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OF 
 
 IJXV. History Committee 
 
 BY 
 
 JUDGE GEORGE L. CHRISTIAN 
 
 RICHMOND, VIRGINIA 
 

 REPORT 
 
 OF 
 
 U.C.V. HISTORY COMMITTEE 
 
 BY 
 
 JUDGE GEORGE L. CHRISTIAN 
 
 Richmond, Virginia 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/reportofucvhistoOOchri 
 
REPORT 
 
 OF 
 
 U. C. V. History Committee. 
 
 Within the limits prescribed for this paper it is impossible 
 to discuss with any degree of satisfaction the issues involved 
 in the great conflict between the North and the South from 
 1861 to 1865. These have, however, been so fully discussed 
 by other members of this committee on former occasions, that 
 but little remains to add to those discussions. 
 
 In a recent work, with the somewhat arrogant title, "The 
 True History of the Civil War," the writer begins by saying: 
 "The seeds of dissolution between the North and the South 
 were carried to Virginia in the ships commanded by Newport 
 and to Massachusetts in the Mayflower. Each kind fell upon 
 soil well adapted to nourish its characteristics. . . . There 
 was in the beginning an almost imperceptible rift between 
 the people of the North and those of the South. This grad- 
 ually widened until, notwithstanding the necessity for union, 
 a separation in sentiment, thought, and custom arose. This 
 estrangement developed until it gave to the people of the 
 North and the South the aspect of two races manifesting 
 toward each other all the antipathy of rival and dissimilar 
 nations and in their disagreements rendering impossible either 
 sympathy with each other's standpoint or patient listening to 
 each other's contention." 
 
 Without intimating any opinion as to how far all the other 
 statements contained in this work warrant the author in 
 giving it the title selected, a few glances at history will con- 
 vince the most skeptical that the foregoing statement is well 
 founded. 
 
 In 1775, when Washington's army was in front of Boston, 
 that great patriot-soldier issued a stern order threatening 
 severe punishment to any man found guilty of saying or doing 
 
 (3) 
 
_i Report of U. C. V. History Committee. 
 
 anything to aggravate what he termed "the existing sectional 
 feeling." And during the same year when Peyton Randolph, 
 of Virginia, the first President of the Continental Congress, 
 died, his brother-in-law, Benjamin Harrison, also from Vir- 
 ginia, was nominated for that position ; but as John Han- 
 cock, of Massachusetts, was likewise nominated, it is said that 
 Mr. Harrison, "to avoid any sectional jealousy or unkindness 
 of feeling between the Northern and Southern delegates at 
 so momentous a crisis," had his own name withdrawn and 
 insisted on the election of Mr. Hancock. And so, too, in the 
 Virginia Convention of 1788 Mr. Henry, in opposing the 
 adoption of the Federal Constitution, after pointing out the 
 provisions to which he objected, and in which his almost 
 prophetic ken saw dangers lurking, which have since been 
 realized, said after all that he did not so much object to the 
 form of the instrument as he did to the character and dis- 
 positions of those with whom we were forming the compact. 
 And another distinguished Virginian with fervid eloquence 
 exclaimed that our oppressions under the compact would be 
 "worse than British tyranny." 
 
 With these early and seemingly innate antipathies, stimu- 
 lated and developed by growing and conflicting interests, aris- 
 ing out of tariffs, acquisitions of territory, and other causes, 
 the "irrepressible conflict," as Seward termed it, would seem 
 necessarily only a question of time. 
 
 As to the real cause or causes which precipitated that con- 
 flict, there have been, and still are, differences of opinion. In 
 our view the settlement of this question is secondary, and 
 the vital questions to be determined are : 
 
 (a) Which side, if either, was responsible for the existence 
 of the cause or causes? And if slavery was the cause, as 
 some allege, which side was guilty of wrong-doing in dealing 
 with that cause f 
 
 (&) Which was the aggressor in provoking the conflict ? 
 
 (c) Which side had the legal right to do what was done? 
 
 (d) Which side conducted itself the better, and according 
 to the rules of civilized warfare, pending the conflict? 
 
