...
"The Constitution of the United States, which these invaders
unconstitutionally swear every citizen whom they
unconstitutionally seize to support, has been wholly abolished.
It is as much forgotten as if it lay away back in the twilight
of history. The facts I have enumerated show that the very
rights most carefully reserved by it to the States and to
individuals have been most conspicuously violated.... Your
fellow-citizen,
(Signed) "John C. Breckinridge."
Such was the "neutrality" suffered by the Confederacy from governments
both at home and abroad.
The chivalric people of Kentucky showed their sympathy with the just
cause of the people of the Southern States, by leaving the home where
they could not serve the cause of right against might, and nobly shared
the fortunes of their Southern brethren on many a blood-dyed field. In
like manner did the British people see with disapprobation their
Government, while proclaiming neutrality, make new rules, and give new
constructions to old ones, so as to favor our enemy and embarrass us.
The Englishman's sense of fair-play, and the manly instinct which
predisposes him to side with the weak, gave us hosts of friends, but all
their good intentions were paralyzed or foiled by their wily Minister
for Foreign Affairs, and his coadjutor on this side, the artful,
unscrupulous United States Secretary of State.
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