Confederate States of America

“ The whole South is in a state of revolution into which Virginia, after a long struggle, has been drawn; and though I recognize no necessity for this state of things, and would have forborne and pleaded to the end for the redress of grievances, real or supposed, yet in my own person I had to meet the question whether I should take part against my native State. With all my devotion to the Union, and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. ”

“ For nearly three years this Government has exercised unquestioned jurisdiction over many millions of willing and united people. It has met and defeated vast armies of invaders, who have in vain sought its subversion. Supported by the confidence and affection of its citizens, the Confederacy has lacked no element which distinguishes an independent nation according to the principles of public law. ”

“ The people of the States now confederated became convinced that the Government of the United States had fallen into the hands of a sectional majority, who would pervert that most sacred of all trusts to the destruction of the rights which it was pledged to protect. They believed that to remain longer in the Union would subject them to a continuance of a disparaging discrimination, submission to which would be inconsistent with their welfare, and intolerable to a proud people. They therefore determined to sever its bonds and establish a new Confederacy for themselves. ”

“ The same principle was again acted upon without dissent in 1852, in the recognition of the Government of Louis Napoleon; and in the recognition of Texas, when she seceded, or withdrew, from the Government of Mexico. Well may any and every one, North or South, exclaim, What is all this for? What have we done to the North? When have we ever wronged them? We quit them, it is true, as our ancestors and their ancestors quit the British Government. We quit as they quit — upon a question of constitutional right. That question they determined for themselves, and we have but done the same. ”

“ There remains, then, for us no choice but to continue the contest to a final issue, for the people of the Confederacy can be but little known to him who supposes it possible that they would ever consent to purchase at the cost of degradation and slavery permission to live in a country garrisoned by their own negroes and governed by officers sent by the conqueror to rule over them. ”

“ Proudly self-reliant, the Confederacy, knowing full well the character of the contest into which it was forced, with full trust in the superior qualities of its population, the superior valor of its soldiers, the superior skill of its generals, and above all in the justice of its cause, felt no need to appeal for the maintenance of its rights to other earthly aids, and it began and has continued this struggle with the calm confidence ever inspired in those who, with consciousness of right, can invoke the Divine blessing on their cause. ”

“ We have entered upon the career of independence, and it must be inflexibly pursued. Through many years of controversy with our late associates of the Northern States, we have vainly endeavored to secure tranquillity and 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 be directed to the conduct of our own affairs, and the perpetuity of the Confederacy which we have formed. ”

“ But I will divide the population of these States equally between the parties, and this will give a free population of 6,575,937 Confederates, against a similar population of 20,609,172 Federals, which makes the odds more than three to one against us in the beginning, without considering the fact that the Northern people had possession of the Government, with the army and navy and all the resources of that Government, while the Confederate States had to organize a new government, and provide an army and the means of supplying it with arms as well as everything else. ”

“ They observe that seven States of the American Union, in the exercise of a right inherent in every free people, have withdrawn, through conventions of their people, from the United States, reassumed the attributes of sovereign power, and formed a government of their own, and that those Confederate States now constitute an independent nation, de facto and de jure, and possess a government perfect in all its parts, and fully endowed with all the means of self-support. ”

“ There is every reason to believe that at no distant day other States, identified in political principles and community of interests with those which you represent, will join this Confederacy, giving to its typical constellation increased splendor, to its Government of free, equal, and sovereign States a wider sphere of usefulness, and to the friends of constitutional liberty a greater security for its harmonious and perpetual existence. ”

“ So long, therefore, as neutral nations fail, by recognition of our independence, to announce that in their judgment the United States are unable to reduce the Confederacy to submission, their conduct will be accepted by our enemies as a tacit encouragement to continue their efforts, and as an implied assurance that belief is entertained by neutral nations in the success of their designs. ”

“ When told by a prominent gentleman, who was speaking for the President, that he could have the command of the Army, he replied that, "though opposed to secession and deprecating war, he would take no part in the invasion of the Southern States." Promptly — that is, within three days — after his State, Virginia, passed her ordinance of secession, he resigned his commission in the Army, as he said he felt conscientiously bound by the act of his State. In a letter to his sister, written then, he said: "We are now in a state of war which will yield to nothing. ”

“ Had those powers promptly admitted our right to be treated as all other independent nations, none can doubt that the moral effect of such action would have been to dispel the delusion under which the United States have persisted in their efforts to accomplish our subjugation. To the continued hesitation of the same powers in rendering this act of simple justice toward this Confederacy is still due the continuance of the calamities which mankind suffers from the interruption of its peaceful pursuits, both in the Old and the New World. ”

“ And the articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them, unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States and be afterward confirmed by the Legislature of every State."
Our heroic ancestors, against fearful odds, had staked all that men hold most dear in the War for Independence. By unexampled sacrifices they gained that priceless possession. ”

