Confederate History Month – Part III

We offer below, without further comment, Part III of III and the conclusion of:

A Vindication of Virginia and the South, By Commodore M.F. Maury

To counteract this attempt by the New England people to do the like, the Legislature of Virginia and other Southern States felt themselves constrained to curtail the privileges of the slave, to increase the patrols, and for the public safety to enact severe laws against the black man. This grated upon the generous feelings of our people the more, because they were thus compelled in self-defence to spread hateful laws upon the statute-book of their State, and subject her fair fame to invidious criticisms by posterity, and this in consequence of the repeated attempt of the Northern people to tamper with the Negroes and interfere with our domestic affairs. It was a shaft that sank deep and rankled long; it brought to mind colonial times, and put into Southern heads the idea of another separation. But this was not all.

Societies were formed in the North to encourage our Negroes to escape and to harbor the runaways; emissaries came down to inveigle them away; and while they were engaged at this, the Northern States aided and abetted by passing Acts prohibiting their officers to assist the Southern citizen in the capture of runaways, and hindering him from doing it himself. At length things came to such a pass that a Southern gentleman, notwithstanding his right, dared not when he went to the North, either on business or pleasure to carry with him, as he formerly did, a body servant. More harsh still—delicate mothers and emaciated invalids with their nurses, though driven from their Southern homes, as they often are, by pestilence or plague, dared not seek refuge in the more bracing climates of the North; they were liable to be mobbed and to see their servants taken away by force, and when that was done, they found that Northern laws afforded no protection. In short, our people no longer had equal rights in a common country.*

*Resolutions of Virginia for a Declaration of Independence, unanimously adopted 16th May, 1776.—Page 1, Code of Virginia, 1860.

Finally, the aggressive and fanatical spirit of the North ran to such a pitch against us, that just before the Southern people began to feel that patience and forbearance were both exhausted, a band of raiders, fitted out and equipped in the North, came down upon Virginia with sword and spear in hand. They commenced in the dead of night to murder our citizens, to arm the slaves, encouraging them to rise up, burn and rob, kill and slay throughout the South. The ringleader was caught, tried and hung. Northern people regarded him as a martyr in a righteous cause. His body was carried to the North; they paid homage to his remains, sang paeans to his memory, and amidst jeers and taunts for Virginia, which to this day are reverberated through the halls of Congress, enrolled his name as one who had deserved well of his country.

These acts were highly calculated to keep the Southern mind in a feverish state and in an unfriendly mood; and there were other influences at work to excite sectional feelings and beget just indignation among the Southern people. The North was commercial, the South agricultural. Through their fast-sailing packets and steamers, Northern people were in constant communication with foreign nations; the South rarely, except through the North. Northern men and Northern society took advantage of this circumstance to our prejudice. They defamed the South and abused the European mind with libels and slanders and evil reports against us of a heinous character. They represented Southern people as a lawless and violent set, where men and women were without shame. They asserted, with all the effrontery of impudent falsehood, that the chief occupation of the gentlemen of Virginia was the breeding of slaves like cattle for the more Southern markets. To this day the whole South is suffering under this defamation of character; for it is well known that emigrants from Europe now refuse to come and settle in Virginia and the South on account of their belief in the stories against us with which their minds have been poisoned.

This long list of grievances does not end here. The population of the North had, by reason of the vast numbers of foreigners that had been induced to settle there, become so great that the balance of power in Congress was completely destroyed. The Northern people became more tyrannical in their disposition, Congress more aggressive in their policy. In every branch of the Government the South was in a hopeless minority, and completely at the mercy of an unscrupulous majority for their rights in the Union. Emboldened by their popular majorities on the hustings, the master spirits of the North now proclaimed the approach of an “irrepressible conflict” with the South, and their representative men in Congress preached the doctrine of a “higher law,” confessing that the policy about to be pursued in relation to Southern affairs was dictated by a rule of conduct unknown to the Constitution, not contained in the Bible, but sanctioned, as they said, by some higher law than the Bible itself.

Thus finding ourselves at the mercy of faction and fanaticism, the Presidential election for 1860 drew nigh. The time for putting candidates in the field was at hand. The North brought out their candidate, and by their platform pledged him to acts of unfriendly legislation against us. The South warned the North and protested, the political leaders in some of the Southern States publicly declaring that if Mr. Lincoln, their nominee, were elected, the States would not remain in the Union. He was truly a sectional candidate. He received no vote in the South, but was, under the provisions of the Constitution, duly elected nevertheless; for now the poll of the North was large enough to elect whom she pleased.

When the result of this election was announced, South Carolina and the Gulf States each proceeded to call a convention of her people; and they, in the exercise of their inalienable right to alter and abolish the form of government and to institute a new one, resolved to withdraw from the Union peaceably, if they could. They felt themselves clear as to their right, and thrice-armed; for they remembered that they were sovereign people, and called to mind those precious rights that had been solemnly proclaimed, and in which and for which we and our fathers before us had the most abiding faith, reverence and belief. Prominent among these was, as we have seen, the right of each one of these States to consult her own welfare and withdraw or remain in the Union in obedience to its dictates and the judgment of her own people.

So they sent commissioners to Washington to propose a settlement, the Confederate States offering to assume their quota of the debt of the United States, and asking for their share of the common property. This was refused. In the meantime Virginia assembled her people in grand council too; but she refused to come near the Confederate States in their councils. She had laid the corner-stone of the Union, her sons were its chief architects; and though she felt that she and her sister States had been wronged without cause, and had reason, good and sufficient, for withdrawing from a political association which no longer afforded domestic tranquility, or promoted the general welfare, or answered its purposes, yet her love for the Union and the Constitution was strong, and the idea of pulling down, without having first exhausted all her persuasives, and tried all means to save what had cost her so much, was intolerable.

She thought the time for separation had not come, and waited first to try her own “mode and measure of redress;” she considered that it should not be such as the Confederate States had adopted. Moreover, by standing firm she hoped to heal the breach, as she had done on several occasions before. She asked all the States to meet her in a peace congress. They did so, and the North being largely in the majority, threw out Southern propositions and rejected all the efforts of Virginia at conciliation. North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas all remained in the Union, awaiting the action of our State, who urged the Washington Government not to attempt to coerce the seceded States, or force them with sword and bayonet back into the Union—a thing, she held, which the charter that created the Government gave it no authority to do.

Regardless of these wise counsels and of all her rightful powers, the North mustered an army to come against the South; whereupon, seeing the time had come, and claiming the right which she had especially reserved not only for herself, but for all the States, to withdraw from the Union, the grand old Commonwealth did not hesitate to use it. She prepared to meet the emergency. Her people had already been assembled in convention, and they, in the persons of their representatives, passed the Ordinance Of Secession, which separated her from the North and South, and left her alone, again a free, sovereign and independent State.

This done, she sounded the notes of warlike preparation. She called upon her sons who were in the service of the Washington Government to confess their allegiance to her, resign their places, and rally around her standard. The true men among them came. In a few days she had an army of 60,000 men in the field; but her policy was still peace, armed peace, not war. Assuming the attitude of defence, she said to the powers of the North, “Let no hostile foot cross my borders.”

Nevertheless they came with fire and sword; battle was joined; victory crowned her banners on many a well-fought field; but she and her sister States, cut off from the outside world by the navy which they had helped to establish for the common defence, battled together against fearful odds at home for four long years, but were at last overpowered by mere numbers, and then came disaster. Her sons who fell died in defence of their country, their homes, their rights, and all that makes native land dear to the hearts of men.