Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 23.djvu/23

 ('. A. /',>"//>' .\; but it now appears that secession by States which these, our brothers, so persistently taught us to regard as a final but friendly and legal remedy for wrongs must be rebuked as the least defensible and most immoral of all measures a sovereign people can adopt.

WHY SECESSION?

It was no small sacrifice for the Southern section to yield all the vast empire of the East, the North and the West, reserving only the area of a dozen States; to give up the Union which our forefathers planned and formed; to surrender that flag of stars and stripes which Washington designed, and under which our heroes had fought on land and sea; to give up the national name, the domain, the wealth, the prestige of our country, and begin anew the experiment of self- government. It will never be fully told how the great heart of the South yearned for a settlement of the issue without the shedding of blood and the severance of the States.

It is, therefore, well asked why then did secession occur ? Let the answer be honorably made, that in 1860 the Southern States despaired of maintaining the original principles of that Union which they had helped to form. They saw sectional ascendancy become imminent and portentious of evil. They saw the hard hand of im- patient fanaticism uplifted against their prosperity, With unspeak- able sadness they beheld centralization tightening its coils to crush out the Statehood of the States. With dismay they read upon the banners of a victorious host the old British and Federalistic device, "The States are provincial and the Union Imperial." The South did not secede from its proud place among the States to maintain the abstract theory of secession. That theory was not the issue and the Union was not the enemy. It did not suppose that under the law as interpreted by every State in the original Union the legal right of secession could be disputed or coercion justified. When the States withdrew they dissolved no Union, broke no law and formed no conspiracy. They left the Union intact, the President, the Congress, the Judiciary all unharmed; the army and navy undisturbed, and all public property scheduled for account and set- tlement. Their ordinances simply maintained the principles which 2