[35] Carroll, “Religious Forces,” pp. 93, 178.
[36] Annual Cyclopædia (1864), p. 683.
[37] Wilmer, “Recent Past,” p. 248.
[38] Perry, “History of the American Episcopal Church,” Vol. II, p. 328 et seq.; McPherson, “History of the Rebellion,” p. 515; Whitaker, “Church in Alabama.”
[39] President of Columbia College (N.Y.) during and after the war.
[40] Smith, pp. 448-450, condensed.
[41] Smith, “History and Debates of the Convention of Alabama,” 1861, p. 12. My account of the convention is condensed almost entirely from Smith’s “Debates.” Smith was a coöperationist member from Tuscaloosa County. He kept full notes of the proceedings and is impartial in his reports of speeches. Almost the entire edition of the “Debates” was destroyed by fire in 1861. Hodgson, “Cradle of the Confederacy,” and DuBose, “Life and Times of William L. Yancey,” both give short accounts of the convention.
[42] Except Yancey, who declared that the disease preying on the vitals of the Federal Union was not due to any defect in the Constitution, but to the heads, hearts, and consciences of the northern people; that no guarantees, no amendments, could reëducate the northern people on the slavery question, so as to induce a northern majority to withhold the exercise of its power in aid of abolition. Governor Moore, in the commissions given to the ambassadors to the other states, declared that the peace, honor, and security of the southern states were endangered by the election of Lincoln, the candidate of a purely sectional party, whose avowed principles demanded the destruction of slavery.
[43] It would seem that after this vote no one would say that nearly half of the members were “Unionists,” yet nearly all accounts make this statement.
[44] There were many indications that the opposition was more sectional and personal than political. It is safe to state for north Alabama that had the Black Belt declared for the Union, that section would have voted for secession.