 It seems to us that an answer to these questions is per- 
 tinent at all times, and at this distance from the conflict they 
 
Report of U. C. V. History Committee. 5 
 
 can be discussed dispassionately without engendering sec- 
 tional bad feeling. 
 
 Our quondam enemies, knowing, as it seems to us they 
 must know, that the evidence on every other point is over- 
 whelmingly against them, and relying on the sentiment of the 
 world now existing against slavery, are prone to charge that 
 the South fought for the perpetuation and extension of that 
 institution; or, to put it in the brief and common form, they 
 charge (as some of our younger people in their ignorance 
 seem to believe) that "slavery was the cause of the war." 
 
 It would seem to the unprejudiced mind, that the mere state- 
 ment of the fact (which, we believe, was a fact) that more 
 than eighty per cent of the Confederate soldiers held no 
 slaves, that General Lee, our representative soldier, freed his 
 slaves before the war, whilst General Grant, the representa- 
 tive soldier of the North, held on to his until they were 
 freed by the results of the war, and the further fact that 
 General Lee said at the beginning of the war, that if he 
 owned all the slaves in the South and could by freeing them 
 save the Union he would do so with the stroke of his pen, 
 ought to furnish a satisfactory refutation of this unjust 
 charge. 
 
 *But let us admit, for the sake of the argument only, that 
 the charge is true. How, then, does the case stand as to us 
 both on the law and the facts? 
 
 It will not be charged by the greatest enemy of the South 
 that it was in any way responsible, either for the existence of 
 slavery or for inaugurating that vilest of traffics — the African 
 slave trade. On the contrary, history attests that slavery was 
 forced upon this country by England against the earnest 
 protests of the South as well as of the North when the States 
 were Colonies und'.r the control of that country; that "the 
 first statute establishing slavery in America is to be found 
 in the famous Code of Fundamentals or Body of the Liber- 
 ties of the Massachusetts Colony of New England, adopted 
 in December, 1641 ;" that the "Desire," one of the very first 
 vessels built in Massachusetts, was fitted out for carrying on 
 the slave trade; "that the traffic became so popular that great 
 attention was paid to it by the New England shipowners, and 
 
6 Report of U. C. V. History Committee. 
 
 that they practically monopolized it for a number of years." 
 ("The True Civil War," pp. 28. 29, 30.) And history further 
 attests that Virginia was the first State, North or South, to 
 prohibit the slave traffic from Africa, and that Georgia was the 
 first to incorporate that prohibition in her Constitution. 
 
 We have no desire to say unkind things about the North. 
 But it is easy to show, that as long as slavery existed there, 
 as it did in all the Colonies when independence was declared, 
 the treatment of slaves by the people of that section was as 
 harsh as, if not more so than, was ever known in any part of 
 the South. Not only is this true, but it is also easy to show 
 that as long as the people of the North were the owners of 
 slaves they regarded and treated and disposed of them as 
 "property." just as the people of England had done since 
 1713, when slaves were held to be "merchandise" by the 
 twelve judges of that country, with the venerable Holt at their 
 head. We could further show that slavery existed at the 
 North just as long as it was profitable to have it there; that 
 the moral and religious sense of that section was only heard 
 to complain of that institution after it was found to be un- 
 profitable and after the people of that section had for the 
 most part sold their slaves to the people of the South ; and 
 that, after Whitney's invention of the cotton gin, whrch 
 wrought such a revolution in the production of cotton at the 
 South as to cause slave labor greatly to increase in value, and 
 which induced many Northern men to engage in that produc- 
 tion, these men almost invariably purchased their slaves for 
 that purpose, and many of these owned them when the war 
 broke out. 
 
 The South was then in no sense responsible for the ex- 
 istence of slavery within its borders, but it was brought there 
 against its will ; it was clearly recognized and attempted to 
 be controlled and protected by the Constitution — the supreme 
 law of the land — and the people of the South, not believing 
 that any other or better disposition could be made of the 
 slaves than by holding them in bondage, only continued to 
 do this. 
 
