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,