Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 28.djvu/197

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" It this truly eloquent and statesmanlike epistle does not e.\prr- tin virus if the Republican managers at the time, it does at least indicate with sufficient clearness their relations towards the ' Peace Conference ' and the determined purpose of the radicals to have 'a lijjht,' and it furthermore foreshadow^ the actual direction given to future events."

HELD OUT TO THF. LAST.

But I cannot protract this discussion further. Suffice it to say, that Virginia. North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas did not secede, until Mr. Lincoln had actually declared war against the seven Cotton and Gulf States, then forming the Southern Confederacy, and called on these four States to furnish their quota of the seventy- five thousand troops called for by him to coerce these States. This act, on Mr. Lincoln's part, was without any real authority of law, and nothing short of the most flagrant usurpation, Congress alone having the power to declare war under the Constitution. He refused to convene Congress to consider the grave issues then confronting the country. But when it did assemble, on the 4th of July, 1861, he tried to have his illegal usurpation validated; but Congress, although then having a Republican majority, refused to consider the resolution introduced for that purpose. The four States above named. led by Virginia, only left the Union then, after exhausting every honorable effort to remain in it, and only when they had to deter- mine to fight with or against their sisters of the South. This was the dire alternative presented to them, and how could they hesitate longer what to do ?

In the busy, bustling, practical times in which we live, it will doubtless be asked by many, and, with some show of plausibility, why we gather up, and present to the world, all this array of testi- mony concerning a cause, which is almost universally known as the "lost cause," and a conflict, which ended more than thirty-five years ago ? Does it not, they ask, only tend to rekindle the embers of sectional strife, and can thus only do harm ? You, our comrades, know that such is not our purpose or desire. Our reasons have been very briefly stated. It is the truth that constrains. The apolo- gists for the North, using all the vehicles of falsehood, are insistent in spreading the poison; with it the antidote must go. If others attribute to us wrong motives in this matter, we are sorry, but u r have no apologies to make to any such. We admit that the Con- federate war is ended; that slavery and secession are forever dead,