About the same time others of great
worth and distinction, impelled by the feeling that "where liberty is
there is my country," left the land desecrated by despotic usurpation,
to join the Confederacy in its struggle to maintain the personal and
political liberties which the men of the Revolution had left as an
inheritance to their posterity. Space would not suffice for a complete
list of the refugees who became conspicuous in the military events of
the Confederacy; let a few answer for the many: J. C. Breckinridge, the
late Vice-President of the United States, and whose general and
well-deserved popularity might have reasonably led him to expect in the
Union the highest honors the States could bestow; William Preston,
George W. Johnston, S. B. Buckner, John H. Morgan, and a host of others,
alike meritorious and alike gratefully remembered. When the passions of
the hour shall have subsided, and the past shall be reviewed with
discrimination and justice, the question must arise in every reflecting
mind, Why did such men as these expatriate themselves, and surrender all
the advantages which they had won by a life of honorable effort in the
land of their nativity? To such inquiry the answer must be, the
usurpations of the General Government foretold to them the wreck of
constitutional liberty. The motives which governed them may best be
learned from the annexed extracts from the statement made in the address
of Mr.
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