Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 17.djvu/227

 The Monumevt to General Robert E, Lee. 219

Before entering upon the narrative of those events I must remind you that the social, political, and constitutional changes brought about by the war are so vast, and have been effected so suddenly and completely, that it is not easy even for us who lived under the old order of things to judge the actions of individuals and communi- ties in the light of opinions and institutions then almost universally received and respected, uninfluenced by the very different opinions and institutions of to-day. The task will become more difficult when the population of this country shall come to consist, as it will in a very few years, of people who never knew any Constitution but the present Constitution, or any Union but the present Union, and who will have no personal knowledge of the views and opinions that guided the conduct of men before the iron of war had entered the soul of our instit-utions. I can, perhaps, better draw your attention to the conclusions which are warranted by the facts about to be pre- sented to you by the rather startling proposition that the actual Southern Confederacy, the Confederacy which for four years made head against the power of the Federal Government, reinforced at last by the slaves, was called into existence by Mr. Lincoln himself.

To explain what I mean it is necessary to mark the difference be- tween the state of affairs before and after the proclamation of Mr. Lincoln of April 15, 1861 — a difference so important and so generally disregarded in what is said and written on the subject of the war that I shall have to ask your indulgence if I present it somewhat in detail.

Although nearly the whole- people of the Southern States became to all intents united after the proclamation of April 15th, it is gene- rally forgotten that before that event the views of duty and of policy entertained in the cotton and in the border States were widely diver- gent. I shall try to show what that difference was.

SECESSION.

Soon after it became known that Mr. Lincoln had been elected, the cotton States, consisting of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Ala- bama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, took measures to secede from the Union, treating his election as a sufficient cause for their action.

South Carolina led the way on the 17th of December, i860, and was followed by the others — Texas having been the last to secede. Her representatives subscribed the provisional Confederate Constitution at Montgomery on the 2d of March, 1861. On the nth of that month