 In the meantime numerous efforts were made, both by 
 Southern States and by individuals, to abolish the institution, 
 
Report of U. C. V. History Committee. 7 
 
 and it is the almost universal belief now that these efforts 
 would have been gradually successful, but for the harsh and 
 unjust criticisms of the Southern people by some of those 
 at the North and the outrageous, illegal, and incendiary in- 
 terferences by the abolitionists and their emissaries. As early 
 as 1769 the House of Burgesses of Virginia tried to abolish 
 slavery in Virginia, but was prohibited by the veto of George 
 III., then King of England, "in the interests of English com- 
 merce." And throughout the period from 1776 to 1832, when 
 the work of the abolitionists first began to be felt, the ques- 
 tion of how to accomplish emancipation engaged the thought 
 of some of the most eminent men of Virginia and other 
 Southern States. 
 
 Mr. George Lunt, a distinguished lawyer of Massachusetts, 
 in his interesting work, entitled "Origin of the Late War," 
 in which he shows that the North was the aggressor and 
 wrongdoer throughout, says : "Slavery, in the popular sense, 
 was the cause of war, just as property is the cause of rob- 
 bery." 
 
 Whilst we do not indorse this statement, looking at the 
 subject from the view-point of a Southerner, yet if it were 
 true, surely there is nothing in it from which the people of 
 the North can take any comfort or credit to themselves. 
 
 But so anxious are our former enemies to convince the 
 world that the South did fight for the perpetuation of slavery 
 that some of them have, either wittingly or unwittingly, re- 
 sorted to misrepresentations or misinterpretations of some of 
 the sayings of our representative men to try to establish this 
 as a fact. A noted instance of this is found in the oft- 
 repeated charge that the late Mr. Alexander H. Stephens, 
 Vice President of the Confederacy, had said in his famous 
 speech, delivered at Savannah in February, 1861, that "slavery 
 was the corner stone of the Confederacy." 
 
 We have heard this charge made by one of the most en- 
 lightened and liberal men of the North, and yet we have at 
 hand utterances from this same Northerner tantamount to 
 what Mr. Stephens said in that speech. Mr. Stephens was 
 speaking of the Confederacy, just then organized, and con- 
 trasting some of the principles on which it was founded with 
 
8 Report of U. C. V. History Committee. 
 
 some of those of the Republican party, then coming into 
 power for the first time, and he said : "Our government is 
 founded on exactly the opposite idea (that the two races, 
 black and white, are equal); its foundations are laid; its 
 corner stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not 
 the equal of the white man; that slavery, subordination to 
 the superior race, is his (the negro's) natural and normal 
 condition." 
 
 Now it will be observed in the first place that Mr. Stephens 
 said the "corner stone" of the Confederacy "rests upon the 
 great truth that the negro is not the equal of the white man." 
 And isn't this fact recognized as true to-day in every part 
 of this land? 
 
 But hear now the utterances of this liberal and cultured 
 Northerner on the same subject when he says as he does: 
 "The Africans are distinctly an inferior order of being, not 
 only in the South, or slave States, but throughout the North 
 also, not entitled to unrestricted pursuit on equal terms of 
 life, liberty, and happiness." 
 
 Is there any difference in principle between these two ut- 
 terances? If, as this distinguished Northerner asserts, and 
 as every one knows to be true, the negroes are "distinctly 
 an inferior order of being" and "not entitled to the unre- 
 stricted pursuit on equal terms [with the whites] of life, 
 liberty, and happiness," does not this make "subordination to 
 the superior race his natural and normal condition," as Mr. 
 Stephens says? 
 
 But hear now what Mr. Lincoln, the great demigod of the 
 North, had to say on this subject in a speech delivered at 
 Charleston, 111., in 1858, when he said : "I will say, then, 
 that I am not now, nor never have been, in favor of bringing 
 about in any way the social or political equality of the white 
 and black races. I am not now, nor never have been, in favor 
 of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them 
 to hold office, nor of intermarriage with white people ; and I 
 will say, in addition to this, that there is a physical difference 
 between the white and black races which, I believe, will for- 
 ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social 
 and political equality. Inasmuch as they cannot so live, while 
 
Report of U. C. V. History Committee. 9 
 
 they do remain together, there must be a position of superior 
 and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor 
 of having the superior position assigned to the white man." 
 
