PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



G23 



siderable fall in that value need be feared scrlong as 

 the interest shall be punctually paid. The punctual 

 payment of this interest lias been secured by the act 

 passed by you at the last session, imposing such a rate 

 ot taxation as must provide sullicient means for that 

 purpose. 



For the successful prosecution of this war, it is in- 

 dispensable that the means of transporting troops and 

 military supplies be furnished, as far as possible, in 

 such manner as not to interrupt the commercial inter- 

 course between our people, nor place a check on their 

 productive energies. To this end the means of trans- 

 portation from one section of country to the other must 

 be carefully guarded and improved." And this should 

 be the object of anxious care on the part of State and 

 Confederate Governments, so far as they may have 

 power over the subject. 



We have already two main systems of through trans- 

 portation from the North to the South one from Rich- 

 mond, along the seaboard ; the other through Western 

 Virginia to New Orleans. A third might be secured 

 by completing a link of about forty miles between 

 Danville, in Virginia, and Greensborough, in North 

 Carolina. The construction of this comparatively short 

 line would give us a through route from North to South 

 in the interior of the Confederate States, and give us 

 access to a population and to military resources from 

 which we are now, in a great measure, debarred. We 

 should increase greatly the safety and capacity of our 

 means for transporting men and military supplies. 



If the construction of the road should, in the judg- 

 ment of Congress, as it is in niine, be indispensable for 

 the most successful prosecution of the war, the action 

 of the Government will not be restrained by the con- 

 stitutional objection which would attach to a* work for 

 commercial purposes ; and attention is invited to the 

 practicability of securing its early completion by giving 

 the needful aid to the company organized for 'its con- 

 struction and administration. * 



If we husband our means and make a judicious use 

 of our resources, it would be difficult to fix a limit to 

 the period during which we could conduct a war 

 against the adversary whom we now encounter. The 

 very efforts which he makes to isolate and invade us 

 must exhaust his means, whilst they serve to complete 

 the circle and diversify the productions of our indus- 

 trial system. The reconstruction which he seeks to 

 effect by arms becomes daily more and more palpably 

 impossible. Not only do the causes which induced us 

 to separate still exist in full force, but they have been 

 strengthened, and whatever doubt may have lingered 

 in the minds of any must have been "completely dis- 

 pelled by subsequent events. 



If, instead of being a dissolution of a league, it were 

 indeed a rebellion in which we are engaged, we might 

 find ample vindication for the course we have adopted 

 in the scenes which are now being enacted in the 

 United States. Our people now look with contemptu- 

 ous astonishment on those with whom they have been 

 so recently associated. They shrink with aversion 

 from the bare idea of renewing such a connection. 

 When they see a President making war without the 

 assent of Congress ; when they behold judges threat- 

 ened because they maintain the writ of habeas corpus, 

 so sacred to free"men ; when they see justice and law 

 trampled under the armed heel of military authority, 

 and upright men and innocent women dragged to dis- 

 tant dungeons upon the mere edict of a despot ; when 

 they find all this tolerated and applauded by a people 

 who had been in the full enjoyment of freedom but a 

 few months ago, they believe that there must be some 

 radical incompatibility between such a people and 

 themselves. With such a people we may be content 

 to live at peace, but the separation is final, and for the 

 independence we have asserted, we will accept no 

 alternative. 



The nature of the hostilities which they have waged 

 against us must be characterized as barbarous when- 

 ever it is understood. They have bombarded unde- 

 fended villages without giving notice to women and 

 children to enable them to escape, and in one instance 



selected the night ns the period when they might sur- 

 prise them most etl'cctuallv whilst asleep" and i 

 picious of danger. Arson and rapine, the destruction 

 of private houses and property, and injuries of the 

 most wanton character, even upon non-combatants, 

 have marked their forays along their borders and upon 

 our territory. Although we ought to havi- been ad- 

 monished by these things that they were disposed to 

 make war upon us in the most cruel and rel 

 spirit, yet we were not prepared to see them fit out a 

 large naval expedition with the confessed purpose not 

 only to pillage, but to incite a servile war in our 

 midst. 



If they convert their soldiers into incendiaries and 

 robbers, and involve us in a species of war which 

 claims non-combatants, women, and children as its 

 victims, they must expect to be treated as outlaws and 

 enemies of mankind. There are certain rights of hu- 

 manity which are entitled to respect even in war, and 

 he who refuses to regard them forfeits his claims, if 

 captured, to be considered as a prisoner of war, but 

 must expect to be dealt with as an offender against all 

 law, human and divine. 



But not content with violating our rights nnder the 

 law of nations at home, they have extended these in- 

 juries to us within other jurisdictions. The distin- 

 guished gentlemen whom, with your approval, at the 

 last session, I commissioned to represent the Confed- 

 eracy at certain foreign Courts, nave been recently 

 mzed by the captain of a United States ship-of-war, 

 on board a British steamer, on their voyage from the 

 neutral Spanish port of Havana to E'ngland. The 

 United States have thus claimed a general jurisdiction 

 over the high seas, and, entering a British ship sailing 

 under its country's flag, violated the rights of em- 

 bassy, for the most part held sacred even amongst 

 barbarians, by seizing our Ministers whilst under me 

 protection and within the dominions of a neutral na- 

 tion. 



These gentlemen were as much under the jurisdic- 

 tion of the British Government upon that snip, and 

 beneath its flag, as if they had been upon its soil; and 

 a claim on the part of the United States to seize them 

 in the streets of London would have been as well- 

 founded as that to apprehend them where they were 

 taken. Had they been malefactors, and citizens even 

 of the United States, they could not have been arrest- 

 ed on a British ship or on British soil, unless under 

 the express provisions of a treaty, and according to 

 the foiTns therein provided for the extradition of crim- 

 inals. f 



But rights the most sacred seem to have lost all re- 

 spect in their eyes. When Mr. Faulkner, a former 

 Minister of the United States to France, commissioned 

 before the secession of Virginia, his native State, re- 

 turned in good faith to Washington to settle his ac- 

 counts and fulfil all the obligations into which he had 

 entered, he was perfidiously arrested and imprisoned 

 in New York, where he now is. The unsuspecting 

 confidence with which he reported to his Government 

 was abused, and his desire to fulfil his trust to them 

 was used to his injury. 



In conducting this war, we have sought no aid and 

 proposed no alliances, offensive and defensive, abroad. 

 We have asked for a recognized place in the great 

 family of nations, but in doing so we have demanded 

 nothing for which we did not offer a fair equivalent. 

 The advantages of intercourse are mutual aniongst 

 nations, and in seeking to establish diplomatic rela- 

 tions, we were only endeavoring to place that inter- 

 course under the regulation of public law. Perhaps 

 we had the right, if we had chosen to exercise it, to 

 ask to know whether the principle that " blockades, to 

 be binding, must be effectual," so solemnly announced 

 by the great Powers of Europe at Paris, is to be gen- 

 erally enforced or applied only to particular parties. 



When the Confederate States, at your last session, 

 became a party to the declaration reaffirming this 

 principle of international law, which has been recog- 

 nized so long by publicists and Governments, we cer- 

 tainly supposed" that it was to be universally enforced. 



