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I have thus taken the pains to show how completely the advocates of the Federal party ignore the facts of the Southern secession, and gloss over the character of the warfare forced on the Confederate States by the armed invasion of their land. They will not believe the South is united and firmly determined to wage war to the uttermost in defence of their homes and hearths; they ignore the refusal to treat with the commissioners sent by Davis, in the hope of averting this dreadful quarrel, and cling desperately to the notion that a large mass of nonslaveholding whites are coerced by the slaveocracy, and only thirsting for deliverance at the hands of the Northern sympathisers. Not only is this not the fact, and there is not a tittle of evidence they have attempted to show for it, but the very contrary is clear. Davis possesses the confidence of the whole of the seceding States; his requisitions are promptly attended to, his forces rapidly augmented. He has been refused all means of arbitration but the sword, and we have seen how able he is to wield it. Not less significant is the solemn and affecting thanksgiving to the God of battles just offered by the Congress of the Confederate States on their late victory. The tone and temper of the speeches of the cabinet of the North, their uniform and regular

course of conduct towards the South, their seizing the moment of the secession to pass the obnoxious Morill Tariff, and the bitterness with which they inaugurated their armed invasion of their brethren, all tend to justify the stand made against them, and yet Mr. Ellison says:

"At present there is no doubt that justice and right are on the side of the North. One great proof of the innate weakness-ay, badness—of the cause of the Southern Confederacy is the fact that it has refused to accept all constitutional remedies for its real or supposed grievances, and has preferred to hew itself out of the Union amidst the blood and carnage of civil war. There was no need for the sword to have been drawn; the ballot-box could have settled the question, if only it had been allowed fair play. If the slave-owners are honest, if their cause is founded on justice and the common weal of the Southern people, why have they refused to allow their own people to vote on the adoption or not of the new Constitution? If their grievances are what they avow them to be, why not put them in a series of constitutional amendments, and lay them before the people of the whole Union, to accept or reject as they pleased? If, under such circumstances, they failed in obtaining redress, then the world would

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wish them God-speed in defending their rights by means of the sword. As it is they are rebels; and even if they succeed in establishing their separate existence, the civil war which they have inaugurated will ever remain a foul blot upon their fame."

Now every single fact loudly gives the lie to this assumption. Who began this wretched civil war? Who were the first invaders? Was any chance left for a fair and peaceable solution given by the Federal Government? Can Mr. Ellison quote one single instance of the North granting a proposition demanded by the South? What evidence is there of coercion of public opinion by tyrannising politicians in the South? What has moved the border States to declare constitutionally against the North? What has been the action of the paternal government in those countries occupied by their troops? Where are there any signs of reaction in favour of the Union? Until these questions are fairly answered we must decline to accept such lame and clumsy declamation. It is of a piece with the mad impertinence of Mr. Cassius M. Clay, or that reverend gentleman, Mr. Maclintock, from Paris, who had the unblushing effrontery to tell us of the tears shed in America over the mutiny of India by men who sympathised with England in her agony. We know the ring of such metal.

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CHAP. V.

THE AUTHORITIES ON THE QUESTION.

I WILL now sum up the amount of evidence we have been able to adduce. On the side of the North enough and to spare has been written, and the only fear I have is that my judgment may not have been warped by the outrageous advocacy adopted by its panegyrists. On the other side we have the message of the President of the Confederate States which will be found in extenso in the Appendix. But the arguments seem to be mainly these-1. That the Federal Government is sovereign ;—which it plainly is not. 2. That the States have no right to resist its action; - which all previous experience expressly denies. 3. That there were no circumstances to justify the secession in this case; the contrary, the facts prove that if the South had not seized the present opportunity, in ten years' time they would have found themselves subjugated; first, by the annihilation of their social status against their will and without compensation; and, secondly,

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by having their whole commerce swallowed up by restrictive and prohibitory protection tariffs. 4. That the manner of secession was illegal; —but the declaration of independence put forward by the secessionist was as solemn and grave a state paper as ever issued from the bureau of any minister, and the force and action was on the part of the North to the complete exclusion of any pacific solution of the differences existing in fact. 5. That the acts of the Federal Government are in accordance with the will of the people; — this the almost universal defection of the border States expressly denies. They are the most statesmanlike, steady, and intelligent subjects of the Union, and their action has, without exception, invariably decided constitutional questions up to the present hour. Again, the proclamations of martial law in Baltimore and Missouri, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the utter extinction of any but military rule, seem to leave small opportunity for the expression of popular will. Lastly, there has been no one occasion for the constitutional expression of such will afforded to the people, whereby they could legitimately affirm or deny the legality of the action of Government which at present has been done mero motu. On all these points, therefore, the balance lies incontestibly on

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