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.

The Senators who withdrew on this day were Mr. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, Messrs. Fitzpatrick and Clay, of Alabama, and Messrs Yulee and Mallory, of Florida. Most of them made temperate and courteous speeches in announcing the fact and occasion of their resignation. Mr. Davis, although at the time much prostrated by ill health, made a speech of remarkable force and dignity; and turning to different members, declared that he was the type of the general feelings of his constituents toward theirs; that he felt no hostility to them; that he went thence unencumbered by the remembrance of any injury received; but he said, if the North had resolved on hostile relations towards the seceded States, then “we will invoke the God of our fathers, who delivered them from the power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear; and thus, putting our trust in God and in our own firm hearts and strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best we may.”

Mr. C. C. Clay of Alabama was more violent. In severing his connection with the Senate, he took occasion to make out a very full bill of indictment against the Republican party, and to recount the grievances that impelled the South to separate herself from the Union. A portion of his speech is interesting here as the historical statement on the side of the South of the causes and necessity of Disunion, made by one of her leading statesmen, and reflecting much both of the intelligence and passion of his countrymen. He said:

It is now nearly forty-two years since Alabama was admitted into the Union. She entered it, as she goes out of it, while the Confederacy was in convulsions, caused by the hostility of the North to the domestic slavery of the South. Not a decade, nor scarce a lustrum, has elapsed, since her birth, that has not been strongly marked by proofs of the growth and power of that anti-slavery spirit of the Northern people which seeks the overthrow of that domestic institution of the South which is not only the chief source of her prosperity, but the very basis of her social order and state polity. It is to-day the master-spirit of the Northern States, and had, before the secession of Alabama, of Mississippi, of Florida, or of South Carolina, severed most of the bonds of the Union. It denied us Christian communion, because it could not endure what it styles the moral leprosy of slaveholding; it refused us permission to sojourn, or even to pass through the North, with our property; it claimed freedom for the slave if brought by his master into a Northern State; it violated the Constitution and treaties and laws of Congress, because designed to protect that property; it refused us any share of lands acquired mainly by our diplomacy and blood and treasure; it refused our property any shelter or security beneath the flag of a common government; it robbed us of our property, and refused to restore it; it refused to deliver criminals against our laws, who fled to the North with our property or our blood upon their hands; it threatened us, by solemn legislative acts, with ignominious punishment if we pursued our property into a Northern State; it murdered Southern men when seeking the recovery of their property on Northern soil; it invaded the borders of Southern States, poisoned their wells, burnt their dwellings, and murdered their people; it denounced us by deliberate resolves of popular meetings, of party conventions, and of religious and even legislative assemblies, as habitual violators