Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 01.djvu/32

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In closing the labors of the first Permanent Congress, your representatives deem it a fit occasion to give some account of their stewardship; to review briefly what, under such embarrassments and adverse circumstances, has been accomplished; to invite attention to the prospect before us, and the duties incumbent on every citizen in this crisis; and to address such words of counsel and encouragement as the times demand.

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. This step was taken reluctantly, by constraint, and after the exhaustion of every measure that was likely to secure us from interference with our property, equality in the Union, or exemption from submission to an alien Government. The Southern States claimed only the unrestricted enjoyment of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Finding, by painful and protracted experience, that this was persistently denied, we determined to separate from those enemies who had manifested the inclination and ability to impoverish and destroy us. We fell back upon the right for which the colonies maintained the war of the Revolution, and which our heroic forefathers asserted to be clear and inalienable. The unanimity and zeal with which the separation was undertaken and perfected, finds no parallel in history. The people rose en masse to assert their liberties and protect their menaced rights. There never was before such universality of conviction among any people on any question involving so serious and so thorough a change of political and international relations. This grew out of the clearness of the right so to act, and the certainty of the perils of further association with the North. The