Southern Defence from General Evans

"But let us pass over the whole of that melancholy controversy
of a half century and take up that record which we made in our
choice at last of the mode and measure of redress. That mode was
separate secession by the ordinance of each State, passed in
regular convention of delegates elected by the people after full
and fair discussion, and upon the advice of jurists who were
among the profoundest lawyers of America. Was the act lawful?
Did the Southern States rashly act on this momentous question
in passionate defiance of known law? The answer is supremely
important, because Southern patriots cannot afford to let a biased
history praise them for their courage, while it denounces them as
outlaws. The answer will not affect our present loyalty to the
Union, because the States are now in the fraternal bonds of a
compact which makes
secession no longer legal; but, considering the Union as it was
in 1860, the question is put: Was the State ordinance of secession
plainly unlawful then? Had the Southern States no color or right
to secede? Was armed coercion unquestionably legal? Replying as a
student of my country's glorious history, I can say that, without
the understanding that States could withdraw in peace, it is not
probable that the Union, under our wise constitution, would have
been formed at all. Viewing the question as a patriot, I can see
how our forefathers regarded this privilege as a conservative,
beneficial provision adapted to restrain the general government
from acts of sectional injustice, and why it was so long expressly
avowed by States and statesmen not of the South alone, but also of
the East and North, as a just defense of the States against the
accumulation of Federal power. Answering as a lawyer, I present
the first records of the States that formed the Union; and, reading
the debates of that period, to interpret the various terms by which
one State after another had entered into the great confederation, I
must say that if this privilege was not strongly implied, then the
States were betrayed into ratifying a constitution which they did
not understand. But we see further that some States expressly
provided for the exercise of this privilege as a condition of their
accession to the Union, and by a just principle it is made clear
that a right reserved by one State became at once the right of all
States. President Buchanan and other statesmen who were embarrassed
by the political situation in 1860 tried to argue that secession and
coercion were both equally illegal; but if the constitution conferred
no power to use the army and navy of the Union and the militia of
the States to coerce a seceded State coercion was illegal, being
unconferred and without sanction of a penalty or the power to enforce
it. Doubtless our government always had the constitutional power to
command a State to obey the law or go out of the Union; but if the
armed coercion of a seceded State was unlawful, then secession must
have been the lawful procedure which the original States contemplated
as their rightful resort. So clear to the minds of many jurists in
1865, so doubtful in others was this doctrine of secession, that our
government was compelled, in view of the great interests at stake, to
concede to the States the color or right to secede in every measure
adopted by Congress, State convention, and constitutional amendment,
adopted to re-establish the relations of the seceded States with the
other States after the Confederate armies were destroyed ; and, in fact,
the whole question was yielded by the final decision not to try
Jefferson Davis on the charge of treason.

The South did not attempt nullification or rebellion or any form of
unlawful resistance to our government. It did not dissolve the Union,
nor even attempt its dissolution; for how may our Union have been
lawfully dissolved? By one method alone, and that is by agreement of
all the States. Our Union could not have been dissolved by one State
or by a majority of States, but only by all States; but the South made
no call for such a measure, preferring to leave each State to act for
itself according to its pleasure, and accordingly each seceding State
dissolved only its own connection with the Union, and left the government
of the Union undissolved. The President, the Congress, the courts, the
army and navy, the constitution and the flag, together with every
function of government, were left in power and place. Suppose the State
had resolved to remain in the Union, and had marched its army toward
Washington to resist the inauguration of President Lincoln. That would
have been rebellion; the overt act would have been treasonable; the
failure of the act would have made it a felonous crime, and its success
would have imperiled free government on this continent; but no State
rebelled, no statesman plotted a conspiracy, no soldier committed
treason. In lawful and dignified measures the South sought an honorable
separation, and, with equally honorable acquiescence in its failure,
reentered the Union to defend its honor and maintain its glory forever.

Such is the record of the lawful course of the South in separating from
the United States, and this procedure was followed by a record of the
civil administration of the Confederate States Government, which will
bear the severest criticism, and has won the rare encomium from a noble
soul beyond the seas, who said:

No nation ever rose so fair.
None fell so free from crime.