 Again we ask : Is there any difference in principle between 
 what is here said by Mr. Lincoln and what was said by Mr. 
 Stephens in his famous "corner stone" speech ? 
 
 And, notwithstanding Mr. Lincoln issued his "Emancipation 
 Proclamation" eighteen months later, he said in his first in- 
 augural : "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to inter- 
 fere with the institution of slavery in the States where it 
 exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have 
 no inclination to do so." 
 
 Could he have used stronger language to show that he be- 
 lieved not only in the legality of the position of the South 
 on the subject of slavery, but that he believed in the pro- 
 priety of that position as well? 
 
 Mr. Toombs said in a speech delivered in Boston in 1856 : 
 "The white is the superior and the black the inferior, and that 
 subordination, with or without law, will be the status of the 
 African in this mixed society. Therefore it is to the interest 
 of both, and especially to the black race, that this status 
 should be fixed, controlled, and protected by law." And this 
 is just as true to-day as it was when this statement was made 
 by this great statesman in 1856. 
 
 But there is this remarkable fact in connection with slavery 
 and its relations to the war, which we have not seen else- 
 where referred to, and which is to our mind a conclusive 
 refutation of the charge that the continuation or the ex- 
 tinction of slavery had any influence whatever on the con- 
 duct of the Southern people, and especially that of the Con- 
 federate soldier in that war. 
 
 The writer belonged to one of the three companies in the 
 army, the personnel of which is so vividly described by the 
 author of "Four Years under Marse Robert," in which there 
 were serving as privates many full graduates of the Uni- 
 versity of Virginia and other leading colleges both North and 
 South. In these companies a variety of subjects pertaining 
 to the war, religion, politics, philosophy, literature, and what 
 not, were discussed with intelligence and often with anima- 
 
io Report of U. C. V. History Committee. 
 
 tion and ability, and yet neither he nor any of his comrades 
 can recall the fact that they ever heard the subject of slavery 
 or the relations of the slaves to the war, referred to in any 
 way during that period, except that when it was determined 
 to put slaves in our army, a violent protest against doing so 
 went up from the ranks, and the only thing which even par- 
 tially reconciled our men to this proposed action was the 
 knowledge of the fact that it had the sanction and approval 
 of General Lee. We have inquired of comrades of various 
 other commands about this, and with the like result. Do men 
 fight for a thing or a cause they never speak of or discuss?. 
 It seems to us that to ask this question is to furnish the an- 
 swer. 
 
 Not only is the foregoing statement true, but with the ex- 
 ception of the steps taken to send negroes to help erect forti- 
 fications, employing them as laborers, etc., but little considera- 
 tion seems to have been given them or of their status to the 
 war either in the Congress or the Cabinet of the Confederacy. 
 The reasons for this are manifest to those of us who lived 
 in those days, but a word of explanation may be necessary to 
 those who have since come on the stage of life. In the first 
 place slavery, as it existed in the South, was patriarchal in 
 its character; the slaves (servants, as we called them) were 
 regarded and treated as members of the families to which 
 they severally belonged; with rare exceptions, they were 
 treated with kindness and consideration, and frequently the 
 relations between the slave and his owner were those of real 
 affection and confidence. As Mr. Lunt, the Boston writer, 
 from whom we have already quoted, says : "The negroes were 
 perfectly contented with their lot. In general they were not 
 only happy in their condition, but proud of it." 
 
 Their owners trusted them with their families, their farms, 
 and^their affairs, and this confidence was rarely betrayed — 
 scarcely ever, unless they were forced to violate their trusts 
 by coming in contact with the Federal armies, or were be- 
 guiled and betrayed themselves by mean and designing white 
 men. The truth is, both the white and the black people of 
 the South regarded the Confederate cause alike as their cause, 
 and looked to its success with almost, if not quite, equal anxiety 
 
Report of U. C. V. History Committee. i i 
 
 and delight. A most striking illustration of this and of the 
 readiness of the slaves to fight even, if necessary, for the Con- 
 federate cause is furnished by the following incident : In 
 February, 1865, when negro troops had been authorized to be 
 enrolled in the Confederate army, there were employed at 
 Jackson Hospital, near Richmond, seventy-two negro men. The 
 surgeon in charge, the late Dr. F. W. Hancock, of Richmond, 
 had these men formed in line ; and after asking them "if they 
 would be willing to take up arms to protect their masters' 
 families, homes, and their own from an attacking foe, sixty 
 out of seventy-two responded that they would volunteer to 
 go to the trenches and fight the enemy to the bitter end." 
 ("War Rebellion Records," Series IV., Volume II. , p. 1193.) 
 
