The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume 2

by Jefferson Davis

The inauguration of the permanent government, amid the struggles of war, was welcomed by our people as a sign of the independence for which all their sacrifices had been made, and the increased efforts of the enemy for our subjugation were met by corresponding determination on our part to maintain the rights our fathers left us at whatever cost. We now enter upon those terrible scenes of wrong and blood in which the government of the United States, driven to desperation by our successful resistance, broke through every restraint of the Constitution, of national law, of justice, and of humanity. But, before commencing this fearful narration, let us sum up the hostile acts and usurpations committed during the first year.

Our people had been declared to be combinations of insurrectionists, and more than one hundred and fifty thousand men had been called to arms to invade our territory; our ports were blockaded for the destruction of our regular commerce, and we had been threatened with denunciation as pirates if we molested a vessel of the United States, and some of our citizens had been confined in cells to await the punishment of piracy; one of our States was rent asunder and a new State constructed out of the fragment; every proposition for a peaceful solution of pending issues had been spurned. An indiscriminate warfare had been waged upon our peaceful citizens, their dwellings burned and their crops destroyed; a law had been passed imposing a penalty of forfeiture on the owner of any faithful slave who gave military or naval service to the Confederacy, and forbidding military commanders to interfere for the restoration of fugitives; the United States Government had refused to agree to an exchange of prisoners, and suffered those we had captured to languish in captivity; it had falsely represented us in every court of Europe, to defeat our efforts to obtain a recognition from foreign powers; it had seized a portion of the members of the Legislature of one State and confined them in a distant military prison, because they were thought merely to sympathize with us, though they had not committed an overt act; it had refused all the propositions of another State for a peaceful neutrality, invaded her and seized important positions, where not even a disturbance of the peace had occurred, and perpetrated the most despotic outrages on her people; it rejected the most conciliatory terms offered for the sake of peace by the Governor of another State, claimed for itself an unrestricted right to move and station its troops whenever and wherever its officers might think it to be desirable, and persisted in its aggressions until the people were involved in conflicts, and a provisional government became necessary for their protection. Within the Northern States, which professed to be struggling to maintain the Union, the Constitution, its only bond, and the laws made in pursuance of it, were in peaceful, undisputed existence; yet even there the Government ruled with the tyrant's hand, and the provisions for the freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the personal liberty of the citizen, were daily violated, and these sacred rights of man suppressed by military force.

But some of these hostile actions require here a more specific consideration. They were the antecedents of oppressive measures which the enemy strove to enforce upon us during the entire war.

The third session of the Provisional Congress commenced at Richmond on July 20, 1861, and ended on August 31st. At the previous session, a resolution had been passed authorizing the President to cause the several executive departments, with the archives thereof, to be removed to Richmond at such time as he might determine prior to July 20th. In my message to the Congress of that date, the cause of removal was stated to be, that the aggressive movements of the enemy required prompt, energetic action; that the accumulation of his forces on the Potomac sufficiently demonstrated that his first efforts were to be directed against Virginia, and from no point could necessary measures for her defense and protection be so effectively provided as from her own capital. My remarks to Congress at this session were confined to such important facts as had occurred during the recess, and to the matters connected with the public defense. "The odious features of the policy and purposes of the Government of the United States stood revealed; the recent grant of a half million of men and four hundred millions of dollars by their Congress, was a confession that their intention was a subjugation of the Southern States."

The fact thus briefly presented in the message was established by the course pursued since the first advent to power of those who had come into possession of the sword and the purse of the Union. Not only by the legislation cited was the intent to make war for the purpose of subjugating the Southern States revealed, but also, and yet more significantly, was the purpose manifested in the evasion and final rejection of every proposition of the Southern States for a peaceful solution of the issues arising from secession.

Such extreme obstinacy was unnatural, unreasonable, and contrary to the general precedents of history, except those which resulted in civil war. This unfavorable indication was also observable in the original party of abolition. Its intolerance had a violence which neither truth nor justice nor religion could restrain, and it was transferred undiluted to their successors. The resistance to the demands of the States and persistence in aggressions upon them were the occasion of constant apprehensions and futile warnings of their suicidal tendency on the part of the statesmen of the period. For thirty years had patriotism and wisdom pointed to dissolution by this perverse uncharitableness. Had the North been contending for a principle only, there would have been a satisfactory settlement, not indeed by compromising the principle, but by adjusting the manner of its operation so that only good results should ensue. But when the contest is for supremacy on one side and self-defense on the other— when the aim of the aggressor is "power, plunder, and extended rule"—there will be no concessions by him, no compromises, no adjustment of results. The alternative is subjugation by the sword, or peace by absolute submission. The latter condition could not be accepted by us. The former was, therefore, to be resisted as best we might.

An amazing insensibility seemed to possess a portion of the Northern people as to the crisis before them. They would not realize that their purpose of supremacy would be so resolutely resisted; that, if persisted in, it must be carried to the extent of bloodshed in sectional war. With them the lust of dominion was stronger than the sense of justice or of the fraternity and the equal rights of the States, which the Union was formed to secure, and so they were blind to palpable results. Otherwise they must have seen, when the remnants of the old Whig party joined hands with abolitionism, that it was like a league with the spirit of evil, in which the conditions of the bond were bestowal of power on one side, and the commission of deeds meet for disunion on the other. The honest masses should have remembered that when scheming leaders abandon principle, and adopt the ideas of dreamers and fanatics, the ladder on which they would mount to power is one on which they can not return, and upon which it would be a fatal delusion to follow.

The reality of armed resistance on our part the North was slow to comprehend. The division of sentiment at the South on the question of the expediency of immediate secession, was mistaken for the existence of a submission party, whereas the division was confined to expediency, and wholly disappeared when our territory was invaded. Then was revealed to them the necessity of defending their homes and liberties against the ruthless assault on both, and then extraordinary unanimity prevailed. Then, as Hamilton and Madison had stated, war against the States had effected the deprecated dissolution of the Union.

Adjustment by negotiation the United States Government had rejected, and had chosen to attempt our subjugation. This course, adopted without provocation, was pursued with a ferocity that disregarded all the laws of civilized warfare, and must permanently remain a stain upon the escutcheon of a Government once bright among the nations. The vast provision made by the United States in the material of war, the money appropriated, and the men enrolled, furnished a sufficient refutation to the pretense that they were only engaged in dispersing rioters, and suppressing unlawful combinations too strong for the usual course of judicial proceedings.

Further, they virtually recognized the separate existence of the Confederate States by an interdictive embargo, and blockade of all commerce between them and the United States, not only by sea but by land; not only with those who bore arms, but with the entire population of the Confederate States. They waged an indiscriminate war upon all: private houses in isolated retreats were bombarded and burned; grain-crops in the field were consumed by the torch; and, when the torch was not applied, careful labor was bestowed to render complete the destruction of every article of use or ornament remaining in private dwellings after their female inhabitants had fled from the insults of brutal soldiers; a petty war was made on the sick, including women and children, by carefully devised measures to prevent them from obtaining the necessary medicines. Were these the appropriate means by which to execute the laws, and in suppressing rioters to secure tranquillity and preserve a voluntary union? Was this a government resting on the consent of the governed?