people-grinding machine allowed its grindees to vote. The Southern plantation system depended on the slaves' not voting.
The Irish immigrants in particular found out very quickly, in the first yellowjack outbreak in New Orleans, that Irishmen are constitutionally unsuited to surviving recurrent epidemics of malaria and yellowjack, and so they switched their emigration destinations to the Northern entry ports. German and other immigrants tended to favor northerly ports, too, as shown by their distribution pattern across the country. (The exception was Texas, where substantial numbers of Irish, Germans, Bohemians, Moravians, and German Jews settled both before and after the Civil War. Many roads around Houston are old farm roads that preserve the names of Jewish German farmers in the area: Gessner, Voss, Silber, Westheimer, Bingle, Beinhorn. But it was a small exception.)
Well, James Longstreet had a better one. And he proved it at Chickamauga, with only half his Corps, arriving late on the field and dog-tired to boot -- and after having lost so many men at Gettysburg, 6000 from George S. Pickett's division alone, but many from Hood's as well (including a piece of Hood himself).
Jeff Davis couldn't bring himself, under pressure from the governors and the planters they represented, to conduct a campaign based on interior lines. What could have been done if Longstreet's, Polk's, and Jackson's corps had been switched back and forth between Tennessee and Virginia as the need arose, executing in scale grand-strategic what Lee has been lionized for having done at Chancellorsville? If Jeff Davis had committed to hold no ground, except only that which afforded him the opportunity to wage defensive battles on favorable ground, and hold that ground only so long as the enemy must pay too high a price to achieve it, relative to what he would pay himself, what could have been done? What then, if Jeff Davis had conducted a mobile war of maneuver and attrition along interior lines?
Jefferson Davis was the wrong man for the job, and Braxton Bragg's influence on him, and Davis's favoritism toward Bragg, was poisonous.
Longstreet needed to hold Lee's job as commander in chief of all the Confederate armies, and Bragg needed to command a division somewhere, in someone else's army, perhaps side by side with "Old Wooden Head", John Bell Hood.
You're cherry picking the record in order to pervert the history.
Let's have a multiple guess on who made THESE statements:
This is a world of compensations. He who would BE no slave, must consent to HAVE no slave."
1. Jefferson Davis
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. George Wallace
"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free, honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just--a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."
1. Robert E. Lee
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. Jefferson Davis
"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel."
1. Robert E. Lee
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. Jefferson Davis
"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they only apply to "superior races."
These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect. -- the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy."
1. Robert E. Lee
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. Jefferson Davis
"But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us, if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive--even the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept."
1. Robert E. Lee
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. Jefferson Davis
"Peace does not appear so distant as it did I hope it will come soon and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will have then been proved that among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost. And then, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consumation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, they have strove to hinder it."
1. Robert E. Lee
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. Jefferson Davis
"it is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers."
1. Robert E. Lee
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. Jefferson Davis
Let's keep those cards, lies and half truths coming.
Walt
My sources were impeccable. The first was Lincoln's inaugural speech, hardly an obscure or poorly-thought out remark. The second was his party's platform. If those don't speak to the motives of the North, and give some clue as to the apprehensions of the South, I can't imagine a more authoritative source. I believe my quotes top yours.
Too convenient by half. A half truth, in fact.
Walt
What a snooze.
I post a lengthy selection of contemporary quotes that shows a true accounting of what was important to the secessionists--slavery.
You post two excerpts from the record and attempt to pass that off as Lincoln's stand on slavery.
You cherry picked the record in order to pervert perception of the history and you got caught red-handed. Don't dig in any deeper.
Walt
Perhaps too inconvenient, from your point of view.
Perhaps too inconvenient, from your point of view.
Still snoozing.
Care to expound?
Walt
No need. Our little series of posts speaks for itself. I'll let the record stand as it is.
General Lee's Letter to Lord Acton
Defending the Constitutional Sovereignty
of the States
Following is a letter written by former Confederate General-in-Chief Robert E. Lee to Lord Acton, the famous British classical liberal statesman/intellectual and pro-Confederate apologist. Although General Lee implies he is willing to accept the results of the late war, he expresses his earnest hope that the states can still retain the rights guaranteed by the original Founding Fathers
Lexington, Virginia
15 Dec., 1866
Sir,
Although your letter of the 4th ulto. has been before me for some days unanswered, I hope you will not attribute it to a want of interest in the subject, but to my inability to keep pace with my correspondence. As a citizen of the South, I feel deeply indebted to you for the sympathy you have evinced in its cause, and am conscious that I owe your kind consideration of myself to my connection with it.