 At the date he*re referred to we know that the life of the 
 Confederate soldier was one of the greatest hardship and 
 peril, and the fact that five out of every six of these negroes 
 were then ready to volunteer and go to the trenches showed 
 conclusively how truly they regarded the Confederate cause 
 as their cause as well as that of the white people of the South. 
 Indeed, we doubt if a larger per cent of the whites in any 
 part of the country would have volunteered to go to the front 
 at that stage of the war. If, then, it were true, as alleged, 
 that the white people of the South were fighting for slavery, 
 does it not necessarily follow that the slaves themselves were 
 ready and willing to fight for it too? One of these proposi- 
 tions is just as true as the other. 
 
 We think we have shown then that even if we admit that 
 slavery was, as falsely charged, the "cause of the war" the 
 South was in no way responsible for the existence of that 
 cause ; but it was a condition forced upon it, one recognized 
 by the supreme law of the land, one which the South dealt 
 with legally and justly as contemplated by that law, and his- 
 tory shows that in every respect, and in every instance, the 
 aggressions and violations of the law were committed by the 
 North. Mr. Lunt says : "Of four several compromises be- 
 tween the two sections of country since the Revolutionary 
 War, each has been kept by the South and violated by the 
 North." Indeed, we challenge the North to point out one 
 single instance in which the South violated the Constitution 
 
12 Report of U. C. V. History Committee. 
 
 or any of the laws made in pursuance thereof; whilst, on the 
 contrary, fourteen of the Northern States passed acts nulli- 
 fying the fugitive slave law, passed by Congress in obedience 
 to the Constitution, denounced and defied the decisions of the 
 Supreme Court, and Judge Black, of Pennsylvania, says of 
 the abolitionists : "They applauded John Brown to the echo 
 for a series of the basest murders on record. They did not 
 conceal their hostility to the Federal and State governments 
 nor deny their enmity to all laws which protected white men. 
 The Constitution stood in their way, and they cursed it bit- 
 terly. The Bible was quoted against them, and the}' reviled 
 God the Almighty himself." 
 
 (2) Our next inquiry is: Which was the aggressor in pro- 
 voking the conflict? 
 
 Mr. Hallam, in his "Constitutional History of England," 
 states a universally recognized principle when he says : "The 
 aggressor in war — that is. he who begins it — is not the first 
 who uses force, but the first who renders force necessary." 
 
 We think we have already shown, by Northern author- 
 ities, that the North was the aggressor and violator of the 
 Constitution and of the legal rights of the South in reference 
 to what they allege to be the "cause of the war," and it is easy 
 to show, by like authorities, that it was clearly the aggressor 
 in bringing on the war. 
 
 On the /th of April, 1861, President Davis said: "With 
 the Lincoln administration rests the responsibility of precip- 
 itating a collision and the fearful evils of the cruel war." 
 
 In his reply to Mr. Lincoln's call for Virginia's quota of 
 seventy-five thousand troops to coerce the South, on April 
 15, 1861, Governor Letcher said: "You have chosen to in- 
 augurate civil war, and you can get no troops from Virginia 
 for any such purpose." 
 
 But we are not content to rest this question on the state- 
 ments of these Southern authorities, as high as they are, but 
 will let Northern writers say what they think about this im- 
 portant question. 
 
 Mr. Lunt says in reference to Mr. Lincoln sending the fleet 
 to reenforce Sumter in April, 1861 : "Tt was intended to draw 
 the fire of the Confederates, and was a silent aggression with 
 
Report of U. C. V. History Committee. 
 
