niments. When Brown was tried with due formality, sentenced, and executed according to the laws of the land, inasmuch as his crimes had been committed with open hostility to the South, he was canonized at the North and a hymn to his memory became the marching song of the declared enemies of the South. For some years the abolition faction had borne upon its banner "No union with slave-holders," though, as has been before stated, when the first Union was formed all of the States recognized slave property by their laws. It was common among demagogues in later times to excite prejudice against that species of property by describing it as a chattel, though it never was more than a life-long right to service and labor, and that, with the right of increase, was all which could be the subject of purchase and sale. Without further reciting violations of the compact which rendered it void, suffice it to say that seven of the States, deliberately acting in the highest form of procedure,—i. e., by convention of the people,—did pass ordinances of secession just as they had formerly passed ordinances of accession by resolutions of ratification of the Constitution of the United States.
Now we have reached the point of inquiry as to what was the moral duty of a citizen of a seceding State in 1861.
It is not proposed to discuss any question arising out of subsequent events. It had, so far as I know, in all the earlier periods of our history been uniformly held that allegiance was primarily due to the State of which the individual was a citizen, and that allegiance to the United States resulted from the fact that the State to which each individual belonged was by compact a member of the Union.
When the Southern States had, in the recognized mode of expressing their sovereign will,—that is, by convention of the people of the State,—resumed the grants made by them as parties to the Federal compact, they, following the precedent of 1787, formed a new union styled the Confederate States of America.
The wish of all, and the general expectation, was that the separation should be peaceable. For this purpose one of the first acts of the Confederate Government was to send commissioners to the United States Government to adjust all questions which would naturally arise in a dissolution of partnership. Our overtures were rejected, as I feared they would be, for the question was ever ringing in my ears, "If we let the South go, where will we
