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.

But had the Northern people really been candid and just in their professed willingness to let the South go, they might have found, alike in the political precedents of the country and in the sound reason of its states men, ample grounds for such a disposition. The doctrine of State secession was no new thing in the North. The right of it had been reserved by the State of New York, on her adoption of the Federal Constitution. The exercise of such right had been threatened on four separate occasions by the State of Massachusetts. She had threatened to secede from the Union, with reference to the adjustment of the State debts; again, on account of the Louisiana Purchase; thirdly, because of the war of 1812-14, when, as Mr. Jefferson said, “four of the Eastern States were only attached to the Union like so many inanimate bodies to living men ;” and fourthly, on the annexation of Texas, when her Legislature actually resolved in advance that this event would be good cause for the dissolution of the Union. With reference to the Louisiana Purchase, and the bill to admit into the Union the Territory of Orleans, under the name of Louisiana, Mr. Quincy, of Massachusetts, had placed on record in Congress a definition of the remedy of secession; for, at the instance of members, he had put in writing, and placed on the desk of the House of Representatives, the following proposition:

If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of this Union; that it will free the States from their moral obligations, and, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a separation-amicably, if they can; violently, if they must.

But it is not necessary to make here any discussion or recrimination on the subject of State secession. For the South claimed a double justification of her withdrawal from the Union; and in putting it on the alternative of that right of self-government proclaimed in the American Declaration of Independence, and existing in all republican systems, she could claim its recognition from the highest sources, both of official and popular authority in the North.

Indeed, the President-elect, Mr. Lincoln, had, at another period of his public life, made this remarkable declaration: “Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake ”