Dixie
by Sam Aurelius Milam III
There
are many lies in the U.S.A. today; pick your subject. Some
of them relate to the so-called Civil War. Not the least of them
is the name of the war itself. Properly speaking, a civil war is
a war between a civilian population and its government. It is a civil
uprising. In the south, they call this war The War Between the
States. The common but incorrect name was dictated not by accuracy,
but by the winners.
![Page 2 Box](Images/Page_2_Box.gif) Another
lie is that Lincoln fought the war to free the slaves. He may or
may not have cared about ending slavery, but he didn't fight the war for
that purpose.
Indeed,
slavery hasn't ended yet. The 14th amendment only made citizenship
the equivalent of slavery. Since then, you can no longer tell the
difference.
Yet
another lie is that the southern states had an obligation to remain in
the union. There was no such constitutional requirement. The
evil of slavery was irrelevant to the legitimacy of secession because,
evil or not, slavery was legal according to the U.S. Constitution.
As the Continental Congress pointed out over 200 years ago, the sanctity
of contracts must be respected. If the abolition of slavery was desirable,
such abolition should have been accomplished by amending the U.S. Constitution.
In the meantime, the southern states were within the law of the land to
keep slaves. They were not bound to remain in a union which illegally
sought to destroy their constitutional institutions, however controversial
those institutions may have been. The southern states behaved with
propriety when they seceded from an oppressive union. Their behavior
was at least as legal as that of the original thirteen colonies which seceded
from England.
Presented
following this article, as examples of the valid actions taken by the southern
states, are portions of the declarations legally issued by South Carolina.
These documents are entirely as valid as the Declaration of Independence.
Indeed, the only significant advantage of the legality of the American
Revolution over that of the southern secession is that after the southern
secession, the advocates of central authority got to write the history
books. America has never recovered from the loss.![10x5 Page Background GIF Image](../../Images/10x5_Page_Background.gif)
...
Contracts between Nations, like contracts between Individuals, should be
faithfully executed even though the sword in the one case, and the law
in the other did not compel it, honest nations like honest Men require
no constraint to do Justice; and tho impunity and the necessity of
Affairs may sometimes afford temptations to pare down contracts to the
Measure of convenience, yet it is never done but at the expence of that
esteem, and confidence, and credit which are of infinitely more worth than
all the momentary advantages which such expedients can extort.
But
although contracting Nations cannot like individuals avail themselves of
Courts of Justice to compel performance of contracts, yet an appeal to
Heaven and to Arms, is always in their power and often in their Inclination
....
— from the
Journals of the Continental Congress
Volume XXXII,
pages 177-178, Friday, April 13, 1787
|
SOUTH CAROLINA ORDINANCE OF SECESSION
December 20, 1860
An Ordinance to Dissolve the Union between
the State of South Carolina and other States united with her under the
compact entitled the Constitution of the United States of America:
We,
the people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, do
declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the ordinance
adopted by us in Convention, on the 23d day of May, in the year of our
Lord 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was
ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts of the General Assembly of
this State ratifying the amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby
repealed, and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and
other States under the name of the United States of America is hereby dissolved.
SOUTH CAROLINA DECLARATION OF CAUSES OF
SECESSION
December 24, 1860
The
people of the State of South Carolina in Convention assembled, on the 2d
day of April, A. D. 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the
Constitution of the United States by the Federal Government, and its encroachments
upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in their
withdrawal from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions
and wishes of the other Slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to
exercise this right. Since that time these encroachments have continued
to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
And
now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place
among nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States
of America, and to the nations of the world, that she should declare the
immediate causes which have led to this act.
In
1787, Deputies were appointed by the States to revise the articles of Confederation;
and on 17th September, 1787, these Deputies recommended, for the adoption
of the States, the Articles of Union, known as the Constitution of the
United States.
...
Thus was established by compact between the States, a Government with defined
objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant ....
We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great
principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold
further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental
principle, namely, the law of compact. We maintain that in every
compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that
the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part
of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other;
and that, where no arbiter is
Secession
documents of South Carolina are taken without change from:
DOCUMENTS of AMERICAN HISTORY,
eighth edition, edited by Henry Steele Commager, Appleton-Century-Crofts,
Division of Meredith Corporation, New York, COPYRIGHT © 1968 BY MEREDITH
CORPORATION
|