CHAP. XLII.]

ABSTRACT OF MR. DAVIS'S MESSAGE.

157

The South obliged to defend itself.

to question that point, but to prepare for defense. He therefore had called on the Confederated States for volunteers, and had issued a procla mation inviting applications for letters of marque and reprisal; and though the authority of Congress was neces sary to these measures, he entertained no doubt that that body would concur in his opinion of their advantage.

aded.

Referring to the proclamation of the President of the Its ports are block- United States announcing the blockade of the Southern ports, he almost doubted its authenticity, and inferred that, if it had been issued at all, it could only have been under the sudden influence of passion. He denounced it as a mere paper blockade, so manifestly a violation of the law of nations that it would seem incredible that it could have been issued by authority. Its threat to punish as pirates all persons who should molest a vessel of the United States under letters of marque issued by the Confederate government, he be lieved, would not be sanctioned by the people of the United States.

It seeks foreign recognition,

He then informed the Congress that commissioners had been sent to various European governments asking for recognition. He offered congrat ulations on the fact that Virginia had at length joined the Confederacy. He could not doubt that "ere you shall have been many weeks in session, the slaveholding states of the late Union will respond to the call of honor and affection, and, by uniting their fortunes with ours, promote our common interests, and secure our common safety."

Directing attention then to the reports of the Secretary of War and of the Navy, and congratulating the Confederacy on the patriotic devotion of its people, assuring them of the smiles of Providence on their efforts, Mr. Davis concludes with these remarks:

"All we ask is to be let alone-that those who never

158

TREATMENT OF THE SLAVERY QUESTION. [SECT. VIII.

and desires to be let alone.

held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms. This we will we must resist to the direst extremity. The moment that this pretension is abandoned, the sword will drop from our grasp, and we shall be ready to enter into treaties of amity and commerce that can not but be mutually beneficial. So long as this pretension is maintained, with a firm reliance on that Divine Power which covers with its protection the just cause, we will continue to struggle for our inherent right to freedom, independence, and self-government."

position.

Such is the purport of this long and very able state Davis's shorter ex- paper. Davis, however, on a subsequent occasion, and with much more brevity, forcibly declared, in a dozen words, the motives of the Confeder ates: "We left the Union simply to get rid of the rule of majorities."

He is obliged to deal

tion.

It has been mentioned (vol. i., p. 533) that, in his inaugural address, Davis made no allusion to with the slave ques- slavery, hoping by that omission to find fa vor in the eyes of Europe; and, in truth, he succeeded in that. But the Southern people, who had been taught by their clergy to regard the institution of slavery as "just and holy," thought that such silence implied shame. They looked upon his precaution as needless, and were far from being satisfied with his course. On this occasion he therefore brought the slave question into its proper and prominent position.

But the commissioners, or other diplomatic agents who were sent to Europe, were careful not to provoke the religious or political disfavor of the governments from whom they sought recognition. Thus Messrs. Yancey, Mann, and Rost, in communications had commissioners deal with Lord John Russell (August, 1861), assured him that the real cause of secession

How the foreign

CHAP. XLII.]

TREATMENT OF STATE RIGHTS.

159

was not Slavery, but the Tariff, which kept out English goods. He stated this in a dispatch to Lord Lyons, the English minister at Washington. In other communications they threw the odium of the protection of slavery on the United States government. They declared that "the object of the war (on the part of the North), as of ficially announced, was, not to free the slave, but to keep him in subjection to his owner, and to control his labor, through the legislative channels which the Lincoln government designed to force upon the master." The obvi They fail to impose Ous insincerity of such declarations doubton England. less incited Lord Russell to express his apprehensions that it was the intention of the Confederacy to reopen the African slave-trade; and the offense which these audacious misrepresentations offered to his understanding, perhaps, led him eventually to reply, "Lord Russell presents his compliments to Mr. Yancey, Mr. Rost, and Mr. Mann. He had the honor to receive their letters and inclosures of the 27th and 30th of November, but in the present state of affairs he must decline to enter into any official communication with them."

