Those who write school histories and wish them adopted by southern schools have to handle the Civil War with gloves.  Such words as “rebel” and “rebellion” are resented in the South, and the historian must go softly in discussing slavery, though he may put on the loud pedal in speaking of State Rights, the fact being that the South not only knows now, but, as evidenced by the utterances of her leading men, from Jefferson to Lee, knew long before the war that slavery was a great curse; whereas, on the question of State Rights, including the theoretical right to secede from the Union—­this being the actual question over which the South took up arms—­there is much to be said on the southern side.  Colonel Robert Bingham, superintendent of the Bingham School, Asheville, North Carolina, has made an exhaustive study of the question of secession, and has set forth his findings in several scholarly and temperately written booklets.

Colonel Bingham proves absolutely, by quotation of their own words, that the framers of the Constitution regarded that document as a compact between the several States.  He shows that three of the States (Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island) joined in this compact conditionally, with the clear purpose of resuming their independent sovereignty as States, should the general government use its power for the oppression of the States; that up to the time of the Mexican War the New England States contended for, not against, the right to secede; that John Quincy Adams went so far as to negotiate with England with a view to the secession of the New England States, because of Jefferson’s Embargo Act, and moreover that up to 1840 the United States Government used as a textbook for cadets at West Point, Rawle’s “View of the Constitution,” a book which teaches that the Union is dissoluble.  Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, were, therefore, in all probability, given this book as students at West Point, and consequently, if we would have honest history, we must face the astonishing fact that there is evidence to show that they learned the doctrine of secession at the United States Military Academy.

Colonel Bingham, who, it may be remarked, served with distinction in the Confederate Army, has very kindly supplemented, in a letter to me, his published statements.  He writes: 

Secession was legal theoretically, but practically the conditions on which the thirteen Independent Republics, covering a little strip on the Atlantic coast, came to an agreement, could not possibly be applied to the great inter-Oceanic Empire into which these thirteen Independent Republics had developed.

“Theory is a good horse in the stable, but may make an arrant jade on the journey”—­to paraphrase Goldsmith—­and the only way in which these irreconcilable differences could be settled was by bullet and bayonet, which settled them right and finally.

Once such matters as these are fully understood in the North, there will be left but one grave issue between North and South, that issue being over the question of whether or not Southerners, under any circumstances, use the phrase “you-all” in the singular.