[83] ‘everyone that knew her loved her, and everything she said or did became her.’
A resolution as noble, courage as pathetic, and faculties as beautiful as these, distinguished the women of the South during the long agony of the war.
‘So indispensable is courage in the performance of the ordinary duties of life, that we admire it even in error.’
The Confederate dead—our dead—our precious dead—by their valor, achieved a name which deserves to endure as long as fame itself.
For our dead this name is a ‘second life among men, in which earthiness is purged away, and what is imperishable tarries,’ ‘and for the living, their just inheritance.’
‘Her trumpet sounds no empty strain—'tis the appeal against our baser promptings, the summons to action, the meed of achievement, the celebration on earth of the spirit's triumph over the grave.’
If the courage of these Confederates, who stepped from their homes into the army and were soldiers, was admirable, the principles for which they contended cannot be over stated.
The right of local self-government lay at the very root of the struggle and conflict between the government and the Confederate States.
The natural leaders of the South, trained in correct methods of observation and reasoning, in politics, saw the impending danger and gave the alarm.
Mr. Crawford, of Georgia, advised secession on the part of the South as early as 1820.
There was no doubt then about the right of a State to secede from the Union.
Rawle, the Pennsylvanian, in his book on the Constitution, says:
‘The secession of a State from the Union depends on the will of the people of such State. The States then may wholly withdraw from the Union, but while they continue they must retain the character of representative republics.’
Tucker, of Virginia, is as explicit as Rawle on this point.
President Jefferson Davis wrote me, July 1st, 1886: ‘Rawle on the Constitution, was the text-book at West Point, but when the class of which I was a member entered the graduating year, Kent's Commentaries were introduced as the text-book on the Constitution and international law. Though not so decided on the point of State ’