“ Comparing the results of our own experience with those of the experiments of others who have borne similar relation to the African race, the people of the several States of the Confederacy have abundant reason to be satisfied with the past, and will use the greatest circumspection in determining their course. These considerations, however, are rather applicable to the improbable contingency of our need of resorting to this element of resistance than to our present condition. ”

“ It was the same centripetal force which held together the thirteen sparsely settled colonies and enabled them, without constitution or government, to contend successfully against the greatest power of the world on land and sea, to win the battles of the Revolution and the liberties of America. It was the same force which attracted together the scattered elements, and organized them into a confederated republic, which brought to the Union prosperity and expansion, and which has made the United States the only great power whose boundaries have never receded. ”

“ Thus the sovereign States here represented have 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; so that the rights of person and property have not been disturbed. ”

“ When so regarded, I must dissent from those who advise a general levy and arming of the slaves for the duty of soldiers. Until our white population shall prove insufficient for the armies we require and can afford to keep in the field, to employ as a soldier the negro, who has merely been trained to labor, and as a laborer [under] the white man, accustomed from his youth to the use of firearms, would scarcely be deemed wise or advantageous by any ”

“ The Confederate States shall guarantee to every State that now is, or hereafter may become, a member of this Confederacy, a republican form of government; and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the Legislature (or of the Executive when the Legislature is not in session) against domestic violence. ”

“ A new Government has been established, and its machinery put in operation over an area exceeding seven hundred thousand square miles. The great principles upon which we have been willing to hazard everything that is dear to man have made conquests for us which could never have been achieved by the sword. Our Confederacy has grown from six to thirteen States ”

“ They collide with the bogged ones and fall over them. The ranks behind stumble in on top of the fallen before word can be passed to halt.
The night reeks with oaths. The patient heavens reverberate with them. The mud-soaked soldiers damned with equal unction all things visible and invisible on the earth, under it and above it. They cursed the United States of America and they damned the Confederate States with equal emphasis and wished them both at the bottom of the lowest depths of the deepest pit of perdition. ”

“ Compelled, by a long series of oppressive and tyrannical acts, culminating at last in the selection of a President and Vice-President, by a party confessedly sectional and hostile to the South and her institutions, these States withdrew from the former Union and formed a new confederate alliance as an independent Government, based on the proper relations of labor and capital. ”

“ Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America to A. Dudley Mann, greeting. ”

“ They met and organized a Confederacy which they openly declared to be the first republic founded on the right and determination of the white man to enslave the black man; and, spreading their banners, declared themselves to the Christian world of the nineteenth century as a nation organized with the full purpose and intent of perpetuating slavery. ”

“ When they see a President making war without the assent of Congress; when they behold judges threatened because they maintain the writ of habeas corpus so sacred to freemen; when they see justice and law trampled under the armed heel of military authority, and upright men and innocent women dragged to distant dungeons upon the mere edict of a despot; when they find all this tolerated and applauded by a people who had been in the full enjoyment of freedom but a few months ago — they believe that there must be some radical incompatibility between such a people and themselves. ”

“ It has been our cherished hope — and hitherto justified by the generous self-devotion of our citizens — that when the great struggle in which we are engaged was passed we might exhibit to the world the proud spectacle of a people unanimous in the assertion and defense of their rights and achieving their liberty and independence after the bloodiest war of modern times without the necessity of a single sacrifice of civil right to military necessity. ”

“ Forced to take up arms to vindicate the political rights, the freedom, equality, and State sovereignty which were the heritage purchased by the blood of your revolutionary sires, you have but the alternative of slavish submission to despotic usurpation, or the independence which vigorous, united, persistent effort will secure. All which fires the manly breast, nerves the patriot, and exalts the hero, is present to stimulate and sustain you. ”

“ Having begun the war in direct violation of their Constitution, which forbade the attempt to coerce a State, they have been hardened by crime until they no longer attempt to veil their purpose to destroy the institutions and subvert the sovereignty and independence of these States. We now know that the only reliable hope for peace is in the vigor of our resistance, while the cessation of their hostility is only to be expected from the pressure of their necessities.
The patriotism of the people has proved equal to every sacrifice demanded by their country's need. ”

“ While stating to you that our country is in danger, I desire also to state my deliberate conviction that it is within our power to avert the calamities which menace us, and to secure the triumph of the sacred cause for which so much sacrifice has been made, so much suffering endured, so many precious lives been lost. This result is to be obtained by fortitude, by courage, by constancy in enduring the sacrifices still needed; in a word, by the prompt and resolute devotion of the whole resources of men and money in the Confederacy to the achievement of our liberties and independence. ”