Treatment of state

federacy.

Davis, in his message, thus found a justification for secession and civil war in the principle of rights in the Con- state rights. Not without curiosity may we examine how that anarchical principle was dealt with by him in his subsequent acts of government. It is the testimony of a member of the Confeder ate Congress, Mr. Foote, that "Posterity will hardly be lieve the statement, and yet it is absolutely true, that the ultra-secessionists, who professed to have brought on the war chiefly to maintain the right of separate state secession, were the first to deny the existence of any such right when certain movements were understood to be in prog ress in North Carolina looking to peaceful secession from the Confederate States themselves; and these persons

160

TREATMENT OF STATE RIGHTS.

[SECT. VIII.

urged most vehemently the putting of the whole country under military law, in order to counteract all such attempts at withdrawal.". The same authority says "that state rights and state sovereignty no longer exist south of the Potomac River; that in that once happy but now forlorn region, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right of jury trial, and, in fact, all the muniments of civil liberty most highly prized in countries actually, free, are completely prostrated; that corruption and imbecility sit grimly enthroned where it was once hoped that virtue and ability would exercise supreme sway; and that a selfish, hypocritical, and tyrannical executive chief, unblushingly sanctioned and sustained by a servile and incompetent Congress, has well-nigh deprived a high-spirited and eminently chivalrous people of all ground of hope as to their own future safety and happiness."

Necessity of a cen

Confederacy.

In theory the Confederacy was founded upon state sovereignty, and its consequence state rights; tral power in the but scarcely had the secession movement begun when it was discovered, as had been discovered eighty-five years before, in the war of the colonies with England, that the object in view could never be gained by a feebly-joined league of quarrelsome states. It demanded a central-a national power. Even "in Richmond itself, as soon as the ordinance of secession was passed, many persons had come to the conclusion that it was best to obliterate state lines, and merge all the South into one indivisible nation or empire. They thought the old, cumbrous, complicated machinery could not be maintained. It was said, state rights gave us the right to secede; but what is in a name?"

It was not possible that the government should be any thing else than a military despotism, and accordingly that it forthwith became. The plea of state necessity overrode every thing, and justified every thing.

CHAP. XLII.] THE CONFEDERATE EXTRA SESSION.

Acts of the extra session.

161

This session of the Confederate Congress lasted from the 29th of April to the 22d of May, much of its business being transacted in secret. Among its more important public acts may be mentioned a recognition that war with the United States was existing, and an authorization of the issue of letters of marque. A patent-office was established, and a bill pass ed for the issue of fifty millions of dollars in bonds. Cit izens of the Confederate States were prohibited paying to citizens of the United States any debt due. Those owing such debts were directed to pay them into the Confeder ate treasury. When the Congress adjourned, it adjourned to meet in Richmond on the 20th of July.

Opposition to the

mond.

But this transfer did not meet with unanimous approval in the South. Davis himself, in the transfer to Rich- first instance, objected to it, and vetoed the bill authorizing it. A strong opposition to it existed in the Gulf States, founded on an apprehension that it would enable the Virginians to do as they had done in the Union, and engross too much of office and patronage. However, like the provision in the Constitu tion against the reopening of the slave-trade, it was one of the stipulated conditions on which the secession of Virginia was obtained, and there can be no doubt that, by many who were not completely informed of the intentions of the master-minds who were projecting a great slave empire, the establishment of the Confederate government at Richmond was regarded as a temporary affair. The Congress assembled at Richmond transacted much of its business in secret session. Recogniz ing, as did that of the United States, that it had a great war on its hands, it, immediately after the battle of Bull Run, authorized the raising of 400,000 men. It provided for the issue of one hundred millions of dollars in treasury notes, payable six months after the ratifi

Acts of the Congress at Richmond.