The Sesquicentennial is here

Defend the South
 


See left-hand column below for free downloads of important Primary Source Documents starting with the election of Lincoln in November, 1860 through the beginning of the War Between the States. They include the most important speeches and documents of the secession debate in the South as Southern states called conventions, debated the issue then voted to secede from the Union. There is also A Detailed Chronology from the same period, Scholarly Essays and other historical material.

Scroll down for the famous 1937 treatise,
"Lincoln and Fort Sumter,"
by Charles W. Ramsdell.
It is by far the BEST ever written on who started
the War Between the States.
 




Reedited, re-mastered,
in stock and ready to ship with a
HUGE quantity discount

 

The War Between the States

and Reconstruction

 

A comprehensive, scholarly treatment of the War Between the States
and Reconstruction in a beautiful three-DVD set featuring one of the
most distinguished historians alive today

Dr. Clyde N. Wilson

 

 

 
Here's Dr. Wilson's bio.
It goes on for four screens in each DVD's introduction so that viewers will know his background and many accomplishments.
 

 

Dr. Wilson is a professor emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina where he taught for 32 years.
He did "exemplary" work as editor of The Papers of
John C. Calhoun
, Volumes 10 through 28. He has contributed over 400 articles, essays and reviews to a wide variety of books and journals, and has lectured extensively.

 

He has written several books including Carolina Cavalier:
The Life and Mind of James Johnston Pettigrew
; From Union to Empire: Essays in the Jeffersonian Tradition; and Defending Dixie: Essays in Southern History and Culture.

 

He has edited several books including three volumes of
The Dictionary of Literary Biography
; The Essential Calhoun;
John C. Calhoun: A Bibliography
; and A Defender of Southern Conservatism: M.E. Bradford and His Achievements.

 

He is recipient of the Bostick Medal for Contributions to
South Carolina Letters, the John Randolph Club Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Sons of Confederate Veterans Medal of Meritorious Service.

 

He is the M.E. Bradford Distinguished Chair of
The Abbeville Institute, an affiliated scholar of the
League of the South Institute, and an adjunct faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

 

He is a regular contributor to Chronicles magazine and Southern Partisan, and an occasional contributor to
National Review
.
 


 

You don't have to have a PayPal account
to pay by credit card through PayPal.


Each DVD is close to an hour-and-ten-minutes and comes in a jewel box case to show off the art work. This is a PERFECT set to give to the historically-challenged and to donate to libraries and schools.

 

Each DVD makes for an informative program at camp, chapter and unit meetings, and the set is an excellent fundraiser because the single set price is $29.95.

 

However, the price you charge is up to you. I get them to you at discounts as high as 55%, and YOU decide what price you want to charge.

 

Make money for your organization while putting the truth of Southern history out there by a distinguished historian.

 

Use PayPal buttons below or make a check out to
Bonnie Blue Publishing and mail to:

Gene Kizer, Producer

Bonnie Blue Publishing

P.O. Box 13012

Charleston, SC 29422-3012
 

Here are quantity discounts PLUS a
"Buy One Set, Get the Second Set for ONLY $5" Special
on one to three sets ("Buy Three Sets, GET Three Sets for Only $5 ea.)

  • 100 sets: $13.50/set (that's a 55% discount)

  • 50-99 sets: $14.50/set (that's a 51.6% discount)

  • 10-49 sets: $16.50/set (that's a 45% discount)
     



Buy One Set (3 DVDs).
Total is $29.95. USPS shipping is $5.45 and will be added at checkout.


 



Buy One Set (3 DVDs) & Get the Second Set for ONLY $5.
Total is $29.95 plus $5 = $34.95 for two sets (6 DVDs). USPS shipping is $5.45 and will be added at checkout.


 



Buy Two Sets (6 DVDs) and Get Two Sets for ONLY $5 each.
Total is $59.90 plus $10 = $69.90 for four sets (12 DVDs). USPS shipping is $6.95 and will be added at checkout.


 



Buy Three Sets (9 DVDs) and Get Three Sets for ONLY $5 each.
Total is $89.85 plus $15 = $104.85 for six sets (18 DVDs). USPS shipping is $6.95 and will be added at checkout.


 



For additional quantities, please send an e-mail to BonnieBlueStaff@comcast.net. Once we settle on a price, I'll send you a PayPal button by e-mail for payment, or you can mail a check.
 


A two-DVD set

More from Dr. Clyde Wilson,
editor of
The Papers of John C. Calhoun


John C. Calhoun:

Last of the Founding Fathers

and

John C. Calhoun:
Prophet

 

Details are the same as above. Each DVD is approximately an hour-and-ten-minutes and comes in a clear jewel box case to show off the art work.

 

Price for the two-DVD set is $19.95 plus shipping.

 

Here are some GREAT specials including a
"Buy One Set, Get the Second Set for ONLY $10."

 

Use PayPal buttons below to pay with PayPal or credit card, even if you don't have a PayPal account; or make a check out to Bonnie Blue Publishing and mail to:

Gene Kizer, Producer

Bonnie Blue Publishing

P.O. Box 13012

Charleston, SC 29422-3012

 

One Set (2 DVDs). Total is $19.95. USPS shipping is $4.45 and will be added at checkout.

 


 



Buy One Set (2 DVDs) & Get the Second Set for ONLY $10.
Total is $19.95 plus $10.00 = $29.95 for two sets (4 DVDs). USPS shipping is $5.45 and will be added at checkout.

 


 



Buy Two Sets (4 DVDs) and Get Two Sets for ONLY $10 Each.
Total is $39.90 plus $20.00 = $59.90 for four sets (8 DVDs). USPS shipping is $5.45 and will be added at checkout.

 


 



For additional quantities, please send an
e-mail to BonnieBlueStaff@comcast.net. Once we settle on a price, I'll send you a PayPal button by e-mail for payment, or you can mail a check.

 

 


The most brilliant talk on black Confederates
ever given, featuring distinguished professor



Edward C. Smith



Scroll down for a ten minute video clip

 

On DVD label are actual black Confederates as seen by a Yankee officer through his field-glass. The drawing was published in Harper's Weekly, January 10, 1863 with title "Rebel Negro Pickets as Seen Through a Field Glass."

 

 


Professor Edward C. Smith is one of the foremost authorities in America on black Confederates and the participation of blacks for the Southern side in the War Between the States. He is a professor of Anthropology at American University where he has taught since 1969, and the founder & co-director of the American University Civil War Institute.

He is also a Civil War, African-American Cultural Heritage, Art History Lecturer and Study Tour Leader for The Smithsonian Institution, The National Geographic Society, The National Park Service and The Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

 

In this Two-DVD talk that totals over 70 minutes,
Professor Smith speaks to an enthusiastic crowd of the
Sons of Confederate Veterans at their national convention
August 12, 1993 in Lexington, Kentucky.

 

Not only is Professor Smith fascinating and articulate, he is witty and broke the crowd up continuously with laughter and applause. He received a THUNDEROUS standing ovation at the end.
 

You will rave about this talk!


(Click here for more information)
 

 
 

Cataloged in Books in Print

ISBN: 0-9818980-9-2
ISBN13: 978-0-9818980-9-4

Published by
Charleston Athenaeum Press


 

This is a low-resolution video file.
The DVD is much higher quality. 

 

 

To Purchase

A single set consists of both DVDs, Volumes 1 & 2.
DVDs come in clear jewel box cases to show off
the art work.
 

You don't have to have a PayPal account
to pay by credit card through PayPal.

 


You can also mail a check to:
 

 

Bonnie Blue Publishing
P.O. Box 13012
Charleston, SC 29422-3012


If you have any questions, don't hesitate to e-mail me at

BonnieBlueStaff@comcast.net
 


 


One DVD Set at $24.95
(plus $4.45 USPS shipping)

Total is $24.95 plus $4.45 = $29.40

 
 



 

 



Buy One Set & Get the Second Set for Only $10. That's Four DVDs for $34.95
(plus $5.45 USPS shipping)

 


 



Three DVD Sets at $21.95 ea. (12% Discount)
(plus $6.95 USPS shipping)

Total is $65.85 plus $6.95 = $72.80

 

 

 

 

 


 


Four DVD Sets at $20.95 ea. (16% Discount)
(plus $6.95 USPS shipping)

Total is $83.80 plus $6.95 = $90.75

 
   

 
 


 

 


 


Five DVD Sets at $19.95 ea. (20% Discount)
(plus $6.95 USPS shipping)

Total is $99.75 plus $6.95 = $106.70

 
   

 
 


 

 


 


Please send me an e-mail for greater DVD quantities, or if you'd like me to produce quantities of Audio CDs for you.

BonnieBlueStaff@comcast.net
 

Here are remaining DVD quantities/prices,
shipping to be added

  • 11-30 sets at $14.45 ea. (42% Discount)

  • 31-50 sets at $13.95 ea. (44% Discount)

  • 51-100 sets at $13.45 ea. (46% Discount)

  • 101-200 sets at $12.95 ea. (48% Discount)

  • 201-500 sets at $12.45 ea. (50% Discount)
     

 

 

A three-DVD set

Literary DVDs featuring
three towering figures in American literature
and some of their works
 

 
  • Flannery O'Connor
     

  • Margaret Mitchell &
    Gone with the Wind
     

  • Joel Chandler Harris &
    Uncle Remus

 

 

This is one of the most enjoyable and enlightening sets you will ever view on Southern literature.

