Southern Confederacy

“ I am not a New Englander by parentage, birth, or education, but if the other Free States of the North and Northwest should submit to the disgrace of uniting themselves with a Southern confederacy, I should remove to New England, and breathe an air uncontaminated by slavery or treason. And there are hundreds of thousands who would pursue the same course. When, in 1798, the great Washington feared that the South might be separated by traitors from the Union, he declared that, in such an event, he would remove to the North ”

“ There is no incompatibility between North and South, except what slavery engenders and strives to intensify. Strike away slavery, and the people gravitate to each other by laws higher than the bad passions of your Rhetts, Yanceys, and Maurys. The small-beer orators and forcible-feeble writers of the South, who are eternally raving about the mean, low-born Yankees, and laboring to excite alienation and prejudice, are merely the tools of a few plotting oligarchs who hope to be the chiefs of a Southern Confederacy. ”

“ In our judgment the Republicans are resolute in the purpose to grant nothing that will or ought to satisfy the South. We are satisfied the honor, safety, and independence of the Southern people require the organization of a Southern Confederacy--a result to be obtained only by separate State secession--that the primary object of each slave-holding State ought to be its speedy and absolute separation from a Union with hostile States. ”

“ By the last of April all the seceded States had ratified this
constitution. The other slave States were taken in as fast as they
withdrew from the Union. The Southern Confederacy, now fairly launched,
set sail over strange seas upon its short but eventful voyage. At the
start the hopes of those it bore rose high. Few believed that the North
would dare draw sword. Even if it should, the southern heart, proud and
brave, felt sure of victory. King Cotton would win Europe to their side.
Peace would come soon. Visions of a glorious future dazzled the
imaginative mind of the South. ”

“ The Republic has received a mortal blow. There are in America two nations, side by side, two jealous rivals who are always on the point of attacking each other. Peace will not remove their antipathies; it will not efface the memory of the past greatness of the Union now destroyed; the victorious South will, without doubt, be quite as friendly toward slavery, and as fond of domination as ever. The enemies of slavery, now masters of their own policy, will certainly not be soothed by the separation. What will the Southern confederacy be to the North! ”

“ The Southern Confederacy is not viable. Let us suppose that, to its misfortune, it has succeeded in all that it has just undertaken: Charleston is free, the border States are drawn in, there is a new federal compact and a new President, the Northern States have of necessity abandoned the suppression of the insurrection by force, Europe has surmounted its repugnance and received the envoys of the great Slave republic. ”

“ The Southern Confederacy has constituted itself a nation for nearly a year and a half. During that time the attachment of the people to the now Government has been indubitably shown; immense armies have been raised; the greatest sacrifices have been endured; the persistence of the South in the war, through a long series of battles—some victories, some defeats—has shown the ‘force and [Pg 430] consistency’ which are looked upon as tests of nationality. ”

“ If the Southern people should unite in a slave-holding Confederacy, it was not only a question as to whether he could shape an army mighty enough to conquer them, the more urgent and by far the graver problem was whether he could mould into unity the warring factions of the turbulent, passion-torn North. These people who had elected him—could he ever hope to bind them into a solid fighting unit? If their representatives in his Cabinet were truly representatives the task was beyond human power. ”

“ The experience of the Southern slave-holders, on the other hand, was no less striking and worthy of admiration. Every man of the twelve seceding States forming the Southern Confederacy, then fighting desperately for the avowed purpose of perpetuating slavery, was called into the field, as no available male arm could be spared from the conflict on their side. Plantation owner, overseer, and every one in authority, had to be drafted away from the scene of their usual occupation to the stage whereon the bloody drama of internecine strife was being enacted. ”

“ Whenever the Southern Confederacy shall achieve its independence—no matter what its resources, its allies, or its aims—it will have to stand face to face with civilized Europe on this question of slavery, and the strength which it derived from the ægis of the Constitution—“the league with the devil and covenant with Hell”—will be withered and gone. ”

“ It means conservative traitors and doughface scoundrels stirring up riot and ruin among us at every corner, with no man to make them afraid; nourishing the South in our faces and intriguing to bring us into the Confederacy. It means the breaking up of the Union into many fragments—for who supposes that Southern hatred will not intrigue to this effect, and that the pro-slavery Northern men of the present day who have worked so hard to secure to the South the successful solution of the first part of its problem will not be found laboring heart and soul to aid their old masters? ”

“ The Southern leaders knew all these things. But they made up their minds that now the time had come to secede from the Union and to establish a Southern Confederacy. For the first time all the southernmost states were united. No matter what Lincoln and the Republicans might say, the Southern slaveholders believed that slavery was in danger. In advising secession, many of them thought that by this means they could force the Northerners to accept their terms as the price of a restored Union. Never were political leaders more mistaken. ”

“ I am in a star-spangled state of mind, my boy, in consequence of our recent great victories, and would most respectfully request the Governors of all the States to push forward re enforcements immediately. Having rashly ventured into Accomac after forage and the pursuit of happiness, the well-known Southern Confederacy is now hemmed-in with much carnage, and finds itself hem'd and haw'd. The South, the South, we love her still, no love than ours profounder ”

“ If England does not recognize the Southern Confederacy pretty quick, they will pass a resolution not to let her have any cotton, except, &c. Suppose England does ever recognize a Confederation based on the principles of the South, what guarantee is there that in her absolute dependence, if it exists, similar coercive steps may not be taken against her? ”

