Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 18.djvu/426

 426 Southern Historical Society Papers.

pendent of considerations of expediency or selfishness, was a politi- cally justifiable withdrawal from a previous limited alliance; and in this case it was the duty of citizens of the States to go with their States. As a proper consequence of these different views, the Fed- erals considered as a traitor every citizen who opposed the central government, however his individual State may have determined; while the Confederates, after the declaration of war on the part of the Union, looked on the Federalists indeed as enemies, but consid- ered as traitors only those citizens, who, in opposition to the vote of their States, yet adhered to the Union. * * * * * * Instead of enquiring into emotion and sympathies, the question is an his- torical one as to the origin of the Union; that is, to seek in the founding of the United States, in what relation at that time the States stood to the central government, the mode of their covenant, and how the relation of the several States to the common union was developed. The colonies, therefore, united not because the citizens in general were oppressed by the British Government, but because one colony felt, whether rightly or not, that it was oppressed and insulted as an independent political body. In the first movement of independence was exhibited clearly the conciousness that the colonies felt themselves separate political bodies. Even at that time the assembly of delegates designated itself as a congress of "twelve independent political bodies," and in this Union each of the colonies issued its separate declaration. In May, 1775, the delegates of the thirteen colonies met in their first congress, in which the first permanent Union was founded; which was ratified by each colony

as a separate body, as one by one they entered the Union, c.", &c.



" Let us suppose, by way of illustration, that German citizens with the best good will to the Empire, yet found that intolerable differ- ences, year by year, bred contention and bitterness ; that Prussians, Suabians or Bavarians, or any group of States, should determine on separation from the Empire. Such separation might be condemned as unpatriotic, inopportune, and unloyal, and an attempt might be made by force of arms to bring back the seceded members to the Empire, but no one would denounce as traitors the individual Prus- sians, Suabians or Bavarians, because, as citizens of their respective fatherlands, they have submitted to the decision of their individual States Prussia, Wurtemburg or Bavaria. The odium would be cast upon the States, and not on the citizens. And yet a great part of the German press has not hesitated to brand as traitors to their