 *3 
 
 the object of producing an active aggression from the other 
 side." 
 
 Mr. Benjamin J. Williams, another Massachusetts writer, 
 says: "The South was invaded and a war of subjugation, 
 destined to be the most gigantic which the world has ever 
 seen, was begun by the Federal government against the se- 
 ceding States in complete and amazing disregard of the foun- 
 dation principle of its own existence, as affirmed in the 
 Declaration of Independence, that governments derive their 
 just powers from the consent of the governed." 
 
 But let us hear what Mr. Lincoln himself has to say on 
 this question, and with his testimony we shall regard the 
 question as conclusively settled. In reply to a committee from 
 Chicago sent to intercede with him to be relieved from send- 
 ing more troops from that city to the Northern armies, Mr. 
 Lincoln said in a tone of bitterness : "Gentlemen, after Bos- 
 ton, Chicago has been the chief instrument in bringing this 
 war on the country. The Northwest has opposed the South, 
 as New England has opposed the South. It is you who are 
 largely responsible for making blood flow as it has. You 
 called for war until we had it ; you called for emancipation, 
 and I have given it to you. Whatever you have asked, you 
 have had. Now you come here begging to be let off. You 
 ought to be ashamed of yourselves." (See Tarbell's "Life of 
 Lincoln," Volume II., p. 149.) 
 
 (3) Which side had the legal right to do what was done? 
 
 On the column of the monument erected to our great civic 
 leader are the words pro aris et focis, meaning that the real 
 cause of the South was that we fought in defense of our 
 altars and our firesides. And the man who would not 
 "Strike for his altars and his fires, 
 God and his native land" 
 is a craven and a coward and unworthy even of the name of 
 man. Our country was invaded by armed men intent on 
 coercion and conquest. We met them on the threshold and 
 beat them and drove them back as long as we had anything 
 to eat or strength to fight with. We could do no more, we 
 could do no less, and history, our children, and even many of 
 our former enemies now applaud our conduct. . 
 
1 4 Report of U. C. V. History Committee. 
 
 There were, however, two, and but two, questions really 
 involved in the conflict. We can scarcely do more than state 
 these and cite some of the many Northern authorities to sus- 
 tain the position that the South was right on both of these. 
 They were: (i) The right of a State to secede, and (2) the 
 right of the Federal government to coerce a seceding State. 
 As to the first of these questions, the late Judge Black, of 
 Pennsylvania, said what is true : "Secession, like slavery, was 
 first planted in New England. There it grew and flourished 
 and spread its branches far over the land before it 
 was ever dreamed of at the South." And he further says 
 that John Quincy Adams, in 1839, and Abraham Lincoln, in 
 1847, made elaborate arguments in favor of the legal right of 
 a State to secede. 
 
 Mr. William Rawle, also late of Pennsylvania, in his work 
 on the Constitution, the text-book used at West Point be- 
 fore the war, says : "It depends on the State itself to retain 
 or abolish the principle of representation, because it depends 
 on itself whether it will continue a member of the Union." 
 
 Timothy Pickering, Josiah Quincy, and Mr. Henry Cabot 
 Lodge, all of Massachusetts, the late Horace Greeley, Gold- 
 win Smith, General Don Piet, of the Federal army, and the 
 Hartford Convention all asserted and affirmed the same doc- 
 trine. And we know that had not this right been understood 
 to exist at the time of the adoption of the Constitution it 
 would never have been adopted. 
 
 As to the second of these questions — i. e., the right of the 
 Federal government to coerce a seceding State — this ques- 
 tion was discussed to some extent in the convention which 
 framed the Constitution. Mr. Madison (called the "Father 
 of the Constitution") said: "The more he reflected on the 
 use of force, the more he doubted the practicability, the jus- 
 tice, and the efficiency of it when applied to people collectively 
 and not individually. A union of the States containing such 
 an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction." 
 
 And Mr. Hamilton said : "But how can this force be exer- 
 cised on the States collectively? It is impossible. It amounts 
 to war between the parties. Foreign powers also will not 
 be idle spectators. They will interpose, and a dissolution of 
 
Report of U. C. V. History Committee. ic 
 
 the Union will ensue." (5th Mad. Pap. 140 and 200.) And 
 no such right or power can be found anywhere in the Con- 
 stitution. 
 
