Two governments instead of one.
It thus appears that the general result of the secession movement up to and including the time
Texas became a member of the
Confederacy, on the 2d of March, 1861, was to place the seceding States under the laws of the government from which they had seceded, the only change being that those laws were to be administered and executed by Confederate officers instead of Federal officers.
As most of the old officials were continued in office, some of them, the customs officers for instance, by express statute, it required very careful attention to discover in what respect secession had substantially changed the actual legal and political condition of the citizens of the States composing the
Montgomery Confederacy.
It gave no new protection to slavery, as every power over that institution denied by the
Confederate Constitution to the Confederate Government had been expressly abnegated by the legislative, executive, and judicial departments under the
Constitution of the
United
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States.
I think it will be apparent that so far as secession before the inauguration of
Mr. Lincoln was concerned, its immediate practical effect was to establish two governments instead of one, to execute substantially the same laws.
The secession of the cotton States was known, in the language of that day, as ‘secession
per se,’ and it found small favor in the border slave States, especially as we shall see in
Virginia.
Conceding that the States had the right to secede, it was generally regarded as a right which should only be exercised for a grave cause, and it was not easy for the people of those States to perceive a grave reason for secession which was followed by a re-enactment by the seceders of the whole body of the laws of the
Union from which they had seceded.
