Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 17.djvu/229

 The Monument to General Robert E. Lee, 221

of Fredericksburg, objected to the form of an address for that purpose submitted by Mr. Memminger because it did not set forth the causes of the secession of South Carolina correctly. He said :

so many years caused a contest in this State against the Federal Government. Not one word is said about the violations of the Con- stitution in expenditures not authorized by that instrument, but the main stress is laid upon an incomparably unimportant point relative to fugitive slaves and the laws passed by Northern States obstruct- ing the recovery of fiigidve slaves * * * * Many of the acts of the non-slave-holding States obstructing the recovery of fugitive slaves have been passed since 1852, I think the majority of them, but I do not regard it as a matter of any importance."
 * * In the declaration not one word is said about the tariff, which for

In reply to General Gregg, Mr. Keitt made a statement which illustrates what I have said with reference to the Southern represent- atives in Congress being responsible for the Federal laws as they stood at the time the cotton States seceded. He said :

the reasons which influenced us in the present case in our with- drawal. My friend suggests that sufficient notice has not been paid to the tariff. Your late senators and every one of your members of the House of Representatives voted for the present tariff. If the gentleman had been there he would also have voted for it. ' '
 * * We have instructed the committee to draw up a statement of

We are told that this reply of Mr. Keitt was greeted with laugh- ter.

TW^O GOVERNMENTS INSTEAD OF ONE.

It thus appears that the general result of the secession movement up to and including the time Texas became a member of the Con- federacy, on the 2d of March, 1861, was to place the seceding States under the laws of the government from which they had seceded, the only change being that those laws were to be administered and exe- cuted by Confederate officers instead of Federal officers. As most of the old officials were continued in office, some of them, the customs officers for instance, by express statute, it required very careful atten- tion to discover in what respect secession had substantially changed the actual legal and political condition of the citizens of the States composing the Montgomery Confederacy.

It gave no new protection to slavery, as every power over that institution denied by the Confederate Constitution to the Confederate Government had been expressly abnegated by the legislative, execu- tive, and judicial departments under the Constitution of the United