“ Southern people know this full well, and will only accept the alliance of England in order to get arms and manufactures in exchange for their cotton. The Southern Confederacy will accept no other mediation, because she knows full well that in Old England her slaves and slavery will receive no more encouragement than in New England. ”

“ Not only would it hold together, but it would at once acquire the Border States, where slavery would be more than restored, for there it would be made as powerful an interest as it was in South Carolina and Mississippi but four years ago. War has welded the Southern Confederacy together, and in face of our breaking-up its rulers would have the strongest possible inducement to keep their Republic united, because they would then hope to conquer most of the Free States, and to confer upon them the "blessings" of the servile system of labor. ”

“ They would make almost any sacrifice to have the Union restored, but regard it as dissolved, and nothing is left for them but to choose between two evils. Many, too, seem to be entirely ignorant of the object of present hostilities. You cannot convince them but that the ultimate object is to extinguish slavery by force. Then, too, they feel that the Southern Confederacy will never consent to give up their State, and as they, the South, are the strong party, it is prudent to favor them from the start. ”

“ Whatever may have been our individual opinions and beliefs before the rebellion (variant enough at all times) , the attempted establishment of a confederacy avowedly based on slavery, proves beyond possibility of cavil that chattel slavery, to which we have been lenient without limit, is a temptation too great for the peace of the nation, and therefore the highest interests of the nation require its removal.
2. The simple fact of the Southern Confederacy is also the basis of our second proposition. ”

“ That such a scheme is contemplated by Northern traitors, and that it is tolerated in the South, on condition that all shall become Slave States, is beyond controversy. New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the Northwest are to abandon their free institutions, become slaveholding States, and be admitted as such into the Southern confederacy. I had supposed that crime had achieved its climax when the Southern rebellion was inaugurated ”

“ And this at the moment when nothing would have delighted the Southern secessionists more than to see the Union entangled in a conflict with a strong foreign power, which foreign power would then have been the natural ally of the Confederacy! How anyone could hope that, under such circumstances, an actual conflict between those powers and the United States, the very thing our secessionists ardently desired in the interest of Southern independence, would re-unite the South and the North in a common national enthusiasm, passes understanding. ”

“ You've already endured much more than it could expect of you; you served it faithfully during the term you enlisted for, and now, when it is through with you, it throws you aside to starve and die. You also can have no doubt that the Southern Confederacy is certain to succeed in securing its independence. ”

“ These resolutions were indorsed by Democratic conventions, approved at public meetings, and amplified by state legislatures. In Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky the feeling quickly reached fever heat; in the cotton States sentiment boldly favoured "A Southern Confederacy." Sectional interest melted party lines. "The Southern Whigs want the great question settled in such a manner as shall not humble and exasperate the South," said the New York Tribune; "the Southern Democrats want it so settled as to conduce to the extension of the power and influence of slavery." ”

“ But let a Southern Confederacy come, in which the immigration of the whites will be naught, while the increase of the blacks will be pursued in all ways, and, in case of success, the moment will soon arrive when many States will see themselves placed, as is the case already with South Carolina, in presence of a number of slaves exceeding that of free men. ”

“ Southern women had suffered much by the Civil War, on the whole far more than their Northern sisters. There was but little exaggeration in the phrase which was current at the time, that the Confederacy, in order to fill its armies, had to “draw upon the cradle and the grave.” Almost every white man capable of bearing arms enlisted or was pressed into the service. The loss of men—not in proportion to the number on the rolls, but in proportion to the whole white population, was far heavier in the South than in the North. ”

“ If an attempt was made to coerce a State, Virginia would join the Southern Confederacy. The Confederate States now regarded the old Union as a foreign power whose possession of a fort within their limits, flying the American flag, was a daily insult. They attempted to secure Sumter by an indirect negotiation with the Washington government and were encouraged by the assurances of Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State and most trusted counsellor. ”

“ The incorrigibles, who still indulge in the swagger which was so customary before and during the war, and still hope for a time when the southern confederacy will achieve its independence. This class consists mostly of young men, and comprises the loiterers of the towns and the idlers of the country. ”

“ The whites who were left at home knew that it was in the power of the negroes to rise and in one night sweep the strength and substance of the Southern Confederacy from the face of the earth. Some of the more ignorant whites lived in constant terror. ”

“ The southern people demand that this organized "irrepressible conflict" shall stop— that the institution of slavery shall be maintained as an existing fact in this Confederacy. The sentiment is rapidly approaching to unanimity among them, that any attempt to impair its property- value, or a single political privilege which it confers, or any of the constitutional rights by which it is guarantied, or to place over them the party which arrogates to itself the right to do any of these things, will be a fatal blow at the peace and stability of this great country. ”

“ Even after the Confederate Congress authorized conscription in 1862, Southern man power, measured in numbers, was wholly inadequate to uphold the independence which had been declared. How, therefore, could the Confederacy hope to sustain itself against such a combination of men, money, and materials as the North could marshal? ”

“ Secession, and a confederacy founded upon slavery as its chief cornerstone, would be better than the future of the Southern States—better for both races, too—if the nation is to permit one-third, and that the fairest portion of its domain, to become the spawning ground of ignorance, vice, anarchy, and of every crime. The nation as such abolished slavery as a legal institution ”