Mary Barbara Tate, talking about her good friend, Flannery O'Connor, is charming, witty and articulate. She knew O'Connor well and spent many hours with her at her home, Andalusia, in Milledgeville, Georgia. You can't help but love Mrs. Tate. She knows more about Flannery O'Connor than almost anybody, and from the familiarity of a good friend.

from Literary Traveler . . .

Mary Barbara Tate, a member of the Flannery O'Connor-Andalusia Foundation board of directors, fondly remembers her visits to Andalusia during O'Connor's time there. A professor of English at Georgia College and State University for twenty-three years, Tate belonged to a reading group that met every week at the farmhouse to discuss Southern literature chosen by O'Connor.

Dr. Mark Winchell, before he passed away, was a prominent literary scholar and professor at Clemson University. He loved the Nashville Agrarians, historically accurate portrayals of Southern history in film such as Gods and Generals and Ride with the Devil, and he knew a LOT about the greatest novel ever written:
Gone with the Wind
.

Gone with the Wind has broken more records, worldwide, than
almost any other piece of literature. It was banned by the Nazis in World War II because they hated literature that portrayed a conquered people rising back up.

Dr. Winchell's talk on Joel Chandler Harris and Uncle Remus is outstanding also. It, too, mixes literature with film, which always had a great attraction for Dr. Winchell. His love of subject is certainly reflected in his talk.

You don't have to have a PayPal account
to pay by credit card through PayPal.
 

Each DVD comes in a clear jewel box case to show off the art work.

The three-DVD set is $29.95 plus shipping, and you can pay
by credit card, PayPal, or make a check out to
Bonnie Blue Publishing and mail to:

Gene Kizer, Producer

Bonnie Blue Publishing

P.O. Box 13012

Charleston, SC 29422-3012

 

Buy One Set (3 DVDs). Total is $29.95. USPS shipping is $4.45 and will be added at checkout.

 


 



Buy One Set (3 DVDs) and Get the Second Set for ONLY $10.
Total is $29.95 plus $10.00 = $39.95 for two sets (6 DVDs). USPS shipping is $5.45 and will be added at checkout.

 


 



Buy Two Sets (6 DVDs) and Get Two Sets for ONLY $10 each.
Total is $59.90 plus $20.00 = $79.90 for four sets (12 DVDs). USPS shipping is $6.95 and will be added at checkout.

 


 



Buy Three Sets (9 DVDs) and Get Three Sets for ONLY $10.00 each.
Total is $89.85 plus $30.00 = $119.85 for six sets (18 DVDs). USPS shipping is $6.95 and will be added at checkout.

 


 



For additional quantities, please send an
e-mail to BonnieBlueStaff@comcast.net. Once we settle on a price, I'll send you a PayPal button by e-mail for payment, or you can mail a check.
 

 


Find out why all you have heard
in the Sesquicentennial thus far is
slavery slavery slavery!

The Ideological Use of Slavery
in American Liberalism

by Dr. Don Livingston


Scroll down for a
10-minute video clip

Dr. Don Livingston discusses the driving impulse of the 19th century, which was centralization, desired by Europe and the North. The South was the only major entity on earth to resist centralization. He says it is an absurd notion that the North invaded the South to free the slaves. He maintains that it was an evil barbarism for the North to invade to force the South back into a union it had voted to secede from. He talks about the virulent racism in the North. Most Northern states forbid blacks to live there. Lincoln's Illinois had laws that stated any black person staying longer than 10 days was subject to arrest and flogging. New England ran the slave trade and made huge fortunes in the process. The entire infrastructure of the Old North was built on the slave trade. Marxism and liberalism are two sides of the same coin.
 

 


Donald W. Livingston is a professor of Philosophy at Emory University in Atlanta, renowned for his expertise on one of the most preeminent figures in the history of Western Philosophy, the Scottish philosopher, historian, economist and essayist, David Hume.

Professor Livingston has been a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow, and is a member of the editorial board of Hume Studies, as well as Chronicles magazine. He is author of Hume's Philosophy of Common Life, and Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium, and co-editor or contributor to numerous other works.

Professor Livingston is also well thought of as a constitutional scholar with numerous writings on the Compact Theory, nullification, secession, federalism, states' rights and subsidiarity, with a common theme of decentralization. He believes strongly in the philosophies of Thomas Jefferson, Robert Hayne and John C. Calhoun, as opposed to the centralizing philosophies of Joseph Story, Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln.

Professor Livingston characterizes Lincoln's farcical position -- that the Union created the states as opposed to the other way around -- as "Lincoln's Spectacular Lie."

Professor Livingston is also one of the founding members of the Abbeville Institute, which is "an association of scholars in higher education devoted to a critical study of what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition." He is currently working on a book "on the moral, legal, and philosophical meaning of secession."
 

Each DVD is approximately an hour-and-ten-minutes and comes in a jewel box case to show off the art work.
 

Buy One DVD. Total is $12.95. USPS shipping is $4.45 and will be added at checkout.
 


 



Buy One DVD and Get a Second for ONLY $5.
Total is $12.95 plus $5 = $17.95 for two DVDs. USPS shipping is $4.45 and will be added at checkout.
 


 



Buy Two DVDs and Get One FREE.
Total is $25.90 for three DVDs. USPS shipping is $5.45 and will be added at checkout.
 


 



Buy Three DVDs and Get Two FREE.
Total is $38.85 for five DVDs. USPS shipping is $5.45 and will be added at checkout.
 


 



Buy Five DVDs and Get Three FREE.
Total is $64.75 for eight DVDs. USPS shipping is $6.95 and will be added at checkout.
 


 

If you'd want greater quantities or a different special,
make me an offer I can't refuse!

BonnieBlueStaff@comcast.net
 



Get all 13 of the DVDs above

for only $99

 

You will get
 

 
  • The Causes of the Late War of Independence
    by Dr. Clyde Wilson

  • The Conduct of the Late War of Independence
    by Dr. Clyde Wilson

  • Reconstruction
    by Dr. Clyde Wilson

  • John C. Calhoun: Last of the Founding Fathers
    by Dr. Clyde Wilson

  • John C. Calhoun: Prophet
    by Dr. Clyde Wilson

  • Mixed Up with All the Rebel Horde,
    Why Black Southerners Fought for the South
    in the War Between the States
    , Volume 1
    by Professor Edward C. Smith

  • Mixed Up with All the Rebel Horde,
    Why Black Southerners Fought for the South
    in the War Between the States
    , Volume 2
    by Professor Edward C. Smith

  • An Evening of Antebellum Music, Part One

  • An Evening of Antebellum Music, Part Two:
    The Poetry and Music of John Hill Hewitt

  • Flannery O'Connor
    by Mary Barbara Tate

  • Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind
    by Dr. Mark Winchell

  • Joel Chandler Harris and Uncle Remus
    by Dr. Mark Winchell

  • The Ideological Use of Slavery in American Liberalism
     by Dr. Donald Livingston

Total is $99.00 for all 13 DVDs above.
USPS shipping of $6.95 will be added at checkout.
 


 



ALSO, if you'd like to create your own Special, make me an offer. Let's do some business! E-mail your offer to BonnieBlueStaff@comcast.net.

Thank you!
 



90 Fabulous Volumes

 

 


The most powerful DVD series on Southern history and literature ever produced

 

 


 

 Save Money:  Eight Website Specials below!

(Click Here or scroll down)
 


 

America was founded in the South.

The South dominated the country until the
War Between the States.

It is impossible to understand American history without first understanding Southern history.

Make me an offer I can't refuse

on any combination and/or number of DVDs! If I like it, I'll send you a PayPal button by
e-mail.

These DVDs are fascinating (scroll down for video clips). Speakers include numerous renowned historians, professors, writers and scholars. ALL love their subjects dearly and have dug deep into them.

Please browse our complete list of 90 volumes because you'll find DVDs on:

  • The War Between the States

  • Reconstruction

  • Black Confederates

  • Classical influence on the South

  • William Faulkner

  • William Gilmore Simms

  • MANY on Southern Literature

  • Joel Chandler Harris and
    Uncle Remus

  • John C. Calhoun

  • Confederate submarine CSS Hunley

  • Charleston, South Carolina

  • Rousing antebellum and WBTS music

  • The Confederate Constitution

  • The South in film (Gone with the Wind, Gods and Generals, Gettysburg,
    Ride with the Devil
    and
    Gangs of New York)

  • Accomplished Southern women

  • South Carolina Indians

  • Antebellum Southern gardens

  • James Henley Thornwell and Southern theology

  • Alexander Stephens ("Little Aleck")

  • Many many more!

Not only are these DVDs perfect for individuals interested in Southern history and literature, they are OUTSTANDING at SCV, UDC, reenactor and other meetings that feature a historical theme.


Send your offer or questions to

BonnieBlueStaff@comcast.net

and if you've never received an
e-mail from us and would like to be on our newsletter list, put "Newsletter" in the subject line.
 

 

More video clips from the series!


 

From Volume 25,
The Causes of the Late War of Independence
by Dr. Clyde Wilson
 

Click Here to go to 15 DVD  Website Special  
featuring Dr. Clyde Wilson and Dr. Don Livingston

Click Here to go to 2-DVD and 4-DVD
 Website Specials
 on John C. Calhoun,
$19.95 and $39.95.

