Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 26.djvu/345

 Tin Cunh'l, l-ilti C.IHS, mill Us l),l',l,:i 385

tin Am ru.in Union, that when the Southern States, deeming the Constitutional compact broken, and their own safety and happiness in imminent danger in the Union, withdrew therefrom and organized their new Confederacy, they but asserted, in the language of Mr. Davis, ' the rights of their sires, won in the War of the Revolution, the State sovereignty, freedom and independence, which were left to us as an inheritance to their posterity forever,' and it was in defence of this high and sacred cause that the Confederate soldiers sacrificed their lives. There was no need of war. The action of the Southern States was legal and Constitutional, and history will attest that it was reluctantly taken in the last extremity."

He now goes on to show how Mr. Lincoln precipitated the war, and describes the unequal struggle in which the South was engaged in these words:

"After a glorious four years' struggle against such odds as have been depicted, during which independence was often almost secured, where successive levies of armies, amounting in all to nearly three millions of men, had been hurled against her, the South, shut off from all the world, wasted, rent and desolate, bruised and bleeding, was at last overpowered by main strength; out-fought, never; for from first to last, she everywhere out-fought the foe. The Confed- eracy fell, but she fell not until she had achieved immortal fame. Few great established nations in all time have ever exhibited capac- ity and direction in government equal to hers, sustained as she was by the iron will and fixed persistence of the extraordinary man who was her chief ; and few have ever won such a series of brilliant victo- ries as that which illuminates forever the annals of her splendid armies, while the fortitude and patience of her people, and particu- larly of her noble women, under almost incredible trials and suffer- ings, have never been surpassed in the history of the world."

And he then adds:

"Such exalted character and achievement are not all in vain. Though the Confederacy fell, as an actual physical power, she lives illustrated by them, eternally in her just cause the cause of consti- tutional liberty.

Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, one of the present Senators from Massa- chusetts, in his life of Webster, says:

" When the Constitution was adopted by the votes of the States at Philadelphia, and accepted by the States in popular conventions,