A Southern View of the Invasion of the Southern States and War of 1861-65

Samuel A’Court Ashe

Ravenio Books

About this ebook

Originally there was no connection between the settlements along the coast. In 1776 they held a meeting and declared their separation from England and asserted that each State was a free, independent and sovereign State; and by a treaty of peace, that was admitted by England.

In 1781 the States entered into a confederacy and again declared the independence and sovereignty of each State. In 1788 a union was proposed to go into effect between any nine States that ratified the Constitution. Eleven States ratified the Constitution and it went into operation between them. George Washington was elected President of the eleven States.

In ratifying that Constitution Virginia and New York particularly affirmed that the people of any State had a right to withdraw from the Union, and there was general assent to that claim, and it was taught in the text book at West Point.

There arose at various times differences between the Southern States and the Northern States but all these were peaceably settled except as to African slavery.

For some cause South Carolina seceded in December, 1860, and presently was joined by six other Southern States. Neither Congress nor the President took any action against these States. But at length Congress passed a measure proposing that the States should amend the Constitution and prohibit Congress from interfering with Negro slavery in any State, with the expectation that such an amendment would lead the seceded States to return.

Presently the new President was led to deny the right of a State to withdraw from the Union, and he started a war against the seceded States and called on the other States to furnish troops for his war. When North Carolina and Virginia and other Southern States were called on to furnish troops to fight the seceded States, North Carolina said, “You can get no soldiers from this State to fight your unholy war,” and North Carolina withdrew from the Union and so did Virginia and two other States.

Then the Supreme Court in a case before it declared that under the Constitution the President had no right to make war and the Constitution did not give Congress the right to make war on any State.

So it mentioned the war as one between the Northern and Southern States and said the right of the matter in dispute was to be determined by the “wager of battle,” thus ignoring the light and justice of the claim in dispute. And so the Northern States conquered those that had seceded.

This book contains the following chapters:

1. The Slave Trade

2. Steps Leading to War

3. Nullification, North and South

4. The States Made the Union

5. Nullification, North and South

6. Ratification of the Constitution by Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island

7. Secession, Insurrection of the Negroes, and Northern Incendiarism

8. The Modern Case of John Brown

9. Why South Carolina Seceded

10. Secession of the Cotton States

11. President Lincoln’s Inaugural

12. Lincoln and the Constitution

13. Lincoln the Lawyer

14. Lincoln’s Inhumanity

15. Lincoln the Usurper

16. Abraham Lincoln, the Citizen

17. Lincoln the Strategist

18. Conditions Just After the War

19. The War Between the Northern States and the Southern States

20. Speech of Jefferson Davis at Mississippi City, Mississippi in 1881