 



 

From Volume 33,
The Fourteenth Amendment
by Dr. Don Livingston
 

Click Here to go to 15 DVD  Website Special  
featuring Dr. Don Livingston and Dr. Clyde Wilson
 



 

Volume 10,
Secession and the American Constitutional Tradition
by Dr. Don Livingston
 

Click Here to go to 15 DVD  Website Special  
featuring Dr. Don Livingston and Dr. Clyde Wilson
 


 

 

DVDs are beautifully designed.

 

Contact Gene Kizer, producer of The History and Literature of the South, if you need writing, book editing, VIDEO shooting and editing and/or DVD production. I'll take your S-VHS or VHS tapes, digitize them, edit them, produce DVDs with menus, then duplicate any quantity with beautiful labels printed right on the DVD. Contact me at:

 BonnieBlueStaff@comcast.net.

For more information including published book reviews I've written, Click Here.



Click HERE to go to
gorgeous FREE Confederate
Clip Art and Graphics!

 

 Website Specials

  • Go to Secession, the War Between the States, Reconstruction, and John C. Calhoun,
     15 Outstanding DVDs,  nine by Dr. Clyde Wilson, six by
    Dr. Don Livingston --
    only $9.93 each! 
     

  • Go to John C. Calhoun 2-DVD and 4-DVD Specials, $19.95 and $39.95 respectively, plus shipping, featuring
    Dr. Clyde Wilson, editor of the John C. Calhoun Papers.
    See above for additional Specials.
     

  • Go to Flannery O'Connor single DVD Special, $11.95 plus shipping, featuring the charming Mary Barbara Tate, a dear friend and associate of O'Connor's.
     

  • Go to Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind,
    single DVD Special at $11.95 plus shipping featuring
    Dr. Mark Winchell, author, literary scholar, former professor.

     

  • Go to 2-DVD Literary Special, Flannery O'Connor, and Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind, $19.95 plus shipping.
     

  • Go to Joel Chandler Harris and Uncle Remus,
    single DVD Special, $11.95 plus shipping featuring
    Dr. Mark Winchell.
     

  • Go to 3-DVD Special, Flannery O'Connor, Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind, and Joel Chandler Harris and
    Uncle Remus for $29.95 plus shipping.
     

  • Go to Alexander Stephens and a Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States single DVD Special at $11.95 plus shipping featuring historian Joseph Stromberg of the Ludwig von Mises Institute at Auburn University.


  •  

    Go to
    "Lincoln and Fort Sumter"
    by Charles W. Ramsdell,

    the brilliant 1937 treatise from the Journal of Southern History,
    indicting Lincoln for starting the War Between the States,
    Vol. 3, Issue 3 (Aug. 1937), Pages 259-288



     



    Please continue scrolling down for the scholarly essay, "The Right of Secession,"
    primary source documents, "A Detailed Chronology of Secession with Bibliography,"
    Website Specials and other valuable information.
     



    Please visit another
    of my Educational Websites:

    www.WorldHistory101-102.com
     

     

     

     

    Go to www.WorldHistory101-102.com

    (use back button on brower to return)
     

    ALL ORDERS of ANY Southern history DVDs above will receive a FREE DVD,
    World History 102, Class 19: British Empire; American Independence; or you can
    substitute ANY of the 80 DVDs in the World History series for your freebie.


    Please continue scrolling down!



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    The Slavery Lie


    Slavery was not the cause

    of the war

     

    Esteemed historian Eugene Genovese warned that today's politically correct interpretations of Southern history are a "cultural and political atrocity," mostly because of the falsehood that slavery was the cause of the War Between the States.

     

    Unquestionably, slavery was not the cause of the war.

     

    The South's economic independence from the North was.

     

    The North could not allow its economic colony to secede and compete against it without total economic collapse.

     

    The collapse of the Northern economy was well underway as the Southern states seceded. Northern states were facing bankruptcy and anarchy.

     

    Early in the secession debate, there
    was noble rhetoric from Northerners such as Horace Greeley who wrote that the North should
    let our "erring sisters go in peace."

     

    But when he started realizing that the North was totally dependent on the South, and the South was producing the wealth of the nation in King Cotton, he wanted war. He wanted war like the rest of the North, because, without the South, they faced ruin.

     

    You can not read a single Northern newspaper editor after January of 1861 who is not petrified of the impending Northern collapse.

     

    The short reason is that the North did not sell its manufactured goods to the rest of the world.

     

    It sold overwhelmingly to the South because this was the era of the Pax Britannica and mighty Great Britain, not the North, ruled the oceans and global trade.

     

    The South was the North's only significant market and we were captive.

     

    We could pay their exorbitant prices because we were producing the wealth of the nation in Southern commodities, and cotton was king.

     

    There is no question about this. It can not be denied. It is a proven fact of economics and history.

     

    The South was, by far, producing the wealth of the United States in 1860.

     

    And -- OUTRAGEOUSLY -- the South was paying 3/4ths of the taxes of the United States through tariffs, yet 3/4ths of the tax money was being spent in the North.

     

    Without the South to sell to, Northern factories stood idle and the North rushed headlong into panic. Northern fear reached a crescendo in April, 1861.

     

    Lincoln was under enormous pressure the entire time the Southern States were seceding.

     

    He faced the specter of going down in history as an abject failure who led the Northern economic collapse.

     

    He was the first sectional president in American history and he was about to let his section - the North - fall into bankruptcy and anarchy.

     

    However, he had the trump card of all tyrants: WAR.

     

    He knew war would solve everything and give him a "magnificent burst of patriotism" as one writer said. The Constitution be damned.

     

    I'm sure Lincoln thought it would be short and quick and nothing like what happened or even he might have had second thoughts before
    sending a military mission to Fort Sumter in April, 1861 knowing, full well, it would start the war.

     

    Lincoln's commander at Fort Sumter,
    Major Robert Anderson, said clearly that Lincoln started the war.

     

    Anderson wrote a letter in response to Lincoln and Secretary of War Cameron's letter that informed him of the Fort Sumter reinforcement plans as Northern warships approached Charleston. Anderson minced no words:

    . . . a movement made now when the South has been erroneously informed that none such will be attempted, would produce most disastrous results throughout our country. . . . We shall strive to do our duty, though I frankly say that my heart is not in the war which I see is to be thus commenced. . . .
     

    The South Was Right

     

    We were right in that conflict -- not just morally, for wanting freedom and independence, but legally.

     

    Secession was a sacred legal right won by our forefathers of 1776 for their progeny, and we exercised that right carefully.

     

    We vigorously debated secession, then we elected Unionist and Secessionist delegates to conventions in each Southern state and they further debated the issue, then they voted in each state convention to secede.

     

    The convention votes were then ratified in each state by a popular vote of the people as had occurred with the Constitution.

     

    It was the most pure expression of republican government and democracy that the world had ever seen for such a large number of people and such a huge landmass, and it was an affirmation of the South's commitment to constitutional government and the republic of the Founding Fathers.

     

    Possessing the wealth of the nation in cotton, and anxious to industrialize and trade freely with the world, the South was a rising star and would be a formidable competitor for Lincoln and the protectionist mercantilist North, and they all knew it.

     

    The North grossly mismanaged

    its own economy

     

    Northern greed had driven an insatiable demand for government support from the end of the Revolution on. Unfair Northern monopolies and protectionism benefited Northern states and penalized the rest of the country especially the South that had always wanted free trade.

     

    The Morrill Tariff of 1861, which was passed the moment Southerners seceded and were not in Congress to vote against it, was the catalyst that brought Northern greed and mismanagement to a head. The Morrill Tariff immediately began destroying Northern trade and the Northern economy.

     

    The entry of goods into the North after the Morrill Tariff was approximately 40% to 60% higher than in the South, so nobody on the planet wanted to do business with the North.

     

    Southerners had wisely prohibited protective tariffs in their Constitution so entry of goods into the South was a tiny fraction of the cost to ship to the North.

     

    Southerners were brilliant, while greedy Northerners destroyed their own economy and made a blockade and war necessary from their standpoint.

     

    Don't take my word

     

    Read Northern newspaper editors anytime after January, 1861 when most Southern states followed South Carolina's lead and seceded.

     

    Northern newspapers were all utterly petrified about the imminent Northern collapse and there were abundant signs that anarchy was fast approaching.

     

    When Lincoln sent an armed naval flotilla into South Carolina to reinforce Fort Sumter on sovereign South Carolina soil, he knew -- beyond the shadow of a doubt -- that he was starting a war.

     

    The one who starts a war is not the one who strikes the first blow, but the one who makes the first blow necessary.

     

    All the Northern rhetoric since the end of the war has tried to justify the Northern destruction of the country and the 1,000,000 casualties that went along with it by saying that the good Northern States invaded the evil South to free the slaves.

     

    Nothing could be further from the truth, as Lincoln himself said for the first two years of the war.

     

    One only has to remember that five slaves states fought for the North throughout the war and NONE of their slaves were "freed" by the Emancipation Proclamation.

     

    The Northern invasion of the South was unconstitutional and immoral and it ranks Lincoln up there with the worst tyrants in world history.

     

    The South was the heir of the original American republic that declared its independence in 1776. That's why a triumphant George Washington is in the center of the Great Seal of the Confederacy.

     

    It was about freedom and the rights of states to govern themselves and protect themselves from a dominating, taxing, constantly encroaching federal government.

     

    And today, it is about the exact same thing: The rights of our States verses the tyranny of the "one size fits all" federal government that was established by the despot Lincoln and the illegal, immoral Northern victory.

