The Women of the Confederacy

by J. L. Underwood

THE UNION VS. A UNION

[J. L. Underwood.]

Early in the war a son of the Emerald Isle, but not himself green, was taken prisoner not far from Manassas Junction. In a word, Pat was taking a quiet nap in the shade; and was aroused from his slumber by a Confederate 249 scouting party. He wore no special uniform of either army, but looked more like a spy than an alligator and on this was arrested.

“Who are you?” “What is your name?” and “Where are you from?” were the first questions put to him by the armed party.

Pat rubbed his eyes, scratched his head, and answered: “Be me faith, gintlemen, them is ugly questions to answer, anyhow; and before I answer any of them, I be after axing yo, by yer lave, the same thing.”

“Well,” said the leader, “we are out of Scott’s army and belong to Washington.”

“All right,” said Pat. “I knowed ye was a gintleman, for I am that same. Long life to General Scott.”

“Ah ha!” replied the scout. “Now you rascal, you are our prisoner,” and seized him by the shoulder.

“How is that,” inquired Pat, “are we not friends?”

“No,” was the answer; “we belong to General Beauregard’s army.”

“Then ye tould me a lie, me boys, and thinking it might be so, I told you another. An’ now tell me the truth, an’ I’ll tell you the truth too.”

“Well, we belong to the State of South Carolina.”

“So do I,” promptly responded Pat, “and to all the other States uv the country, too, and there I am thinking, I hate the whole uv ye. Do ye think I would come all the way from Ireland to belong to one State when I have a right to belong to the whole of ’em?”

This logic was rather a stumper; but they took him up, as before said, and carried him for further examination.

This Irishman’s unionism is a fair sample of what sometimes passes in this country as broad patriotism. “We don’t believe in so much State and State’s right. We want a nation and we want it spelt with a big N.” This is the merest twaddle. From the very nature of the formation of our government there can be no organized Nation. Alexander Hamilton wrote, “The State governments are essentially necessary to the form and spirit of the general system. * * * They can never 250 lose their powers till the whole of America are robbed of their liberties.” It is a Union of States and can be made nothing else. Bancroft, the great historian, says: “But for Staterights the Union would perish from the paralysis of its limbs. The States, as they gave life to the Union, are necessary to the continuance of that life.”

Madison wrote as follows: “The assent and ratification of the people, not as individuals composing the entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they belong, are the sources of the Constitution. It is therefore not a National but a Federal compact.”

The Irishman could only belong to the “whole of ’em” by belonging to one of them. No man can love all the other States without loving his own State. A Swiss loves Schwyz or Unterwalden or some other canton before he loves the Confederation of Cantons. The loyal Scotchmen love Scotland before they love the British Empire. The Union man loves the Union through his immediate part of Union. Daniel Webster loved the Union, but his speeches show how he loved Massachusetts first. Calhoun loved the Union, but he loved it as a Federal Union with his beloved Carolina. Many of the best people of the North loved their several States and in loyalty to them took sides against the South.

The Southern people, Whigs and Democrats, were devoted to the Union of the fathers as long as it was a reality. But as soon as they realized that it had become only a confederation of the Northern majority States, with the protecting features of the old Constitution directly discarded, the love for their own States led them heart and soul into the Confederate cause. Our Irishman might be satisfied with A Union, but nothing but THE Union of the fathers could satisfy Southern men. They loved the definite Union of 1789; they fought the indefinite Union of 1861. The former was a union on a Constitution without a flag; the latter was a mere sentimental union under a flag without a Constitution. The Constitution had been thrown away.

The writer’s father, a plain old farmer-merchant of 251 Alabama, was a fair specimen of the staunchest Southern Union man. A Whig all his life, he almost adored Henry Clay and idolized the Union. The great old Union paper, the National Intelligencer, of Washington City, was his political Bible, and he made it follow his son all through school and college. Like all other Whigs, he believed in the right of secession, but did not think the time had come for such a step. He opposed with all his might the secession of Alabama. But when it was an accomplished fact, he wrote sadly to his son, who was then a student in a foreign land:

Alabama has seceded. She has the right to do so, but I didn’t want her to exercise it. I belong to my State, and I secede with her. And I know the other States have no right to coerce her. My son, your old father is like a Tennessee hog, he can be tolled, but he can’t be driven.

Savoyard tells us truly that no State embraced secession with more reluctance than North Carolina, and yet no State supported the Southern cause with more heroism or fortitude. When the news flashed over the wires that President Lincoln had issued a call for volunteers to coerce the sovereign Southern States, Zebulon B. Vance was addressing an immense audience, pleading for the Union and opposing the Confederacy. His hand was raised aloft in appealing gesture when the fatal tidings came, and in relating the incident to a New England audience a quarter of a century later, he said:

When my hand came down from that impassioned gesticulation it fell slowly and sadly by the side of a secessionist. I immediately, with altered voice and manner, called upon the assembled multitude to volunteer, not to fight against but for South Carolina. If war must come, I preferred to be with my own people. If we had to shed blood I preferred to shed Northern rather than Southern blood.

North Carolina took her favorite son at his word, turned secessionist with him, and volunteered for the conflict.

Robert E. Lee felt in Virginia just like Zeb Vance felt in North Carolina. The women of the South were the women of Lee and Vance and Alex. Stephens and Judah 252 P. Benjamin, Charles J. Jenkins and Ben Hill. They loved the Union, but when it was gone, they, with their States, opposed what, to them, was only a Union of invading, coercing States.

“We were not the first to break the peace

That blessed our happy land;

We loved the quiet calm and ease,

Too well to raise a hand,

Till fierce oppression stronger grew,

And bitter were your sneers.

Then to our land we must be true,

Or show a coward’s fears!

We loved our banner while it waved

An emblem of our Union.

The fiercest dangers we had braved

To guard that sweet communion.

But when it proved that ‘stripes’ alone

Were for our Sunny South,

And all the ‘stars’ in triumph shone

Above the chilly North,

Then, not till then, our voices rose

In one tumultuous wave:

‘We will the tyranny oppose,

Or find a bloody grave.’”

It was Southern devotion to the Union which led so many men of Kentucky and Tennessee into the Federal army. It was the same traditional love for the Union of the fathers that held back Virginia and the other border States from secession too long. It led them to make the mistake of the crisis. The writer, like nearly all the Southern men of his ultra Unionism, at the time thought South Carolina made the mistake of too much haste in her secession. He does not think so now. He has not thought so since calmly and thoroughly studying the history of those times.

The new party in the North was in a triumphant majority and was determined to deprive the minority States of the South of their share in the government. Delay on the part of Southern border States did no good. It did harm. It misled the Northern people as to the true feeling in Virginia and the other border States. Had they all seceded on the same day with South Carolina there would have been no war.

Now that the Northern people, through the broad, patriotic administrations of Cleveland, McKinley and Roosevelt, have restored the Union, and Florida is again a coequal State with New York, and Texans once more 253 fellow-citizens with Pennsylvanians, what section shows more loyalty to the Union and the common country than the South?

Our patriot mothers and grandmothers of 1860 loved the Union. Those who yet survive, and their children, love the Union in 1905. No State is under the ban now. The captured battle flags of Confederate States have been restored to the States by a Republican Congress. The Federal government volunteers to take care of Confederate soldiers’ graves. President, and Congress and Army and Navy follow General Wheeler’s coffin to an honored grave. A Republican President publicly avows his attachment to Confederate veterans and shows his faith by his appointments. Thank God, our Union to-day is again the Union of equal States.