The convention remained in session until the first day of May, when it adjourned over to the second week in June to await the result of the popular vote on the ordinance of secession. The ratification was given by an overwhelming majority of the popular vote, and upon the re-assembling of the convention the ordinance was duly signed by the greater part of the members. I had voted for the ratification at the polls and now put my signature to the ordinance.
Virginia now had fully and completely dissolved her connection with the United States, and resumed the powers she had delegated when she ratified the Constitution. To this step she had been impelled against her previous inclinations, by the course of the government at Washington, to avoid being dragged into an unholy war against the Cotton States, and to maintain the cherished principles for which she had fought, and which she had uniformly asserted since the adoption of the United States Constitution. When the act of secession was complete, she adopted the Constitution of the Confederate States, both provisional and permanent, and was fully admitted into the Confederacy.
North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas likewise withdrew from the Union and became members of the Confederacy for the same reasons which influenced Virginia. Missouri subsequently passed an ordinance of secession and joined the Confederacy, but that state was soon overrun by United States troops, and the regular government was subverted and another substituted in its place by the force of Federal bayonets. Kentucky undertook to occupy a neutral position until the greater part of that state was in the power of the Federal troops, when an irregular government was formed which passed an ordinance of secession and joined the Confederacy. The situation of Maryland was such that she was soon overrun by troops and prevented any legislative expression of opinion, the members of her legislature being seized and imprisoned. Little Delaware was so situated that its voice was never heard at all.
[CHAPTER VI]
The Right to Withdraw
The causes which led to the secession of the Southern States have never been given, and when they are compared with those which led to the American Revolution as given by the First Continental Congress, the latter sink into comparative insignificance. A large portion of the wrongs complained of in the Declaration of Independence were acts committed after the commencement of the collisions between the British troops and the Colonists, and if these were compared with those committed by the Federal troops in the beginning of the war, in Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, to say nothing of the long list of outrages perpetrated during its progress, the indictment against King George contained in the eloquent language of the Declaration of Independence, would be a very tame affair in comparison with that which could be preferred against the Government at Washington.
The third article of the Confederation had specified the object for which it had been formed, and that it was "A firm league of friendship" for the common defence, the security of the liberties and the mutual and general welfare, and that the states bound themselves to assist each other against all force offered to or attacks made upon them or any of them "on account of religion, sovereignty, trade or any other pretense whatever." The preamble to the Constitution recites that it was made "to form a more perfect union." More perfect how? To the subversion of the liberties and sovereignty of the states? Had the conduct of the Northern States been that of the members of "a firm league and friendship?" And when they had so flagrantly violated and neglected the plain stipulations of the Constitution, did not the Southern States have the same right to withdraw from the connection with them, that the colonies had to withdraw from the connection with Great Britain, because the government which had been instituted for "the common defence and general welfare" had become "destructive of those ends?"
Who was to judge of whether there was a necessity for severing the connection, the oppressor or the oppressed? If the former, then the decision would have been against the colonies. If colonies, the mere offshoots from the mother country, could undertake to judge the sufficiency of the grievances and the mode and measure of redress, could not sovereign states which had framed the government of which they complained, do the same thing? In seceding from the Union, the Cotton States had acted as states, and not as factious individuals resisting the laws or authority of the government. The right of no one had been violated, and it was not proposed to violate the rights of any individuals or states, but merely to dissolve a compact, the terms of which had been violated. To undertake to coerce those states by military force was subversive of the whole spirit and purpose of the Constitution, and made the government the master, instead of the agent, of the powers which had created it. This doctrine of coercion had never been asserted by any respectable statesman since the foundation of the government, and was at war with all of its principles and aims. When therefore the other states were called upon to engage in this war of coercion against the Cotton States, it was not only their right but their duty to resist. By the very terms of the Constitution, it was made the duty of the Federal Government to protect the states against invasion. Did that government have the right to invade the state it was bound to protect? It was not authorized even to protect the states against domestic violence except upon invitation of the legislature or of the executive, when the legislature was not in session. Was it authorized to create that domestic violence? The power of coercion involved the anomalous consequence of reducing the states to conquered provinces when exercised, and this involved the self-destruction of the government itself.