Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

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[379] to the parties concerned, and preserve as far as possible, under separate governments, the fraternal and mutually beneficial relations which had existed between the states when united, and which it was the object of their compact of union to secure. To all the proofs heretofore offered I confidently refer for the establishment of the fact that whatever of bloodshed, of devastation, or shock to republican government has resulted from the war, is to be charged to the Northern states. The invasions of the Southern states, for purposes of coercion, were in violation of the written Constitution, and the attempt to subjugate sovereign states, under the pretext of “preserving the Union,” was alike offensive to law, to good morals, and the proper use of language. The Union was the voluntary junction of free and independent states; to subjugate any of them was to destroy constituent parts, and necessarily, therefore, must be the destruction of the Union itself.

That the Southern states were satisfied with a federal government such as their fathers had formed was shown by their adoption of a Constitution so little differing from the instrument of 1787. It was against the violations of that instrument, and usurpations offensive to their pride and injurious to their interests, that they remonstrated, argued, and finally appealed to the inherent, undelegated power of the states to judge of their wrongs, and of the “mode and measure of redress.”

After many years of fruitless effort to secure from their Northern associates a faithful observance of the compact of union; after its conditions had been deliberately and persistently broken, and the signs of the times indicated further and more ruthless violations of their rights as equals in the Union, the Southern states, preferring a peaceful separation to continuance in a hostile Union, decided to exercise their sovereign right to withdraw from an association which had failed to answer the ends for which it was formed. It has been shown how they endeavored to effect the change with strict regard to the principles controlling a dissolution of partnership, and how earnestly they desired to remain in friendly relations to the Northern states, and how all their overtures were rejected. When they pleaded for peace, the United States government deceptively delayed to answer, while making ready for war. To the calm judgment of mankind is submitted the question, Who was responsible for the war between the states?

Virginia, whose history, from the beginning of the Revolution of 1776, had been a long course of sacrifices for the benefit of her sister states and for the preservation of the Union she had mainly contributed to establish, clung to it with the devotion of a mother. It has been shown