     

    The facts are all there. Educate yourself and argue well because truth is on our side and will eventually prevail.

     

    Deo Vindice

     

    Gene Kizer

    Publisher

     

    Charleston, South Carolina



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    About Dr. Clyde Wilson

    Dr. Wilson is editor of the Papers of John C. Calhoun, and a professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina. He has written or edited several books including Carolina Cavalier: The Life and Mind of James Johnston Pettigrew, The Essential Calhoun (editor), A Defender of Southern Conservatism: M.E. Bradford and His Achievements, The Meaning of South Carolina History: Essays in Honor of George C. Rogers Jr (co-editor), American Historians, 1607-1865 (Dictionary of Literary Biography), Defending Dixie: Essays in Southern History and Culture, and scores of articles. He is unquestionably a top expert on the War Between the States, Reconstruction, and John C. Calhoun.

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    The War Between the States:
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    Volume 4
    Part II,
    The War Between the States:
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    Volume 16

    John C. Calhoun: Last of the Founding Fathers

    Volume 18
    John C. Calhoun: Prophet

    Volume 25
    The Causes of the Late War of Independence

    Volume 26
    The Conduct of the Late War of Independence

    Volume 49
    Reconstruction

    Volume 53
    John C. Calhoun Seminar,
    Part 1

    Volume 54
    John C. Calhoun Seminar,
    Part 2

    About Dr. Donald Livingston

    Dr. Livingston is a professor of Philosophy at
    Emory University in Atlanta. He is a renowned scholar of Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, economist and historian, David Hume, and has written several books including Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium: Hume's Pathology of Philosophy and Hume's Philosophy of Common Life; he is co-editor of Hume, A Re-evaluation; Liberty in Hume's "History of England"; and Hume as Philosopher of Society, Politics, and History. Dr. Livingston has also written and spoken extensively on the right of secession, and is the driving force behind the highly respected Abbeville Institute.

    Dr. Livingston's volumes include

    Volume 10
    Secession and the American Constitutional Tradition

    Volume 20
    The Philosophical Meaning of the Confederacy

    Volume 33

    The Fourteenth Amendment
    A Perverse Incentive

    Volume 37
    Part 1 of
    Secession: A Constitutional and Philosophical View

    Volume 38
    Part 2 of
    Secession: A Constitutional and Philosophical View

    Volume 45
    The Ideological Use of Slavery
    in American Liberalism

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    The
    38 Best Volumes
    from

    Send me an e-mail at BonnieBlueStaff@comcast.net and make me an offer I can't refuse on any combination and/or quantity of DVDs. If I like it, I'll send you a PayPal button by e-mail.

     Volume 1

    Part I of
    William Faulkner, Southern Writer
    by Dr. Jim Meriwether

    Dr. Meriwether is a well-known William Faulkner scholar and English professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina. He actually knew Faulkner and spent time with him, then later cataloged Faulkner's papers as a young scholar at Princeton.


     Volume 2

    Part II of
    William Faulkner, Southern Writer
    by Dr. Jim Meriwether

    For short bio, see Volume 1


     Volume 3

    Part I of
    The War Between the States:
    Its Causes and Conduct
    by Dr. Clyde N. Wilson

    Dr. Wilson is editor of The Papers of
    John C. Calhoun, and a professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina. He has published several books including Carolina Cavalier: The Life and Mind of James Johnston Pettigrew, The Essential Calhoun (editor), A Defender of Southern Conservatism: M.E. Bradford and His Achievements, The Meaning of South Carolina History: Essays in Honor of George C. Rogers Jr (co-editor), American Historians, 1607-1865 (Dictionary of Literary Biography), Defending Dixie: Essays in Southern History and Culture,
    and scores of articles. He is an unquestioned expert on the War Between the States and Reconstruction, and John C. Calhoun.

    See additional biographical information above.


     Volume 4

    Part II of
    The War Between the States:
    Its Causes and Conduct
    by Dr. Clyde N. Wilson

    For short bio, see Volume 3


     Volume 10

    Secession and the
    American Constitutional Tradition
    by Dr. Donald Livingston

    Dr. Livingston is a professor of Philosophy at
    Emory University in Atlanta. He is a renowned scholar of Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, economist and historian, David Hume, and has written several books including Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium: Hume's Pathology of Philosophy and Hume's Philosophy of Common Life; he is co-editor of Hume, A Re-evaluation; Liberty in Hume's "History of England"; and Hume as Philosopher of Society, Politics, and History. Dr. Livingston has also written and spoken extensively on the right of secession, and is the driving force behind the highly respected Abbeville Institute.


     Volume 11

    Part I of
    Charleston Literature
    by Dr. David Aiken

    Dr. Aiken is a professor of English at The Citadel, and the College of Charleston, and a noted William Gilmore Simms scholar. His published books include the editing of Simms's eyewitness account of Sherman's burning of Columbia, SC: A City Laid Waste, The Capture, Sack, and Destruction of the City of Columbia, published by the University of South Carolina Press in 2005. Dr. Aiken has lectured on the rich literary heritage of Charleston, South Carolina and the Holy City's many outstanding poets and writers.


     Volume 12

    Part II of
    Charleston Literature
    by Dr. David Aiken

    For short bio, see Volume 11


     Volume 16

    John C. Calhoun:
    Last of the Founding Fathers
    by Dr. Clyde N. Wilson

    For short bio, see Volume 3


     Volume 18

    John C. Calhoun: Prophet
    by Dr. Clyde N. Wilson

    For short bio, see Volume 3


     Volume 19

    James Henley Thornwell
    and the Promise of Southern Theology
    by Dr. William Wilson

    Dr. William M. Wilson is an assistant dean at the University of Virginia, College of Arts and Sciences, and a lecturer in the Religious Studies Department. His specialities are philosophical theology, modern Christian thought, and religion and literature.


     Volume 23

    Reclaiming Faulkner,
    Part One
    by Dr. James E. Kibler

    Dr. Kibler is a noted William Gilmore Simms scholar, a poet, novelist and long-time English professor at the University of Georgia. He is author of many, many books including Selected Poems of William Gilmore Simms (editor), Child to the Waters, Walking Towards Home, Memory's Keep, Sherman's March from the Sea, Poems from Scorched Earth, Poetry and the Practical, William Gilmore Simms: A Reference Guide, and Our Fathers' Fields: A Southern Story, which was proclaimed an instant Southern classic. Dr. Kibler is also the author of scores of articles.


     Volume 24

    Reclaiming Faulkner,
    Part Two
    by Dr. James E. Kibler

    For short bio, see Volume 23


     Volume 25

    The Causes of the
    Late War of Independence
    by Dr. Clyde N. Wilson

    For short bio, see Volume 3


     Volume 26

    The Conduct of the
    Late War of Independence
    by Dr. Clyde N. Wilson

    For short bio, see Volume 3


     Volume 29

    Getting Even:
    The Morality of Revenge
    by Dr. Thomas Fleming

    Dr. Fleming is a noted classics scholar, president
    of The Rockford Institute, and editor of
    Chronicles magazine. He is the author of several books including The Politics of Human Nature, Montenegro, The Divided Land, and The Morality of Everyday Life. He is an animated speaker with a commanding voice and articulation, and his lectures on the influence of the classics -- the study of the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome -- on Southern culture, are riveting.


     Volume 30

    Fighting, Feuding, and Dueling
    in the Old South
    by Dr. Thomas Fleming

    For short bio, see Volume 29


     Volume 31

    Southern Manners and Honour
    by Dr. William Wilson

    For short bio, see Volume 19


     Volume 33

    The Fourteenth Amendment
    A Perverse Incentive
    by Dr. Donald Livingston

    For short bio, see Volume 10


     Volume 34

    The CSS Hunley
    by Mr. Randy Burbage

    Includes extensive film footage of
    the famous Confederate submarine,
    CSS Hunley, on the ocean floor before she was raised

    Mr. Randy Burbage is a member of the
    CSS Hunley Commission for the State of South Carolina, and has been instrumental in preserving and promoting the Confederate submarine CSS Hunley. Mr. Burbage is a natural leader and has been involved in a leadership capacity with reenacting and promoting Southern history for over 25 years. He is currently Commander of the South Carolina Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and a popular, personable speaker.


     Volume 37

    Part I of
    Secession:
    A Constitutional and Philosophical View
    by Dr. Donald Livingston

    For short bio, see Volume 10


     Volume 38

    Part II of
    Secession:
    A Constitutional and Philosophical View
    by Dr. Donald Livingston

    For short bio, see Volume 10


     Volume 41

    Part I of
    William Gilmore Simms
    by Dr. John C. Guilds

    Dr. John Caldwell Guilds is perhaps the foremost
    William Gilmore Simms scholar alive today. He wrote the outstanding biography of Simms, Simms, A Literary Life, and is editor of Long Years of Neglect: The Work and Reputation of William Gilmore Simms. Volumes 41 and 42 are fascinating lectures, and in the audience were several Simms scholars with excellent questions and comments, such as Dr. James B. Meriwether, featured in Volumes 1 and 2, and Dr. James Everett Kibler, featured in Volumes 23 and 24.


