Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/291

Rh as to astonish the world, met the shock of revolution. Intricate questions difficult to solve and existing from the very formation of the government itself, had grown in intricacy with increase in power, population and prosperity, until the great political parties had divided on sectional lines, and the solution of the questions culminated in the war between the States, the greatest war of modern times. Slavery, State rights and acquisition of territory were the irritating causes. The two sections fought against each other, though neither of them departed, except as the exigencies of the war temporarily demanded, from the great American principle of government as they had construed it, namely, the sovereignty of the States composing the respective confederations. The Congress of the United States, in July, 1861, while controlled by the Republican party (the great war party), solemnly declared that the war was waged "to defend the Constitution and all laws in pursuance thereof, and to preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States unimpaired; that as soon as these objects were accomplished the war ought to cease." This was the accepted theory to the close of the war.

The seceded States, in their sovereign capacity and through constitutional conventions (the accepted method), severed their connection with the United States, formed a confederated government for common defense and adopted a constitution virtually the same as that of the United States, from which they had separated. They maintained for four years a government which was recognized as belligerent and de facto by other powerful nations, and at the close of that period, in theory, these States were still in the Confederacy, although it was de facto dead. In the theory of the Confederate government, and also of the United States government, the States composing each had been regarded as free and sovereign. They were as capable of maintaining self-government as they had been from the earliest days of