CONFEDERATE STATES. 



197 



belongs to their race and lineage; and, as Burke 

 long ago remarked, their relation to the servile race 

 in contact with them has intensified the feeling and 

 invested this love of liberty with a sentiment of per- 

 sonal privilege. To suppose that a people with such 

 military, political, and social characteristics will ever 

 voluntarily submit to be ruled by any other Govern- 

 ment than one of their own choice is too insulting 

 to their pride to be entertained for a moment. And 

 to doubt their capacity to achieve independence, 

 and to maintain themselves us a separate Power 

 among the nations of the earth, is to close our eyes 

 to all the teachings of history to ignore the proof 

 which our forefathers have stamped upon its pages 

 to believe that human nature has changed, that 

 we are a degenerate race unworthy descendants of 

 our Revolutionary sires. 



The appointment by the President of Lee as " Gen- 

 eral-in-chief " has dt>ne much to restore confidence 

 to the country, and to reinspire the army. All feel 

 that we may safely repose this weighty trust and re- 

 sponsibility in that great soldier and devout patriot. 

 All feel that we may lean upon him as our tower of 

 strength. All feel that his calm courage and stead- 

 fast purpose, his military skill and wise judgment, 

 will enable him to wield our armies with the max- 

 imum efficiency and strength. May God strengthen 

 him for the great task to which a confiding people 

 have called him ! 



To provide means for carrying on the war, Con- 

 gress has been compelled to impose upon the coun- 

 try a heavy burden of taxation. But heavy as it is, 

 it is not too heavy for the country to bear, and not 

 heavier than our wants imperatively demand. It is 

 impossible to maintain the mighty contest in which 

 we are engaged, without vast expenditures of money. 

 Money can only be raised by loans or taxation. Our 

 condition does not enable us to effect the former. 

 We must of necessity, therefore, resort to the latter. 

 We appeal to you with confidence to submit cheer- 

 fully to the burdens which the defence of our coun- 

 try, your homes, aud your liberties, render necessary. 

 To contribute according to his means to that defence 

 is as much an obligation upon the citixen as it is to 

 peril his life upon the battle-field. 



Let us then, fellow-countrymen, tread in the plain 

 path of duty. No nation that has trod it faithfully 

 and fearlessly ever, in the world's history, has stum- 

 bled and fallen. " Nations," says Burke, " never 

 are murdered ; they commit suicide." Let us not be 

 guilty of the folly and crime of self-destruction. * * * 

 Considered, therefore, in every point of view, is it 

 possible to believe that the people of the Confederate 

 States will ever incur subjugation, or accept submis- 

 sion as the result of the great struggle in which we 

 are engaged ? Neither is it possible to believe that 

 these States, compelled, by long years of unjust and 

 unconstitutional action toward them by the Northern 

 States, to withdraw from political union with them, 

 can ever be tempted by any promises, or so-called 

 "guarantees," again to unite themselves under a 

 common government. Forced into this revolution 

 by their faithless disregard of the obligations of the 

 constitutional compact, and by the selfish and sec- 

 tional legislation which they fastened upon us, what 

 in the course of this war has occurred to change our 

 opinion as to their character and purpose? The 

 barbarity and unrelenting ferocity which has char- 

 acterized their conduct of it, has excited the indig- 

 nant wonder of tbe world. Falsehood, duplicity, 

 and mean cunning, marked their course in its in- 

 auguration; and, in its progress, every artifice of 

 low diplomacy and persistent misrepresentation has 

 been resorted to by them to lessen us in the estima- 

 tion of mankind. Our struggle for the right of self- 

 fovernment which they themselves have always 

 eclared to be inalienable has been held tip to the 

 world as a contest for the maintenance of African 

 slavery a purely State institution, over which 

 neither the Confederate State Government 3 or the 



United States Government has any constitutional con- 

 trol. To prevent foreign nations from according to 

 us that recognition to which we were entitlea by 

 public law, and even the very language of existing 

 treaties a recognition of which they have them- 

 selves accorded to other countries on far slenderer 

 grounds they have deliberately falsified accounts 

 of military operations, and our capacity and re- 

 sources for continuing the contest. 



A war which has been carried on for four years 

 with every varying fortune, their ministers of state 

 have again and again assured foreign powers could 

 not possibly be waged by us for more than two or 

 three months. And after all their insolent boasts of 

 their power to crush us, they have been compelled 

 to resort to foreign enlistments, and the arming of 

 our captured slaves, in order to fill up the ranks of 

 their armies. In spite of these practices, winked at, 

 if not countenanced by European powers they have 

 practically confessed their inability to vanquish us 

 in regular warfare, by the inhuman policy of destroy- 

 ing the dwellings, the food, and the agricultural im- 

 plements of our non-combatant population thus 

 endeavoring, by the starvation of their wives and 

 children, to break the indomitable spirit of our sol- 

 diers. 



In the" invasion of our soil neither private prop- 

 erty, nor age, nor sex, has been spared from the 

 rapacity and brutal passions of their mercenary le- 

 gions. Wherever they have passed over the surface 

 of our fair land, the blackness of desolation has 

 marked their path, and such barbarous desolation 

 has been their boast. Public records have been de- 

 stroyed institutions of learning public and private 

 libraries pillaged or burned, and the temples of God 

 sacrilegiously defiled. 



Fellow-countrymen, will you, can you ever submit 

 to be ruled by such a people ? Can you ever join 

 hands with them in fraternal union ? Can you with 

 all these things freshly before you daity occurring 

 on your native soil ever return to political union 

 with these despoilers of your houses, these violators 

 of your wives and daughters? Never ! A dark crim- 

 son stream divides you, which all the skill of nego- 

 tiation can never bridge over. The Southern people 

 have determined to be free and independent, and if 

 their fortitude and courage do not fail them, it is im- 

 possible to doubt the issue. But there must be no 

 halting, no hesitation, in the only path that leads to 

 the goal. We must prove to our enemies, and prove 

 to the world, that we cannot be conquered. We 

 must convince them that though our soil may be 

 overrun, the faith of our people in the great cause for 

 which they are contending is unbroken, is unchang- 

 ed their will invincible. Let us emulate the ex- 

 ample of the Russian people when invaded by the 

 great army of Napoleon. Let us be willing to make 

 any and every sacrifice, and consider it but a mere 

 offering on the altar of our country. By the light of 

 the blazing ruin of what had once been a proud pal- 

 ace, Napoleon read this inscription, which Rostop- 

 schin had affixed to his gate : " Frenchmen ! I have 

 spent eight years in embellishing this residence. 

 Here I have lived happily in the bosom of my family 

 the inhabitants of this estate, numbering seventeen 

 hundred and twenty persons, have quitted it at ^vour 

 approach ; and I have, with my own hands, fired my 

 beloved home, to prevent its pollution by your pres- 

 ence ! " Shall our patriotism be colder and more 

 calculating than that of the subjects of a despotic 

 ruler? Have we less reason to resist less reason to 

 detest the invading armies of the North, than the 

 Russians had to oppose and hate the French? Our 

 enemies, with a boastful insolence unparalleled in 

 the history of modern civilization have threatened 

 not only our subjugation, but some of them have an- 

 nounced their determination, if successful in this 

 struggle, to deport our entire white population, and 

 supplant it with a new population, drawn from their 

 own territory and European countries ! While such 



