Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[110] such as were those of the Colonies to Great Britain, at the breaking out of the Revolution; and so on, sentence after sentence of like tenor, at the same time appealing to the self-esteem of the Southern people by saying: “Whilst constituting a portion of the United States, it has been your statesmanship which has guided it in its mighty strides to power and expansion. In the field, as in the Cabinet, you have led the way to its renown and grandeur.” The Address, no doubt, served its intended purpose, namely, to deceive the uninformed, to inflame the public mind in the Slave-labor States, and to hasten the ripening of the rebellion.¹

More dignified, but not less reckless in sweeping, unsupported assertions, was the “Declaration of the Causes which justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Government,” drawn up and reported by Charles G. Memminger, who was afterward the financial agent of the confederated conspirators. After taking a glance at the history of the Union down to the ratification of the National Constitution by the people of South Carolina, he proceeded in his difficult task of searching for grievances inflicted by the National Government upon the people of that State. He was entirely unsuccessful. It was painfully apparent, that a once honest but now corrupt man was trying to deceive himself and others into the belief that a great crime was a commendable virtue. He complained of the refusal of the people of the North to regard with favor the system of slavery in the South, and also of their exercise of the freedom of speech on the subject. He complained of their refusal to believe that a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States can reverse the judgment and decrees of the Almighty, as recognized by the wisest men in all time; and he pointed to the actions of some of the States northward of the Potomac hostile to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, as the strongest evidence, among others, of “a sectional combination for the subversion of the Constitution.” But in no word in that “Declaration” was the National Government, whose authority and protection he and his followers in crime were defying and discarding, charged with the slightest actual wrong-doing. The debate which this “Declaration” elicited, revealed quite a diversity of opinion concerning the real cause of, or the real pretext for, secession. In that debate, several members made the statements quoted on page 69 of this volume.

Memminger's manifesto, which was concluded with a ludicrous appropriation of the closing words of the great Declaration of Independence by the Fathers, in 1776, viewed in the light of truth and soberness, appears in itself a solemn protest against the wicked actions of the conspirators at that time, and ever afterward. It also presents a fair specimen of that counterfeit