This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[150]
Secession, and Co-operative Secession.
The advocates of the former prevailed at first in the planting States, bordering upon the Gulf of Mexico; of the latter, in the States lying next to the Free States, and in Virginia.
With these Major Jackson sympathized.
Although this class of patriots embraced many shades of opinion, their distinctive views were these:--That while the sectional action, and especially the temper of the Northern people, would justify before God and man an immediate separation, yet it was not politic to make it upon this provocation, because the South was so unprepared for that tremendous war which would probably follow.
It was further contended that it would give her enemies the pretext — unfair, indeed, yet plausible — to rob her of a part of her moral strength, by charging her with a factious appeal from the polls to violence, prompted only by the loss of the powers and emoluments of office: That, inasmuch as this iniquitous election was yet made under the forms of the Constitution, it would be better to await the first aggression which plainly violated it, in form as well as in fact, and make that the signal of resistance: That the power of our enemies dictated the necessity of acting only in concert, so that the Southern cause might possess the full strength arising from the union of all these States: And that, since the collision of one with the Federal Government would inevitably decide the question of peace or war for all, and no State would stand idly, and see her Southern sisters crushed in detail by the common enemy, however erring by a generous precipitation, both courtesy and justice required that they should only act in concert.
The advocates of immediate separate secession replied, that this act was, in its nature, that of a State acting sovereignly, and therefore singly: That, although the South was unprepared, yet it was best to act at once, because the time consumed in consulting and preparing, would be so improved by our enemies in the
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.