     Volume 42

    Part II of
    William Gilmore Simms
    by Dr. John C. Guilds

    For short bio, see Volume 41


     Volume 43

    Part I of
    The Theology of the South:
    The Fruits of Orthodoxy and Apostasy
    by Rev. Steve Wilkins

    Rev. Steve Wilkins is pastor of the
    Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church, Monroe, Louisiana


     Volume 44

    Part II of
    The Theology of the South
    by Rev. Steve Wilkins

    For short bio, see Volume 43


     Volume 45

    The Ideological Use of Slavery
    in American Liberalism
    by Dr. Donald Livingston

    For short bio, see Volume 10


     Volume 46

    The Confederate Constitution
    by Dr. Marshall DeRosa

    Dr. DeRosa is a professor of Political Science at
    Florida Atlantic University, and an esteemed constitutional scholar. His book, The Confederate Constitution of 1861: An Inquiry into American Constitutionalism, is a definitive study of the Confederate Constitution. His other books include The Politics of Dissolution: The Quest for a National Identity and the American Civil War, The Ninth Amendment and the Politics of Creative Jurisprudence, and An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law (editor).


     Volume 47

    M. E. Bradford
    by Dr. Mark Winchell

    Dr. Mark Winchell is a professor of English at Clemson University, and an authority on historically-correct films such as Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York, Ang Lee's Ride with the Devil, Victor Fleming's Gone With The Wind, and Ronald F. Maxwell's Gettysburg, and Gods and Generals. Dr. Winchell is author of over 120 articles, and several books including The Vanderbilt Tradition: Essays in Honor of Thomas Daniel Young, Talmadge: A Political Legacy, A Politician's Life, and Cleanth Brooks and the Rise of Modern Criticism.


     Volume 49

    Reconstruction
    by Dr. Clyde N. Wilson

    For short bio, see Volume 3


     Volume 50

    North and South:
    the Philosophical Divide
    by Dr. Thomas Fleming

    For short bio, see Volume 29


     Volume 51

    The Despot's Heel:
    Maryland's Ordeal of Reconstruction,
    1861-1880
    by Dr. Bart Talbert


     Volume 52

    The Theological Case for Secession
    by Dr. William Wilson

    For short bio, see Volume 19


     Volume 58

    An Evening of Antebellum Music,
    Part One
    Starring world-famous performers
    Beau Palmer, Lisa Palmer,
    & Kimberly Jackson, with
    Rev. Jim Schoolfield narrating


     Volume 59

    An Evening of Antebellum Music,
    Part Two: The Poetry and Music of
    John Hill Hewitt
    Starring Beau Palmer, Lisa Palmer,
    & Kimberly Jackson, with
    Rev. Jim Schoolfield narrating


     Volume 60

    Flannery O'Connor
    by Mary-Barbara Tate

    Mrs. Tate was a good friend of Flannery O'Connor's and knew her well. Mrs. Tate spent many hours with O'Connor at O'Connor's home, Andalusia, in Milledgeville, Georgia. She is a charming and articulate speaker whom one can't help but love, and appreciate.

    from Literary Traveler . . .

    Mary Barbara Tate, a member of the Flannery O'Connor-Andalusia Foundation board of directors, fondly remembers her visits to Andalusia during O'Connor's time there. A professor of English at Georgia College and State University for twenty-three years, Tate belonged to a reading group that met every week at the farmhouse to discuss Southern literature chosen by O'Connor.


     Volume 61

    Margaret Mitchell and
    Gone With The Wind
    by Dr. Mark Winchell

    For short bio, see Volume 47


     Volume 64

    Joel Chandler Harris
    and Uncle Remus
    by Dr. Mark Winchell

    For short bio, see Volume 47


     Volume 65

    Alexander Stephens and a Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States
    by Historian Joseph Stromberg

    Joseph R. Stromberg holds the JoAnn B. Rothbard chair in history at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and is historian-in-residence there. He lectures frequently on various topics in Southern history including the constitutionality of secession, as well as economic issues.


    A Detailed CHRONOLOGY
    of Secession, with Bibliography

    Click here for an excellent, lengthy chronology that includes not only the secession debate in the South, 1860-1861, but such detail as the calling of secession conventions in the different Southern states, the actual convention votes for/against secession, the dates of ratification by the people in their various states with the actual vote totals for/against, the events happening on the national level as the Confederate government is organized at the same time that Lincoln takes over as U.S. president, and all things pertaining to the beginning of the War Between the States. There is also a bibliography divided into primary and secondary sources.


      Essays  


       Coming Soon  

    • Esteemed historian Dr. Eugene D. Genovese's UNCOMPLIMENTARY assessment of modern politically correct scholarship on the South and WBTS: "We are witnessing a cultural and political atrocity..."
       

    • A review of Charles B. Dew's book, Apostles of Disunion, Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (sic)
       

    • A summary of the excellent book, Black Bondage in the North
       

    • An article on the laws of the many Northern and Western states that had FORBID free blacks from living there including Lincoln's own Illinois
       

    • Dr. Charles W. Ramsdell and his acclaimed piece, Lincoln and Fort Sumter, in which he argues persuasively that Lincoln knew he was starting the war when he sent troops to Charleston in April, 1861, during the country's most critical hour
       

    • The causes of the WBTS in articles written by Southerners who were there
       

    • New England's secessionist convention: The Hartford Convention


    Primary Source Documents

    (Official Secession Documents, Gubernatorial Messages, Farewell Speeches, Letters and Addresses of Commissioners, General Speeches, Other Special Documents)
     

      Official Secession Documents 

    (Declarations, Addresses, Resolutions and Reports that speak officially for a state or county)

      Gubernatorial Messages  

       Farewell Speeches  

    (delivered in the Senate, and
    House of Representatives of the
    United States Congress)

      Letters and Addresses 
         of Commissioners     

    (from one Southern state to another)

       General Speeches  

       Other Special Documents  

        




    The South Carolina Sovereignty Flag, 1860.
     



    The Right of Secession

    by Gene H. Kizer, Jr.

    (click here for full-page format)

            There is no evidence that secession was illegal or prohibited by the Constitution, and in fact there is almost overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that secession was a legal, constitutionally sanctioned act. Historian Kenneth M. Stampp, in his book The Imperiled Union, maintains that it is impossible to say that secession was illegal because of the ambiguity of the original Constitution as to state sovereignty and the right of secession. He points out that "the case for state sovereignty and the constitutional right of secession had flourished for forty years before a comparable case for a perpetual Union had been devised," and even then its logic was "far from perfect because the Constitution and the debates over ratification were fraught with ambiguity."1 It appears that the original intent of an unquestioned right of secession was established by the Founders, took root and "flourished for forty years," then later a "perpetual Union" counter-argument developed out of political necessity when Northern states began realizing their wealth and power was dependent on the Union and its exploitation of the South.
            There had to be a specific constitutional prohibition on secession for it to be illegal. Conversely, there did not have to be a specific constitutional affirmation of the right of secession for it to be legal. Why? Because the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution states:

    The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

    There was no constitution prohibition on secession, nor was there a constitutional sanctioning of any kind of federal coercion to force a state to obey a federal law because to do so was to perpetrate an act of war on the offending state by the other states, for whom the federal government was their agent.

            The arguments for the right of secession are unequivocal. There is the constitutional right based on the Compact Theory, and the revolutionary right based on the idea that a free people have the right to change their government anytime they see fit. The Compact Theory views the Constitution as a legal agreement between the states - a compact - and if any one state violates the compact, then the entire agreement becomes null and void. Northern states unquestionably violated the Constitution on a number of grounds including unconstitutional Personal Liberty Laws on their books, as well as by deliberately harboring fugitives from justice by protecting the sons of John Brown who were wanted by Virginia for murder at Harpers Ferry. Northern states also made a mockery of the Constitution's Preamble, which states clearly that the Constitution was established to "insure domestic Tranquility" and "promote the general Welfare." Certain prominent Northern leaders with the acquiescence of states like Massachusetts were utterly at war with the South and doing everything they could to destroy the domestic tranquility of Southern states by encouraging slaves to murder white people, poison wells, destroy property and commit other acts of rapine. John Brown himself had been encouraged and financed in the North.
            The revolutionary right of secession is based on the Declaration of Independence and the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson and John Locke, that

    whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, . . .

    These words come directly from the Declaration of Independence. This passage was also used, verbatim, in South Carolina's Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union. A similar sentiment was expressed by Abraham Lincoln in 1847 on the floor of the United States House of Representatives:

    Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.2   

            Horace Greely's New York Daily Tribune published a long, emotional editorial on December 17, 1860, the day South Carolina's Secession Convention began, strongly supporting the right of secession on the revolutionary basis. The Tribune used the exact same passage used in South Carolina's Declaration of Immediate Causes, which comes from the Declaration of Independence, reiterating that the "just powers" of government come from the "consent of the governed" and "'whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and institute a new government,' &c., &c.", adding that

    We do heartily accept this doctrine, believing it intrinsically sound, beneficent, and one that, universally accepted, is calculated to prevent the shedding of seas of human blood. And, if it justified the secession from the British Empire of Three Millions of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861.3

    The Tribune goes on to say it "could not stand up for coercion, for subjugation," because "We hold the right of self-government sacred," and if the Southern States want out, "we shall feel constrained by our devotion to Human Liberty to say, Let Them Go!", because self-government is one of the "Rights of Man."4   
            The States' Rights Hartford Convention of New England, aggrieved by the financial losses of New Englanders in shipping during the War of 1812, met in 1815 and seriously discussed seceding from the Union. The Convention selected representatives to go to Washington to present its grievances to the government. It even chose a military leader should its grievances be ignored, and made arrangements for a second convention, if necessary, to make specific plans to secede. Commissioners were sent to Washington but upon arriving found that the War of 1812 had ended, therefore it was not necessary to air their grievances. The Journal of the Hartford Convention bristles with references to state sovereignty, and uses States' Rights language such as the right of a state to decide for itself when a violation of the Constitution occurred. One quote from the Hartford Convention Journal, justifying secession, sums it up:

    Whenever it shall appear that these causes are radical and permanent, a separation by equitable arrangement, will be preferable to an alliance by constraint, among nominal friends, but real enemies, inflamed by mutual hatred and jealousy, and inviting by intestine division, contempt and aggression from abroad.5

            Some excellent constitutional arguments are summarized in an article entitled "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," by Mr. H. Newcomb Morse, in the Stetson Law Review, a publication of the Stetson University College of Law.6 Morse writes that the War Between the States did not prove that secession was illegal because

    many incidents both preceding and following the War support the proposition that the Southern States did have the right to secede from the Union. Instances of nullification prior to the War Between the States, contingencies under which certain states acceded to the Union, and the fact that the Southern States were made to surrender the right to secession all affirm the existence of a right to secede . . .7

    He adds that the Constitution's "failure to forbid secession" and amendments dealing with secession that were proposed in Congress as Southern states were seceding strengthened his argument that "the Southern States had an absolute right to secede from the Union prior to the War Between the States."8
            Morse argues that because the Constitution did not forbid secession, then every state acceding to the Constitution had the implied right to secede from it. He says that if men of the caliber of Madison, Hamilton, Wilson and the others meant to forbid secession they definitely would have said so, and the omission of a prohibition on secession in the Constitution is strong proof that the right of secession existed and was assumed. He quotes James Madison from The Madison Papers who wrote "a breach of any one article by any one party, leaves all other parties at liberty to consider the whole convention as dissolved."9 Vermont and Massachusetts, he points out, nullified with statutes, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, and those two breaches of the compact alone were enough for the South to consider the compact dissolved.
            There were many other violations of the Constitution discussed throughout the secession debate including Northern Personal Liberty Laws that, in effect, nullified the Fugitive Slave Law of the Compromise of 1850 as well as Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution, which dealt with fugitive slaves. At least ten Northern states had statutes that nullified the two aforementioned laws. Other breaches of the Constitution included, as stated earlier, the harboring of fugitives from justice in the North, specifically two of John Brown's sons who were with Brown at Harpers Ferry and were wanted in Virginia for murder, but were being harbored in Ohio and Iowa. Brown himself had been encouraged by Northerners and financed by Northern money. Certain Northern leaders, again, with the acquiescence of states like Massachusetts, tried desperately to destroy "domestic Tranquility" in the South by sending incendiary abolitionist material in the mail encouraging slaves to revolt and murder. Lincoln's own Republican Party published 100,000 copies of Hinton Helper's The Impending Crisis, which called for slave revolt, and Republicans in Congress endorsed the book and used it as a campaign tool.
            To prove the right of a state to determine for itself when the Constitution has been violated, Morse quotes Jefferson's Kentucky Resolutions which point out that if the government had the right to determine when the Constitution was violated, then the government would be the arbiter of its own power and not the Constitution. The Kentucky Resolutions also reaffirm state sovereignty and independence.10
            Morse demonstrates that congressional discussions and proposed legislation during the secession of Southern states indicated that Congress believed the right of secession to exist. One piece of legislation was introduced to deal with the disposition of federal property within a seceding state, as well as a seceding state's assumption of its share of the national debt. Another scrambled to forbid secession unless approved by two-thirds of the members of both Houses of Congress, the president, as well as all the states. Morse then points out that thirty-six years earlier, Chief Justice John Marshall, in Gibbons v. Ogden wrote that "limitations of a power furnish a strong argument in favor of the existence of that power. . . .11 He concludes:

    What would have been the point of the foregoing proposed amendments to the Constitution of the United States prohibiting or limiting the right of secession if under the Constitution the unfettered right of secession did not already exist? Why would Congress have even considered proposed amendments to the Constitution forbidding or restricting the right of secession if any such right was already prohibited, limited or non-existent under the Constitution?12

            Morse goes on to discuss the conditional ratification of the Constitution by three of the original thirteen states, which carefully reserved the right of secession. They were Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island. Virginia used the exact wording of her conditional ratification of the U.S. Constitution, in her Ordinance of Secession. Morse points out that since the other states, which had unconditionally ratified the Constitution, consented to Virginia's conditional ratification, then they "ostensibly assented to the principle that Virginia permissibly retained the right to secede." He adds that with the additional acceptance of "New York's and Rhode Island's right to secede, the existing states of the Union must have tacitly accepted the doctrine of secession." Further, Morse states that according to the Constitution, all the new states that joined the Union after the first thirteen also had the right of secession since new states entered on an equal footing with the exact same rights as the existing states.13
            Southerners during the secession debate knew and understood this argument. Senator Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana, a brilliant legal mind who was later Attorney General, Secretary of War and Secretary of State of the Confederacy, in his farewell speech to the United States Senate on February 5, 1861, said:

    The rights of Louisiana as a sovereign state are those of Virginia; no more, no less. Let those who deny her right to resume delegated powers, successfully refute the claim of Virginia to the same right, in spite of her expressed reservation made and notified to her sister states when she consented to enter the Union.14

            Morse skips forward to Reconstruction, and points out that "the Northern occupational armies were removed from Arkansas, North Carolina, Florida, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Virginia only after those former Confederate States had incorporated in their constitutions a clause surrendering the right to secede." Morse then argues brilliantly that

    by insisting that the former Confederate States surrender their right to secede, the United States government had implicitly admitted that those states originally had the right. How could they surrender a right, unless they had it in the first place?15

            To summarize, Morse points out that before the war, under Virginia's conditional ratification of the Constitution, when the people decided that government power had been "perverted to their injury or oppression," they had the right to secede. When Northern states passed Personal Liberty Bills and other statutes nullifying the fugitive slave laws of the Constitution (Article IV, Section 3), a "perversion" occurred which gave the Southern states the right to secede. Reinforcing that "perversion" even further was the Federal government's not forcing those Northern states to abide by the Constitution, therefore

    the Northern States conceivably "perverted" national law to the "injury or oppression" of the people of the Southern States. Thus, the reassumption of the powers of government by the people of the Southern States was a natural consequence of the Northern States' conduct and the federal government's failure to prohibit that conduct.16

            The only other issue, according to Morse, was whether the Southern states conducted their act of secession legally. Morse points out that the people are the sovereign, having supreme, absolute and perpetual power, therefore secession would have to be accomplished by the people of each state rather than even the legislatures. He says "convention delegates elected by the people of the state to decide one question constitute authority closer to the seat of the sovereign -- the people themselves," therefore a convention in each Southern state would be necessary as a "special agent of the people of the state." Did the Southern states conduct themselves legally and therefore perfect their acts of secession and independence? Morse says:

    When the Southern States seceded from the Union in 1860 and 1861, not one state was remiss in discharging this legal obligation. Every seceding state properly utilized the convention process, rather than a legislative means, to secede. Therefore, not only did the Southern States possess the right to secede from the Union, they exercised that right in the correct manner.17

    Morse's conclusion is that "conceivably, it was the Northern States that acted illegally in precipitating the War Between the States. The Southern States, in all likelihood, were exercising a perfectly legitimate right in seceding from the Union."18

            Other evidence of the right of secession abounds. Albert Taylor Bledsoe wrote in 1866 what is thought to be the best book ever written on the right of secession: Is Davis a Traitor; or Was Secession a Constitutional Right Previous to the War of 1861? Dr. Richard M. Weaver, who was, during his lifetime, a professor and author of several noted books on the South, called Is Davis a Traitor? "the masterpiece of the Southern apologias." Weaver described it as a "brilliant specimen of the polemic" out of the entire "extensive body of Southern political writing."19
            Dr. Clyde N. Wilson, long time professor of history at the University of South Carolina, goes even further. In the Introduction to a 1995 reprint of Is Davis a Traitor?, Dr. Wilson lists the top seven books defending the South and the right of secession and says "Bledsoe did it first and best," his argument for the right of secession being "absolutely irrefutable to any honest mind."20 The other six works that best defend the South and right of secession according to Dr. Wilson are the two-volume work A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States by Alexander H. Stephens, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis, A Defence of Virginia and Through Her of the South by Robert L. Dabney, The Creed of the Old South by Basil L. Gildersleeve, The Southern States of the American Union Considered in their Relations to the Constitution of the United States and the Resulting Union by Jabez L. M. Curry, and The Lost Cause by Edward A. Pollard.
            According to Dr. Wilson in the Introduction, pages i-viii, Bledsoe was born in Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1809. He graduated from West Point in 1830 and had been there part of the time with Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Leonidas Polk and Albert Sydney Johnston. He loved mathematics and theology, but practiced law for nine years in Springfield, Illinois, as part of a bar that included Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. Dr. Wilson writes that "it was said that Bledsoe won six out of eleven cases tried against Lincoln," and that he had given Lincoln lessons, at one point, on using a broadsword because Lincoln had been challenged to a duel. After his legal career, Bledsoe taught astronomy and mathematics at the University of Mississippi, acquiring a "legendary" genius for mathematics. In 1854, he began teaching mathematics at the University of Virginia. During the war, Bledsoe served briefly as the colonel of a regiment of infantry from Virginia, then later in the Confederate War Department, and finally he was sent to Europe by President Davis on what is thought to have been a secret diplomatic mission to influence public opinion in Britain. After the war, until his death in 1877, Bledsoe published The Southern Review, in which he continued to argue the justice and truth of the Southern cause.
            Bledsoe began working on Is Davis a Traitor? while in England and published it just after the war "as a part of the campaign of Davis's defense." The Confederate President was in a Yankee prison, Fortress Monroe, where he spent a miserable two years waiting to be tried for treason. He was in irons with a light shining brightly in his cell twenty-four hours a day and with Union guards marching back and forth. The bright light was an additional measure of Yankee viciousness since it was known that Davis had never been able to sleep except in total darkness.
            Davis wanted to be tried for treason because he was confident he could prove the right of secession. However, he never got his chance, and that denial of Jefferson Davis' trial on the charge of treason by the Northern government is additional evidence of the right of secession.
            In talking about the effectiveness of Is Davis a Traitor?, Richard Weaver writes that