The influence of current opinion in Europe upon the current policies of America must always be salutary; and the importance of the questions now at issue in the United States, involving not only constitutional freedom and constitutional government in this country, but the progress of universal liberty and civilization, invests your proposition with peculiar value, and will add to the obligation which every true American must owe you for your efforts to guide that opinion aright. Amid the conflicting statements and sentiments in both countries, it will be no easy task to discover the truth, or to relieve it from the mass of prejudice and passion, with which it has been covered by party spirit.
I am conscious of the compliment conveyed in your request for my opinion as to the light in which American politics should be viewed, and had I the ability, I have not the time to enter upon a discussion, which was commenced by the founders of the constitution and has been continued to the present day. I can only say that while I have considered the preservation of the constitutional party of the General Government to be the foundation of our peace and safety at home and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it a chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it. I need not refer one so well acquainted as you are with American history, to the State papers of Washington and Jefferson, the respresentatives of the federal and democratic parties, denouncing consolidation and centralization of power, as tending to the subversion of State Governments, and to despotism.
The New England States, whose citizens are the fiercest opponents of the Southern states, did not always avow the opinions they now advocate. Upon the purchase of Louisiana by Mr. Jefferson, they virtually asserted the right of secession through their prominent men; and in the convention which assembled at Hartford in 1814, they threatened the disruption of the Union unless war should be discontinued. The assertion of this right has been repeatedly made by their politicians when their party was weak, and Massachusetts, the leading state in hostility to the South, declares in the preamble to her constitution, that the people of that commonwealth "have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free sovereign and independent state, and do, and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction and right which is not, or may hereafter be by them expressly delegated to the United States of America in Congress Assembled." Such has been in substance the language of other State governments, and such the doctrine advocated by the leading men of the country for the last seventy years. Judge Chase, the present Chief Justice of the U.S., as late as 1850, is reported to have stated in the Senate, of which he was a member, that he "knew of no remedy in case of the refusal of a state to perform its stipulations," thereby acknowledging the sovereignty and independence of state action.
But I will not weary you with this unprofitable discussion. Unprofitable because the judgement of reason has been displaced by the arbitrament of war, waged for the purpose as avowed of maintaining the union of the states. If, therefore, the result of the war is to be considered as having decided that the union of the states is inviolable and perpetual under the constitution, it naturally follows that it is as incompetent for the general government to impair its integrity by the exclusion of a state, as for the states to do so by secession; and that the existence and rights of a state by the constitution are as indestructible as the union itself. The legitimate consequence then must be the perfect equality of rights of all the states; the exclusive right of each to regulate its internal affairs under rules established by the Constitution, and the right of each state to prescribe for itself the qualifications of suffrage.
The South has contended only for the supremacy of the Constitution, and the just administration of the laws made in pursuance to it. Virginia to the last made great efforts to save the union, and urged harmony and compromise. Senator Douglas, in his remarks upon the compromise bill recommended by the commitee of thirteen in 1861, stated that every member from the South, including Messrs. Toombs and Davis, expressed their willingness to accept the proposition of Senator Crittenden of Kentucky as a final settlement of the controversy, if sustained by the republican party, and that the only difficulty in the way of an amiable adjustment was with the republican party.
Who then is responsible for the war? Although the South would have preferred any honourable compromise to the fratricidal war which has taken place, she now accepts in good faith its constitutional results, and receives without reserve the amendment which has already been made to the constitution for the extinction of slavery. That is an event that has been long sought, though in a different way, and by none has it been more earnestly desired than by citizens of Virginia. In other respects, I trust that the constitution may undergo no change, but that it may be handed down to succeeding generations in the form we have received it from our forefathers. The desire I feel that the Southern states should possess the good opinion of one whom I esteem as high as yourself, has caused me to extend my remarks farther than I intended, and I fear it has led me to exhaust your patience.
If what I have said should serve to give any information as regards American politics, and enable you to enlighten public opinion as to the true interests of this distracted country, I hope you will pardon its prolixity.
In regard to your inquiry as to my being engaged in preparing a narrative of the campaigns in Virginia, I regret to state that I progress slowly in the collection of the necessary documents for its completion. I particularly feel the loss of the official returns showing the small numbers with which the battles were fought. I have not seen the work by the Prussian officer you mention and therefore cannot speak of his accuracy in this respect.
With sentiments of great respect, I remain your obt. servant.
R.E. Lee
Robert E. Lee, January 23,1861
Walt
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