Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

[35] and in which the true idea of the Union was violated, the government distorted to the ends of party, and faction put in the place of a statesmanship that sought long but in vain to check its vile ambition and avert the final result.

When the thirteen colonies in North America resolved to throw off the yoke of Great Britain, committees of correspondence were established in each colony. In May, 1774, after Lord Dunmore dissolved a patriotic Virginia House of Burgesses, eighty-nine of its members met at the Raleigh Tavern, in Williamsburg, and, among other acts, recommended that all the colonies should send deputies to a General Congress, to watch over the united interests of all, and deliberate upon and ascertain the measures best adapted to promote them.

On the 4th of July, 1776, the Congress published a Declaration of Independence. It declared that tile colonies were “free and independent States,” thus asserting their separate State sovereignty, and expressly negativing the idea of consolidation, held by New Hampshire, who on the 15th of June, 1776, voted that the Thirteen United Colonies ought to be declared “a free and independent State.”

At this time the only common agent of the States was a Congress which really had no legislative power. Its action was generally wise, and therefore cheerfully acquiesced in and made efficient by the principals. But as the war continued, its pressure became heavier; men, money, and supplies were needed; and often the resolutions of Congress were either wholly neglected or positively repudiated by the States. It became apparent that the common agent must be clothed with actual power, and this could only be done by an express agreement between the States, whereby each should bind itself to observe certain rules, and obey certain regulations adopted to secure the common safety.

It was thus that the first Confederation of the American States-the articles of which were adopted by the several States in 1777-originated in the necessities of the war waged by them against Great Britain for their independence. A common danger impelled them to a close alliance, and to the formation of a confederation, by the terms of which the colonies, styling themselves States, entered “severally into a firm league of friendship with each other for their common defence, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding 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 pretence whatever.”

In order to guard against any misconstruction of their compact, the several States made explicit declaration, in a distinct article, that “each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the, United States in Congress assembled.”