200 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 



Fighting between South and North began on 

 the clearly defined issue of political independ 

 ence. Seven states, organized in a confederacy, 

 claimed the rights and authority of a sovereign 

 power, and expelled by force a body of troops 

 that refused to recognize that claim. The rea 

 soning by which the claim was sustained had 

 as its basis the familiar democratic dogma that 

 government is just only when it rests upon the 

 will of the governed. There was no room to 

 doubt, so the Southerners held, that the peo 

 ple of the seven States willed to be governed by 

 the authorities of the Confederacy, and not by 

 the organs of the government at Washington. 

 Whether the manifestation of this will had 

 been constitutional or revolutionary, might be 

 debatable. In either case, however, the result 

 was unassailable. No power on earth could 

 justly dispute the authority of that government 

 which the people of the South had set up. 

 President Lincoln, when he sought to assert 

 the power of a government which the people 

 had repudiated, was but treading in the tyrant 

 footsteps of George III in 1776. 



The logical strength of this Southern argu 

 ment could not be disputed. Nor could, on the 

 other hand, the strength of the reasoning by 



