Why War?

The union which the men of the South loved, and which they were willing to make concessions and sacrifices to perpetuate, was that union formed by the Founding Fathers "to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty."  It was a fraternal federation of sovereign States, guaranteeing equal rights to all and leaving each free to regulate its domestic affairs in its own way.  It was a union in which, in reference to the questions of foreign policy, every citizen would echo the sentiments expressed by Patrick Henry when, after Concord and Lexington, in a message to Massachusetts, he said, "I am not a Virginian: I am an American."  And yet it was a union which, in the reference to the questions of domestic policy, every citizen, like Patrick Henry, would recognize the right of his own State to his highest allegiance.  It was a union in which people of each State would enjoy the blessings of local self government and find in "home rule" a safeguard against any possible attempt of the Federal power to interfere with their peculiar interest. 

When it became evident that this union was to exist in name only; when its essential principles had been overthrown and trampled in the dust; when the spirit of fraternity had given place to a bitter feeling of sectional hostility; when New England speakers and writers were heaping abuse and slander upon the South and teaching the people to be disobedient to the Constitution.  When the North were persistently striving to stir up insurrection in the Southern States and glorifying those who attempted to carry outrage and massacre into Southern homes (John Brown is an example of one geing paid by Northern interests); when the tendency to centralization was threatening to destroy State independence, and declaring the Constitution to be "a covenant with death and a league with hell" which ought to be supplanted by a so-called "higher law."  It became evident that Northern power was to sit on the throne in Washington and make the Yankee Conscience the fundamental law of the land rather than the Constitution.  The Southern people felt that the preservation of community independence and liberty, won at Yorktown and bequeathed to them by their Fathers as an inalienable birthright, demanded the resumption of the powers entrusted by them to the Federal government.

Not as a passion swept mob rising in mad rebellion against constitutional authority but as a intelligent and orderly people, acting in accordance with the due forms of law and within the limit of what they believed to be their Constitutional right, the Men of the South withdrew from the union in which they had lived for three-fourths of a century.

The people of the South did not desire war.  They made every effort consistent with their safety, self-respect, and manhood to avert war.

But the North would not have it so!