The Secret of it.

troops, to extort taxes, to impose burdens, and to exact obedience. For any feeling of respect toward their enemy to gain even a momentary ascendancy was worse than a defeat; hence, we are not surprised that no occasion was left unimproved where misrepresentation, defamation and false inference could avail to influence the public mind. There was reason in their madness but, alas, the people of the South did not perceive the subtle influences at work upon them.

Message of Jefferson Davis.

The Message of Jefferson Davis to the Confederate Congress which re-assembled in adjourned session, at Richmond, Nov. 18th, gave the Confederate views and summary of events. We may transfer it at length, that our readers may have before them the revolutionary side of the story and argument: "TO THE CONGRESS OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES:

"The few weeks which have elapsed since your adjournment have brought us so near the close of the year that we are now able to sum up its general results. The retrospect is such as should fill the hearts of our people with gratitude to Providence, for his kind interposition in their behalf. Abundant yields have rewarded the labor of the agriculturist, whilst the manufacturing industry of the Confederate States was never so prosperous as now. The necessities of the times have called into existence new branches of manufactures, and given a fresh impulse to the activity of those heretofore in operation. The means of the Confederate States for manufacturing the necessaries and comforts of life within themselves, increase as the conflict continues, and we are gradually becoming independent of the rest of the world for the supply of such military stores and munitions as are indispensable for war.

"The operations of the army, soon to be partially interrupted by the approaching winter, have afforded a protection to the country and shed a glorious luster upon its arms through the trying vicissitudes of more than one arduous campaign, which entitle our brave volunteers to our praise and gratitude. From its commencement up to the present period the war has been enlarging its proportions and expanding its boundaries so as to include new fields.

The conflict now extends from the shores of the Chesapeake to the confines of Missouri and Arizona, yet sudden calls from the remotest points for military aid have been met with promptness enough not only to avert disaster in the face of superior numbers, but also to roll back the tide of invasion from

Message of Jefferson Davis.

the border. Wheu the war commenced, the enemy were possessed of certain strategic points and strong places in the Confederate States. They greatly exceeded us in numbers, in available resources, and in the supplies necessary for war. Military establishments had long been organized,

and were completed. The navy, and, for the most part, the army, once common to both, were in their possession. To meet all this we had to create not only an army in the face of war itself, but also military establishments necessary to equip and place it in the field. It ought, indeed, to be a subject of gratulation that the spirit of the volunteer, and the patriotism of the people, have enabled us, under Providence, to grapple successfully with these difficulties.

"A succession of glorious victories, at Bethel, Bull Run, Manassas, Springfield, Lexington, Leesburg and Belmont, has checked the wicked invasion which greed of gain and the unhallowed lust of power brought upon our soil, and has proved that numbers cease to avail when directed against a people fighting for the sacred right of self-government and the privileges of freemen.

"After more than seven months of war, the enemy have not only failed to extend their occupancy of our soil, but new States and Territories have been added to our Confederacy. While, instead of their threatening march of unchecked conquest, they have been driven at more than one point to assume the defensive; and upon a fair comparison between the two belligerents as to men, military means and financial condition, the Confederate States are relatively much stronger now than when the struggle commenced. Since your adjournment, the people of Missouri have conducted the war in the face of almost unparalleled difficulties with a spirit and success alike worthy of themselves and of the great cause in which they are struggling.

"Since that time Kentucky, too, has become the theater of active hostilities. The Federal forces have not only refused to acknowledge her right to be neutral, and have insisted upon making her a party to the war, but have invaded her for the purpose of attacking the Confederate States. Outrages of the most despotic character have been per petrated upon her people. Some of her most eminent citizens have been seized and borne away to languish in foreign prisons, without knowing who were their accusers, or the specific charges made against them, while others have been forced to abandon their homes, their families and property and seek a refuge in distant lands. Finding that the Confederate States were about to be invaded through Kentucky, and that her people, after being

Message of Jefferson Davis.

mine, be indispensable for the most successful prosecution of the war, the action of the Government will not be restrained by the constitutional objection which would attach to a work for commercial purposes; and attention is invited to the practicability of securing its early completion by giving the needful aid to the company organized for its construction and administration.

"If we husband our means and make a judicious use of our resources, it would be difficult to fix a limit to the period during which we could conduct a war against the adversary whom we now encounter. The very efforts which he makes to desolate and invade us must exhaust his means, whilst they serve to complete the circle and diversify the productions of our industrial system. The reconstruction which he seeks to effect by arms becomes daily more and more palpably impossible. Not only do the causes which induced us to separate still last in full force, but they have been strengthened, and whatever doubt may have lingered on the minds of any must have been completely dispelled by subsequent events. If, instead a dissolution of a league, it were indeed a rebellion in which we are engaged, we might find ample vindication for the course we have adopted in the scenes which are now being enacted in the United States.

"Our people now look with contemptuous astonishment on those with whom they have been so recently associated. They shrink with aversion from the bare idea of renewing such a connection.

"When they see a President making war without the assent of Congress-when they behold judges, threatened because hey maintain the writ of habeas corpus, so sacred to freemen-when they see justice and law trampled under the armed heel of military authority, and upright men and innocent women dragged to distant dungeons-when they find all this tolerated and applauded by a people who had been in the full enjoyment of freedom but a few months ago, they believe that there must be some radical incompatability between such a people and themselves. With such a people we may be content to live at peace, but our separation from them is final; for the independence we have asserted we will accept no alternative.

"The nature of the hostilities which they have waged against us must be characterized as barbarous whenever it is understood. They have bom barded undefended villages, without giving notice to women and children to enable them to escape, and in one instance selected the night as the period when they might surprise them most effectually whilst asleep and unconscious of danger. Arson and rapine, the destruction of private houses and proper

Message of Jefferson Davis.

| ty, and injuries of the most wanton character, even upon noncombatants, have marked their forays along the borders and upon our territory. We ought to have been admonished by these things that they were disposed to make war upon us in the most cruel and relentless spirit, yet we were not prepared to see them fit out a large naval expedition with the confessed purpose not only to pillage, but to incite a servile war in our midst.

"If they convert their soldiers into incendiaries and robbers, and involve us in a species of war which claims non-combatants-women and children --as its victims, they must expect to be treated as outlaws and enemies of mankind.

"There are certain rights of humanity which are entitled to respect even in war, and he who refuses to regard them forfeits his claim if captured, to be considered a prisoner of war, and must expect to be dealt with as an offender against all law, human and divine.

"But not content with violating our rights under the law of nations at home, they have extended these injuries to us within other jurisdictions. The distinguished gentlemen, whom, with your approval at the last session, I commissioned to represent the Confederacy at certain foreign courts, have been recently seized by the captain of a United States ship-of-war while on board a British mail steamer on their voyage from the neutral Spanish port of Havana to England. The United States have thus claimed a general jurisdiction over the high seas, and entering a British ship, sailing under its country's flag, violated the rights of embassy, for the most part held sacred, even among barbarians, by siezing ministers whilst under the protection and within the dominions of a neutral nation. These gentlemen were as much under the jurisdiction of the British Government, upon that ship and beneath hat flag, as if they had been on its soil, and a claim on the part of the United States to seize them in the streets of London would have been as well founded as that to apprehend them where they were taken. Had they been malefactors, and citizens even of the United States, they could not have been arrested on a British ship or on British soil, unless under the express provisions of a treaty, and according to the forms therein provided for the next extradition of criminals. But rights the most sacred seem to have lost all respect in their eyes.

"When Mr. Faulkner, a former minister of the United States to France, commissioned before the secession of Virginia, his native State, returned in good faith to Washington to settle his accounts and fulfil all the obligations into which he had entered. he was perfidiously arrested and imprisoned in New

DAVIS.

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Message of Jefferson Davis.

York, where he now is. The unsuspecting confidence with which he reported to his Government was abused, and his desire to fulfil his trust to them was used to his injury.

In conducting this war, we have sought no aid and proffered no alliances offensive and defensive abroad. We have asked for a recognized place in the family of nations; but, in doing so, we have demanded nothing for which we did not offer a fair equivalent. The advantages of intercourse are mutual among nations, and in seeking to establish diplomatic relations we were only endeavoring to place that intercourse under the regulation of public

law.

Perhaps we had the right, if we had chosen to exercise it, to ask to know whether the principle, that blockades to be binding must be effectual, so solemnly announced by the great powers of Europe at Paris, is to be generally enforced or applied only to particular parties.

"When the Confederate States, at your last session, became a party to the declaration reaffirming this principle of international law, which has been recognized so long by publicists and governments, we certainly supposed that it was to be universally euforced. The customary law of nations is made up of their practice rather than their declarations, and if such declarations are only to be enforced in particular instances at the pleasure of those who make them, then the commerce of the world, so far from being placed under the regulation of a general law, will become subject to the caprice of those who execute it or suspend it at will. If such is to be the course of nations in regard to this law, it is plain thet it will thus become a rule for the weak and not for the strong.

"Feeling that such views must be taken by the neutral nations of the earth, I have caused the evidence to be collected which proves completely the utter inefficiency of the proclaimed blockade of our coast, and shall direct it to be laid before such governments as shall afford us the means of being heard.

"But although we should be benefitted by the enforcement of this law, so solemnly declared by the great powers of Europe, we are not dependent on

that enforcement for the successful prosecution of the war. As long as hostilities continue the Confederate States will exhibit a steady increasing capacity to furnish their troops with food, clothing and arms. If they should be forced to forego many of the luxuries and some of the comforts of life, they will at least have the consolation of knowing that they are thus daily becoming more and more independent of the rest of the world. If, in this process,

'Although it is true that the cotton supply from the Southern States could only be totally cut off by the subversion of our social system, yet it is plain that a long continuance of this blockade might, hy a diversion of labor and investment of capital in other employments, so diminish the supplies as to bring ruin upon all those interests of foreign countries which are dependent on that staple. For every laborer who is diverted from the culture of cotton in the South, perhaps four times as many elsewhere, who have found subsistence in the various employments growing out of its use, will be forced also to change their occupation.

"While the war which is waged to take from us the right of self-government can never attain that end, it remains to be seen how far it may work a revolution in the industrial system of the world, which may carry suffering to other lands as well as to our own.

"In the meantime, we shall continue this struggle in humble dependence upon Providence, from whose searching scrutiny we cannot conceal the secrets of our hearts, and to whose rule we confidently submit. For the rest we shall depend upon ourselves.

"Liberty is always won where there exists the unconquerable will to be free, and we have reason to know the strength that is given by a conscious sense not only of the magnitude but of the righteousness of our cause.

"JEFFERSON DAVIS.

The Purposes of the Message.

"Richmond, Nov. 18th, 1861." This document possessed a double interest-for what it said and for what it left unsaid. In the first place there was no call for it as the Confederate "Congress" was yet in old session. It was issued mainly and chiefly for a foreign market The dispatch of special agents to Europe was to further the cause of intervention, or, at least, of recognition. Their arrest on the high seas sent a thrill of disappointment throughout the South which soon gave place to a thrill of hope that the arrest would embroil the Federal Government with England. The mes