Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/47

30 one hand and attempting to subdue us on the other,’ we could not stand up for coercion, for subjugation, for we do not think it would be just. We hold the right of self- government even when invoked in behalf of those who deny it to others. So much for the question of principle." After the Confederate government had been organized and its whole machinery in active operation and it had taken its place among the nations, Mr. Greeley endorsed its action in no ambiguous words. He said: "We have repeatedly said, and we once more insist, that the great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of American Independence, that 'Governments derive their just powers from consent of the governed, ’ is sound and just; and that if the slave States, the cotton States or the Gulf States only, choose to form an independent nation, they have a clear moral right to do so. Whenever it shall be clear that the great body of Southern people have become conclusively alienated from the Union, and anxious to escape from it, we will do our best to forward their views."

Nor was the New York Tribune alone, for the whole New York press and prominent journals and able editors of Republican papers all over the North coincided with these views. "Wayward sisters, go in peace," was the cry on every hand, echoed from the lips of the general of the army, with the refrain uttered by the eminent Republican leader, Salmon P. Chase: "The South is not worth fighting for; let them alone."

I give a few quotations from some of the other leading journals. Did space allow, these might be multiplied almost ad infinitum.

From the New York Herald, November 23, 1860. — The Disunion Question —A Conservative Reaction in the South.—We publish this morning a significant letter from Governor Letcher, of Virginia, on the subject of the present disunion excitement in the South, Southern constitutional rights, Northern State acts of nullification, and