    Bledsoe witnessed some practical result of his labor when Robert Oulds and Charles O'Conor, attorneys for Jefferson Davis, made use of the book in preparing their defense; but the Federal government, apparently feeling the weakness of its legal position, allowed the case to be dismissed.21

    Here was the North's big chance to prove the South wrong once and for all in a solemn, dignified court of law in the eyes of the entire world and for all of posterity, but they refused to take it. Why? They certainly had not suddenly had a change of heart toward the South. It was Reconstruction, the body of the assassinated Lincoln was barely cold in the ground while the hateful Charles Sumner, no doubt still smarting from his caning by Preston Brooks, along with Thaddeas Stephens and other South hating radical Republicans were ascending in Congress. Northern troops were in control of every Southern government while large numbers of former Confederates were disfranchised. This was exactly the time the federal government would have wanted to convict the Southern president if it had a case. The federal government was willing to kill hundreds of thousands of Southerners on the battle field, so there can be no doubt it would have relished humiliating Jefferson Davis in a courtroom. It is a virtual certainty that if the North's case had been strong they would have taken it to trial and vindicated their war against the hated South once and for all. That the Federal government did not go to court against the Confederate president after keeping him in jail for two years charged with treason, is strong evidence that there was indeed a legal right of secession and the South had exercised it properly. There were no other treason trials against former Confederates because any one trial would likely prove the legal right of secession, and imminently practical Northerners were not about to lose in a court of law what they had won on the battlefield.
            Bledsoe's "irrefutable" argument in Is Davis a Traitor?" begins with the Constitution as a compact, or legal agreement among the members to the compact. The reason Bledsoe starts here is because any member that has acceded to (agreed to) the terms of a compact, can secede from that compact if the terms are broken by one of the other members. Bledsoe produces the writings and statements of the strongest opponents of the Constitution as compact - Daniel Webster and others - who have admitted that if the Constitution is a compact, then states can secede from it; but who deny that the Constitution is a compact.22 Webster was the great spokesman for the North with the credibility and reputation to go along with it. Bledsoe writes:

    Thus, the great controversy is narrowed down to the single question -- Is the Constitution a compact between the States? If so, then the right of secession is conceded, even by its most powerful and determined opponents; by the great jurist, as well as by 'the great expounder' (Webster) of the North.23

            The evidence that the North had broken the specific terms and spirit of the compact if it was a "compact," was substantial. As stated earlier, Northern states had statutes on their books nullifying the Constitutional and Congressional law with regard to fugitive slaves. Many other specific breaches of the Constitution by the North existed in areas besides slavery. Many in the North for over two decades believed, as Seward had clearly stated, that they were operating according to a "higher law" than the Constitution. The more radical had long called the Constitution a "covenant with death and agreement with hell."24 So, the North's having broken the compact, virtually guaranteed that secession was legal if, indeed, the Constitution was a compact that was "acceded to" by the original makers. Did the original states "accede" to a compact?
            Bledsoe attacks the arguments of Webster and the others one at a time taking on the strongest, most salient parts of their arguments. For example, Webster had said "words are things, and things of mighty influence."25 At one point, in the Senate, Webster had railed against the Constitution as compact. Webster had said that saying "the States acceded to the Constitution" was "unconstitutional language."26 Of course the reason he felt that way, as Bledsoe had said, was because if states had acceded to the Constitution, then it was only logical that they could secede from it. Discrediting the single word, "accede," was very important to Webster, so Bledsoe researched in great detail the words of the founders and finds that in the Constitutional Convention of 1787, "Mr. James Wilson . . . preferred 'a partial union' of the States, 'with a door open for the accession of the rest.'" However, "Mr. Gerry, a delegate from Massachusetts, was opposed to 'a partial confederacy, leaving other States to accede or not to accede, as had been intimated.'" Father of the Constitution, James Madison, "used the expression 'to accede' in the Convention of 1787, in order to denote the act of adopting 'the new form of government by the States.'" Virginia Governor Randolph, also at the Convention of 1787, had said "That the accession of eight States reduced our deliberations to the single question of Union or no Union." Patrick Henry had said that if the Constitution "be amended, every State will accede to it." Mr. Grayson asks if Virginia will gain anything from her prominent position "by acceding to that paper." Benjamin Franklin, whom Bledsoe says was next in importance at the Constitutional Convention to Washington, later said "Our new Constitution is now established with eleven States, and the accession of a twelfth is soon expected." George Washington, as he watched states join the Constitution, said "If these, with the States eastward and northward of us, should accede to the Federal government . . .". Chief Justice John Marshall used the word "accede" in reference to joining the Constitution, and even Mr. Justice Story, a staunch opponent of the belief in Constitution as compact, in agreement with Webster, said "The Constitution has been ratified by all the States; . . . Rhode Island did not accede to it, until more than a year after it had been in operation;".27
            Webster had attacked the word "accede" as something invented by proponents of the Constitution as compact. His intention was to discredit his opponents by discrediting the language they were using, but his plan backfired. Bledsoe points out that Webster's attack on the word "accede" by calling it a "new word," was ill founded and incorrect because "accede" had precisely been "the word of the fathers of the Constitution" with Washington "at their head." They had all used the word "accede" in reference to states joining the Constitution, and of course, the converse of the word "accede," is "secede."28
           
    Over and over Bledsoe demolishes each and every argument that maintains secession was not legal or a right. To those like Webster, who tried to say the Constitution was not a compact, Bledsoe offers the words of the Father of the Constitution, James Madison, in the Virginia Resolutions of 1798, "That this assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the Federal Government as resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties." Bledsoe further mentions a letter from Madison to a Mr. Everett in 1830 in which Madison says that the Constitution is "'a compact among the States in their highest sovereign capacity.'" Bledsoe then uses Webster's own words against him, quoting Webster admitting that the Constitution was a compact in a debate three years earlier, on "Foote's resolutions."29 Bledsoe says:

    that Mr. Webster himself, had, like everyone else, spoken of the Constitution as a compact, as a bargain which was obligatory on the parties to it. "it is the original bargain," says he, in that debate; "the compact -- let it stand; let the advantage of it be fully enjoyed. The Union itself is too full of benefits to be hazarded in propositions for changing its original basis. I go for the Constitution as it is, and for the Union as it is."30

            Perhaps the strongest argument against the right of secession, is based on the wording in the Constitution's Preamble: "We the people." Those who argue that the Constitution is not a compact, but is a national document, believe that "We the People" means all of the American people in one body, and not in their sovereign states. This, says Bledsoe on page 61, "is the great stronghold, if it has one, of the Northern theory of the Constitution. The argument from these words appears in every speech, book, pamphlet, and discussion by every advocate of the North. It was wielded by Mr. Webster in his great debate with Mr. Calhoun, in 1833, . . .". If the Constitution was written as a document for all of the American people in one body, then individual states had no right to withdraw from it. The committee on style of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was headed by Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania. Notwithstanding the Northern nationalist rhetoric, this is what Gouverneur Morris said was the meaning of the Constitution and those words, "We the people," that he had authored:

    The Constitution was a compact not between individuals, but between political societies, the people, not of America, but of the United States, each enjoying sovereign power and of course equal rights.31

    The "United States" means just that: states that are united. Morris himself believed in the right of secession and supported New England's move to secede during the War of 1812, which culminated in the Hartford Convention.32 Bledsoe quotes The Madison Papers and refers to some 900 pages of the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in which are recorded the debate over method of ratification. He points out that nowhere in that vast record is there a discussion of the "people" as meaning the entire American people outside of their states. The big debate was over whether the legislatures of each state would ratify the Constitution, or the "people" of each state in special convention. It was clearly "legislature vs people in convention" of each state. It was decided by the Constitutional Convention that since a later legislature might rescind the ratification of an earlier legislature, it would be a more sound foundation to have the people of each state ratify the Constitution in special conventions called for the purpose of ratification.33 This is exactly how the South seceded, by secession conventions called for the single purpose of deciding the issue of secession. And, as Mr. H. Newcomb Morse said in the Stetson Law Review, "not one state was remiss in discharging this legal obligation."
            There was another problem in that nobody knew how many states, or which ones, would ratify the Constitution, therefore listing the specific states in the Preamble could not be done as it had been done in the body of the Articles of Confederation. If all the states had been listed and one refused to ratify, then the document would be invalid. The number "nine" was decided on, as the number of states necessary to put the Constitution into effect, but in debating the issue it was brought up that the Constitution could only apply to those states ratifying it, therefore no references could be made to "all" of the American people. Bledsoe writes that Rufus King suggested adding "between the said states, so as to confine the operation of the government to the States ratifying the same."34 The words were cleaned up and found their way into the Constitution in Article VII which starts out:

    The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.