 The late James C. Carter, of New York (a native of New 
 England), one of the greatest lawyers this country has ever 
 produced, said : "I may hazard the opinion that if the ques- 
 tion had been raised, not in i860, but in 1788, immediately 
 after the adoption of the Constitution, whether the Union, as 
 formed by that instrument, could lawfully treat the secession 
 of a State as rebellion and suppress it by force, few of those 
 who participated in forming that instrument would have an- 
 swered in the affirmative." 
 
 In November, i860, the New York Herald said : "Each 
 State is organized as a complete government, holding the 
 purse and wielding the sword, possessing the right to break 
 the tie of confederation as a nation might break a treaty, 
 and to repel coercion as a nation might repel invasion. . . . 
 Coercion, if it were possible, is out of the question." 
 
 The question was maturely considered by Mr. Buchanan 
 and his Cabinet at the close of his administration, and it was 
 unanimously determined that no such right existed. 
 
 One of the resolutions of the platform of the Chicago Con- 
 vention, on which Mr. Lincoln was elected, and which he re- 
 affirmed in his first inaugural, was the following : 
 
 "Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of 
 the States, and especially the right of each State to order 
 and control its own domestic institutions according to its own 
 judgment exclusively, is essential to the balance of power on 
 which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric 
 depends, and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed 
 force of 'the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under 
 what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes." 
 
 To show that Mr. Lincoln was fully cognizant of the fact 
 that he was committing this "gravest of crimes" when he 
 caused his armies to invade the Southern States, we will 
 give his own definition of the meaning of the terms "invasion" 
 and "coercion," as contained in his speech delivered at In- 
 dianapolis on his journey to Washington to be inaugurated 
 in February, 1861. He asks: "What, then, is 'coercion?' 
 
1 6 Report of U. C. V. History Committee. 
 
 What is 'invasion?' Would the marching of an army into 
 South Carolina without the consent of her people and with 
 hostile intent toward them be 'invasion?' I certainly think 
 it would, and it would be 'coercion' also if South Carolinians 
 were forced to submit." 
 
 Is not this exactly what he did to South Carolina and to 
 all the other Southern States? And is it not true that this 
 "gravest of crimes" having been committed by him without the 
 authority of Congress, or any legal right, was the sole cause 
 why the Southern people went to war ? We know that such 
 is the fact, and surely no further authorities can be necessary 
 to show that the South was right on both of the only two 
 questions involved in the war ; and if it had not resisted and 
 fought under the circumstances in which it was placed, it 
 would have been eternally disgraced. 
 
 We can only state and without discussing at all our last 
 inquiry, which is : 
 
 (4) Which side conducted itself the better and according 
 to the rules of civilized warfare pending the conflict? 
 
 With the notoriously infamous records of the conduct of 
 Sheridan, Hunter, and Milroy in the Valley (to say nothing 
 of how far Grant participated in that conduct), of that of 
 Pope and Steinwehr in Piedmont, Va., of that of Butler in 
 Norfolk and New Orleans, and, worse than all, the confessed 
 vandalism of Sherman on his "March to the Sea," together 
 with the burning of Atlanta and Columbia, the last stimu- 
 lated and encouraged by Halleck, the chief of staff of the 
 armies of the Union, and contrast all this with the humane 
 order of General Lee, on his campaign of invasion into Penn- 
 sylvania, and the conduct of his army in that campaign, and 
 there can be but one answer to this inquiry. That answer is 
 that the South did right and that the North did wrong. 
 
 "God holds the scales of justice; 
 
 He will measure praise and blame; 
 
 And the South will stand the verdict, 
 
 And will stand it without shame." 
 
Gaylord Bros. 
 
 Makers 
 
 Syracuse, N. Y. 
 
 PAT. JAN. 21. 1308 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
 00032722867 
 
 FOR USE ONLY IN 
 THE NORTH CAROLINA COLLECTION 
 
 28957