Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 26.djvu/343

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to the last, against five fold numbers and resources a hundred fold greater than theirs.'

He says of the cause of the North :

" The cause seems to me as bad as it well could be; the determi- nation of a mere numerical majority to enforce a bond, which they tin mselves had flagrantly violated, to impose their own mere arbi- trary will, their idea of national greatness, upon a distinct, indepen- dent, determined and almost unanimous people."

And he then says, as Lord Russell did :

"The North fought for empire which was not and never had been hers; the South for an independence she had won by the sword, and had enjoyed in law and fact ever since the recognition of the thirteen 'sovereign and independent States,'* if not since the foundation of Virginia. Slavery was but the occasion of the rupture, in no sense the object of the war." Let me add a statement which will be confirmed by every veteran before me, no man ever saw a Virginia soldier who was fighting for slavery.

This writer then speaks of the conduct of the Northern people as " unjust, aggressive, contemptuous of law and right," and as pre- senting a striking contrast to the " boundless devotion, uncalculat- ing sacrifice, magnificent heroism and unrivalled endurance of the Southern people."

But I must pass on to what a distinguished Northern writer has to say of the people of the South, and their cause, twenty-one years after the close of the war. The writer is Benjamin J. Williams, Esq., of Lowell, Massachusetts, and the occasion which brought forth his paper (addressed to the Lowell Sun) was the demonstration to President Davis when he went to assist in the dedication of a Con- federate monument at Montgomery, Ala. He says of Mr. Davis :

" Everywhere he receives from the people the most overwhelming manifestation of heartfelt affection, devotion and reverence, exceed- ing even any of which he was the recipient in the time of his power; such manifestations as no existing ruler in the world can obtain from

War. Article I of that document is in the following words: " His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz : New Hampshire, Massa- chusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Conneticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Caro- lina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free, sovereign and independent states, and he treats with thrni," &c. &c. (not with 'f ?)
 * See the exact text of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary