Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 9.djvu/23

Rh ilar character from sources equally as prominent could be multiplied indefinitely, showing that as far as Northern sentiment was concerned, the Southern States which passed ordinances of secession before the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln had no reason to believe that their action would meet with the result which so soon changed the feeling of acquiescence in their movement, expressed by Mr. Phillips and Mr. Greeley, into a determination to compel them to remain in the Union by force of arms—an illusive dream from which they awoke too late to avert the consequence of their acts.

Justice to the brave men who gave or risked their lives in defense of the South, demands that the truth as they saw and see it shall be stated. No enemy respects a cringing foe, and a manly submission to the results of the war, in the most unreserved sense, does not imply the surrender of mental convictions as to the causes of the war or belief in the truth of the principles for which one fought. The conditions are indeed changed, and the results of the war embodied in the amendments have altered the Constitution so as to make views tenable before the war, incompatible with that instrument as amended. As an example of those changes, it may be noted that every one now is by virtue of the Fourteenth amendment a citizen of the United States, whereas previous to its adoption he was a citizen only by virtue of being first a citizen of the State in which he lived. The latter was the chief ground upon which paramount allegiance was held to be due to the State, whereas one of the revolutionary results of the war is that Federal citizenship is placed on the higher plane. But with this exception and the elimination of slavery, for the maintenance of which the South fought because it was made the particular issue upon which her right to regulate her domestic concerns was assailed, it is a question whether the effect of the war has not been to strengthen instead of to weaken the doctrine of Jefferson as to the relative rights and