For this purpose I have decided
to present an historical sketch of the events which preceded and
attended the struggle of the Southern States to maintain their existence
and their rights as sovereign communities--the creators, not the
creatures, of the General Government.
The social problem of maintaining the just relation between
constitution, government, and people, has been found so difficult, that
human history is a record of unsuccessful efforts to establish it. A
government, to afford the needful protection and exercise proper care
for the welfare of a people, must have homogeneity in its constituents.
It is this necessity which has divided the human race into separate
nations, and finally has defeated the grandest efforts which conquerors
have made to give unlimited extent to their domain. When our fathers
dissolved their connection with Great Britain, by declaring themselves
free and independent States, they constituted thirteen separate
communities, and were careful to assert and preserve, each for itself,
its sovereignty and jurisdiction.
At a time when the minds of men are straying far from the lessons our
fathers taught, it seems proper and well to recur to the original
principles on which the system of government they devised was founded.
The eternal truths which they announced, the rights which they declared
"_unalienable_," are the foundation-stones on which rests the
vindication of the Confederate cause.
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