2.  The interests of the South were injured by the burden of tax for the benefit of the North.

3.  The Republican party had determined that slavery should not be admitted in the territories—­the Republicans were in power, and foreseeing further interference in their rights, the South thought the time had come to form an independent government.

4.  The North refused to accept the compromise proposed by Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, which might have averted the war.  Nor would she consent to submit the matter to a vote of the people; hence there was no chance for harmony.  The aggressive measures of the North were such as no self-respecting State in the South could endure.

It had come to be a habit in Congress, to insult the South because she held slaves.

Reason and right alike succumbed to prejudice and hatred, and the dissatisfied States, weary of wrong and oppression, sounded the note of separation; and from every throat burst the refrain;—­

  We are a band of brothers,
  Native to the soil,
  Fighting for the property,
  We’ve gained by honest toil.

* * * * *

  Hurrah!  Hurrah! for Southern rights hurrah! 
  Hurrah! for the Bonnie Blue Flag
  That bear a single star.

The Southern Confederacy

Read May 11, 1909

More than a hundred years ago the American States rebelled against the tyranny of England, the mother country, and formed a Confederacy of and among themselves to work together for their own welfare and prosperity.  It was granted by their Constitution, and by the States, that each or any individual State had the right under provocation, to withdraw from the pact.

Not quite fifty years ago the Southern States of this Union, having endured provocation after provocation, withdrew from their Northern oppressors, and formed themselves into the Confederacy, whose brief existence ran red with the best blood of her chivalrous land.  War was not contemplated.  A peaceable separation was desired.  A peace conference was held to which representatives of the States were invited.  Measure after measure was proposed, so that war might be averted.  All were rejected.  The recusant States must be whipped back into submission to the autocrats that would direct their affairs.  With restricted territory, a minority of population, and home interests directly opposed to those of the over-riding North, what was there to hope for but continuous degradation?  Our leaders have been accused of precipitating the war for their own personal ambition.  It was another “Aaron Burr conspiracy.”  Let us hear what they had to say about it.

Jefferson Davis, the fearless soldier and upright citizen—­the man who by reason of his supreme fitness was a little later, chosen President of the Confederacy, said in his last speech before the United States Senate: