o arms for the preservation of their existence. To those who
knew that the Union was formed for specific enumerated purposes, and
that the States had never surrendered their sovereignty it was a
palpable absurdity to apply to them, or to their citizens when obeying
their mandates, the terms "rebellion" and "treason"; and, further, it is
shown in the following pages that the Confederate States, so far from
making war or seeking to destroy the United States, as soon as they had
an official organ, strove earnestly, by peaceful recognition, to
equitably adjust all questions growing out of the separation from their
late associates.

Another great perversion of truth has been the arraignment of the men
who participated in the formation of the Confederacy and who bore arms
in its defense, as the instigators of a controversy leading to disunion.
Sectional issues appear conspicuously in the debates of the Convention
which framed the Federal Constitution, and its many compromises were
designed to secure an equilibrium between the sections, and to preserve
the interests as well as the liberties of the several States. African
servitude at that time was not confined to a section, but was
numerically greater in the South than in the North, with a tendency to
its continuance in the former and cessation in the latter. It therefore
thus early presents itself as a disturbing element, and the provisions
of the Constitution, which were known to be necessary for its adoption,
bound all the States to recognize and protect that species of property.
When at a subsequent period there arose in the Northern States an
antislavery agitation, it was a harmless and scarcely noticed movement
until political demagogues seized upon it as a means to acquire power.
Had it been left to pseudo-philanthropists and fanatics, most zealous
where least informed, it never could have shaken the foundations of the
Union and have incited one section to carry fire and sword into the
other. That the agitation was political in its character, and was
clearly developed as early as 1803, it is believed has been established
in these pages. To preserve a sectional equilibrium and to maintain the
equality of the States was the effort on one side, to acquire empire was
the manifest purpose on the other. This struggle began before the men of
the Confederacy were born; how it arose and how it progressed it has
been attempted briefly to show. Its last stage was on the question of