            Bledsoe further clarifies by writing that "when it was determined that the Constitution should be ratified by 'the Conventions of the States,' and not by the legislatures, this was exactly equivalent, in the uniform language of the Convention of 1787, to saying that it shall be ratified by 'the people of the States.' Hence, the most ardent friend of State rights, or State sovereignty, saw no reason why he should object to the words, 'We, the people of the United States,' because he knew they were only intended to express the mode of ratification by the States . . . in their sovereign capacity, as so many political societies or peoples, as distinguished from their legislatures."35
            Bledsoe goes on by pointing out that the Federal government had no legal right whatsoever to coerce a state into following its laws therefore it had no right to force a seceding state back into the Union. President Buchanan had stated in his lame duck period between Lincoln's election of November 6, 1860, and March 4, 1861, when Lincoln would be inaugurated, while state after state was seceding, that as president of the United States he had no power to coerce a state even though he denied that secession was legal. Bledsoe notes the contradiction in Buchahan's position and writes "if we say, that coercion is a constitutional wrong, or usurpation, is not this saying that the Constitution permits secession, or, in other words, that it is a Constitutional right?" He says "Coercion is unconstitutional . . . wrong . . .strikes down and demolishes the great fundamental principle of the Declaration of Independence, -- the sacred right of self-government itself." About secession, he says "Secession, on the other hand, asserts the right of self-government for every free, sovereign, and independent State in existence."36
            Bledsoe discussed the views of credible foreigner observers and writes that Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, said:

    The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; and in uniting together they have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the States choose to withdraw from the compact, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so, and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly either by force or right.37

    To Tocqueville, Bledsoe adds "Mackay, and Spence, and Brougham, and Cantu, and Heeren," then he goes on "as well as other philosophers, jurists and historians among the most enlightened portions of Europe, (who) so readily adopt the Southern view of the Constitution, and pronounce the American Union as a confederation of States."38
            Bledsoe continues with more persuasive argument, the words of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, who assert, beyond doubt, that the Constitution is a compact and the states, sovereign. He discusses William Rawl of Philadelphia and his book, A View of the Constitution of the United States, which stresses the right of secession and was used at West Point during most of the antebellum era, and the State's Rights Hartford Convention of New England states, which strongly supported the right of secession. These are but a few of the arguments found in Bledsoe's persuasive book.
            The Southern states did not rush headlong into secession. They had enormous grievances against the North that were much greater than even Northern violations of the Constitution. The unfairness of taxation, which had been the huge issue of the Revolution, was worse for the antebellum South because three-fourths of the taxes were paid by the South, while three-fourths of the tax money was spent in the North. It had held down the development of Southern industry for a half-century and Southerners were tired of it. Southerners felt the North was already at war with them in many ways. They saw Northern emissaries sent South to encourage slave uprisings, murder and rapine, then being applauded in the North for their grisly successes, especially John Brown. Southerners saw Hinton Helper's book, The Impending Crisis, which was full of errors on its economics, call for bloody slave revolt yet be enthusiastically adopted by the Republicans in Congress as a campaign document. With the election of Republican Lincoln, Southerners believed those same Republicans would now put into effect the principles of Helper's book, and there was nothing they could do about it. For their own safety, Southern states began debating secession. They did so peacefully and with great intellectual vigor and in the end, the people of the South struck for independence and self-government, just as their fathers in the Revolution had.
            The North, however, had become wealthy manufacturing, shipping, and financing for the captive Southern market, which was rich itself because of King Cotton. The North could not let the South go without a complete economic collapse that was well underway during the secession winter and spring of 1860-1861. All the noble rhetoric of the Horace Greelys in 1860 about the "just powers" of the government coming from the "consent of the governed" was cast aside due to the specter of economic collapse and financial ruin, thus the war came.

    Notes

        1Kenneth M. Stampp, The Imperiled Union, Essays on the Background of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 35-36.
        2Abraham Lincoln, 1847 Congressional debate in the United States House of Representatives in John Shipley Tilley, Lincoln Takes Command (Nashville: Bill Coats, Ltd., 1991), xv. Tilley's source, as stated in footnote #4 on page xv, was Goldwyn Smith, The United States: an Outline of Political History, 1492-1871 (New York and London, 1893), 248.
        3"The Right of Secession," The New-York Daily Tribune, December 17, 1860, in Howard Cecil Perkins, ed., Northern Editorials on Secession (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964), 199-201.
        4"The Right of Secession," The New-York Daily Tribune, December 17, 1860, in Howard Cecil Perkins, ed., Northern Editorials on Secession, 199-201. Here is the entire editorial:

    We have repeatedly asked those who dissent from our view of this matter to tell us frankly whether they do or do not assent to Mr. Jefferson's statement in the Declaration of Independence that governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; and that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government," &c., &c. We do heartily accept this doctrine, believing it intrinsically sound, beneficent, and one that, universally accepted, is calculated to prevent the shedding of seas of human blood. And, if it justified the secession from the British Empire of Three Millions of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861. If we are mistaken on this point, why does not some one attempt to show wherein and why? . . . --we could not stand up for coercion, for subjugation, for we do not think it would be just. We hold the right of Self-government sacred, even when invoked in behalf of those who deny it to others . . . if ever 'seven or eight States' send agents to Washington to say 'We want to get out of the Union,' we shall feel constrained by our devotion to Human Liberty to say, Let Them Go! And we do not see how we could take the other side without coming in direct conflict with those Rights of Man which we hold paramount to all political arrangements, however convenient and advantageous.

        5Journal of the Hartford Convention, as quoted in George M. Curtis, III, and James J. Thompson, Jr., eds., The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver (Indianapolis: LibertyPress, 1987), 153.
        6Stetson University, in DeLand, Florida, was founded in 1883, and is Florida's first university. Stetson's College of Law, founded in 1900, is Florida's oldest law school.
        7H. Newcomb Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson University College of Law, Stetson Law Review, Vol. XV, No. 2, 1986), 420.
        8Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson Law Review, Vol. XV, No. 2, 1986, 420.
        9James Madison, 2 The Madison Papers (Philadelphia: 1840), 895, in H. Newcomb Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson University College of Law, Stetson Law Review, Vol. XV, No. 2, 1986), 426.
        10H. Newcomb Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson University College of Law, Stetson Law Review, Vol. XV, No. 2, 1986), 422-427.
        11Chief Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 1 (1824), 200, in H. Newcomb Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson University College of Law, Stetson Law Review, Vol. XV, No. 2, 1986), 428.
        12H. Newcomb Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson University College of Law, Stetson Law Review, Vol. XV, No. 2, 1986), 428.
        13H. Newcomb Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson University College of Law, Stetson Law Review, Vol. XV, No. 2, 1986), 428-432.
        14Judah P. Benjamin, "Farewell Address to the U. S. Senate," delivered February 5, 1861, in Edwin Anderson Alderman, and Joel Chandler Harris, eds., Library of Southern Literature (Atlanta: The Martin and Hoyt Company, 1907), Volume I, 318.
        15H. Newcomb Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson University College of Law, Stetson Law Review, Vol. XV, No. 2, 1986), 433.
        16H. Newcomb Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson University College of Law, Stetson Law Review, Vol. XV, No. 2, 1986), 433-434.
        17H. Newcomb Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson University College of Law, Stetson Law Review, Vol. XV, No. 2, 1986), 434-436.
        18H. Newcomb Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson University College of Law, Stetson Law Review, Vol. XV, No. 2, 1986), 436.
        19George M. Curtis, III, and James J. Thompson, Jr., eds., The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver (Indianapolis: LibertyPress, 1987), 152. Richard M. Weaver graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1932, earned an M.A. degree at Vanderbilt University, and a doctorate in English from Louisiana State University in 1943. He taught at the University of Chicago until his death in 1963. He wrote scores of essays and published several books. He is best known for his books Ideas Have Consequences, and The Ethics of Rhetoric.
        20Albert Taylor Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor; or Was Secession a Constitutional Right Previous to the War of 1861? (Baltimore: Innes & Company, 1866; reprint, North Charleston: Fletcher and Fletcher Publishing, 1995), i-ii. Dr. Clyde N. Wilson is a world renowned scholar of John C. Calhoun, having edited most of Calhoun's voluminous papers. He has written several books, and numerous articles and essays on Southern history.
        21Curtis and Thompson, eds., The Southern Essays of Richard Weaver, 153-154.
        22Taking on Webster also challenges most of the others who did not believe the Constitution was a compact, because most of the others quoted Webster and used his argument.
        23Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor?, 6.
        24Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor?, 151-153.
        25Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor?, 16.
        26Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor?, 12.
        27Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor?, 12-17.
        28Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor?, 17.
        29Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor?, 25.
        30Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor?, 25.
        31Gouverneur Morris, Life and Writings, vol. iii., p. 193, as quoted in Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor?, 65.
        32Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor?, 64-65; Yanak and Cornelison, The Great American History Fact-Finder, 278.
        33Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor?, 66-73.
        34Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor?, 72.
        35Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor?, 73.
        36Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor?, 154.
        37Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, as quoted in Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor?, 155. The reference to Democracy in America footnoted by Bledsoe is Vol. i, Chap. xviii., p 413.
        38Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor?, 157.

         

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