Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[61] “domestic peace and future prosperity” of the State depended upon “secession from their faithless and perjured confederates.” He alluded to the argument of some, that no action should be taken until they knew whether the policy of the new Administration would be hostile to their interests or not; and, with the gravity of the most earnest disciple of Calhoun, he flippantly said:--“My countrymen, if we wait for an overt act of the Federal Government, our fate will be that of the white inhabitants of St. Domingo. Why wait?” he asked. “What is this Government? It is but the trustee, the common agent of all the States, appointed by them to manage their affairs, according to a written constitution, or power of attorney. Should the Sovereign States then — the principals and the partners in the association — for a moment tolerate the idea that their action must be graduated by the will of their agent? The idea is preposterous.” This was but another mode of expressing the doctrine of State Supremacy.

Louisiana was rather slow to move in the direction of treason. Her worst enemy, John Slidell, then misrepresenting her in the Senate of the United States, had been engaged for years in corrupting the patriotism of her sons, and had been aided in his task by Judah P. Benjamin, a Hebrew unworthy of his race, and others of less note. Slidell was universally detested by right-minded men for his political dishonesty,¹ his unholy ambition, his lust for aristocratic rank and power, and his enmity to republican institutions. He had tried in vain, during the summer and autumn of 1860, to engage many of the leading men in Louisiana in treasonable schemes. With others, such as Thomas O. Moore (the Governor of the State), and a few men in authority, he was more successful. Among the leading newspapers of the State, the New Orleans Delta was the only open advocate of hostility and resistance to the National Government, after the Presidential election.

Governor Moore called an extraordinary session of the Legislature, to meet at Baton Rouge on the 10th of December, giving as a reason the election of Mr. Lincoln by a party hostile to “the people and institutions of the South.” In his message he said, he did not think it comported “with the honor and self-respect of Louisiana, as a Slaveholding State, to live under the government of a Black Republican President,” although he did not dispute the fact that he had been elected by due form of law. “The question,” he said, “rises high above ordinary political considerations. It involves our present honor, and our future existence as a free and independent people.” He asserted the right of a State to secede; and hoped that, if any attempt should be made by the National authority “to coerce a Sovereign State, and compel her to submission to an authority she had ceased to recognize,” Louisiana would “assist her sister States with the same alacrity and courage that the Colonies assisted each other in their struggle against the despotism of the Old ”