White Supremacy, Hobgoblin of the Left

You hear a lot these days about the horrors of "White Supremacy."  Nobody seems to know exactly what it is but it is horrible.  President Joe Biden says it is the number one threat to "our democracy."  After having read about it and meditated on deeper truths, I have conceived the following definition of a White Supremacist:

A White Supremacist is what you are when you are not a ranting Marxist Communist.  

Now you know.  It isn't about color.  Black, Hispanic and Asian conservatives are also White Supremacists.  Together we shall rule the world.  Honest.

Charles Dickens on the Civil war - March 1862

Charles Dickens on the Civil war - March 1862

From Charles Dickens letter to the WW Cerjet 16 March 1862:

"I take the facts of the American quarrel to stand thus. Slavery has in reality nothing on earth to do with it, in any kind of association with any generous or chivalrous sentiment on the part of the North. But the North having gradually got to itself the making of the laws and the settlement of the tariffs, and having taxed South most abominably for its own advantage, began to see, as the country grew, that unless it advocated the laying down of a geographical line beyond which slavery should not extend, the South would necessarily to recover it's old political power, and be able to help itself a little in the adjustment of the commercial affairs.

Every reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and until it was convenient to make a pretense that sympathy with him was the cause of the War, it hated the Abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale. For the rest, there's not a pins difference between the two parties. They will both rant and lie and fight until they come to a compromise; and the slave may be thrown into that compromise or thrown out, just as it happens."

"As to Secession being Rebellion, it is distinctly provable by State papers that Washington, considered it no such thing – that Massachusetts, now loudest against it, has itself asserted its right to secede, again and again – and that years ago, when the two Carolinas began to train their militia expressly for Secession, commissioners sent to treat with them and to represent the disastrous policy of such secession, never hinted it would be rebellion."

Southern Secession Was Not “Rebellion.”

NOT A REBELLION

- Rev. J. William Jones, University of Virginia, July 18:

Let me add my earnest and hearty protest against calling our war the “Rebellion.” It was not a rebellion, and we were not rebels or traitors. George Washington was a rebel because he fought against properly constituted and legal authority and if he had failed he would probably have been tried as a rebel and executed as a traitor. But Jefferson Davis was no rebel when he led the great struggle to maintain proper authority, to uphold law and constitution; and when the Federal Government held him as a prisoner they never dared to bring him to trial, because they knew, under the advice of Chief Justice Chase and the ablest lawyers at the North, that they could never convict him of treason under the Constitution and laws of the United States.

I remember that one day down at Beauvoir, several years before his death, the grand old chief of the Confederacy said to me alluding to this question: “Rebellion indeed! How can a sovereign State rebel? You might as well say that Germany rebelled against France, or that France, who was overwhelmed in the conflict, rebelled against Germany, as to say that the sovereign States of the Confederacy rebelled against the North or the government. O that they had dared give me the trial I so much coveted, and for which I so earnestly begged, in order that I might have opportunities to vindicate my people and their cause before the world and at the bar of history! They knew that I would have been triumphantly acquitted, and our people purged of all taint of treason, and they never dared to bring my case to trial.”

Is it not time, then, for those people to cease talking about treason and rebellion, and to stop their insults in calling us rebels? If there were any rebels in that great contest, they were north of the Potomac and the Ohio—the men who trampled under foot the Constitution of our country and the liberties bequeath us by our fathers.

Gen. Lee always spoke of the war as the “great struggle for Constitutional freedom,” and that is a truthful and distinctive title which I prefer. The War Between the States” was the title given by A. H. Stephens, and is a good one. “Confederate War” would do, but that implies that we made the war, which, of course, we did not, our policy being peace. The “War of Coercion,” or the “War against State Sovereignty” would express it; but the “Rebellion,” never!

Confederate Veteran July 1894

Hat tip:  Carl Jones of FaceBook

How Lincoln “Saved” the Union

The Why of the Civil War

The Why of the War

By : Samuel Ashwood

As Woke education gains more and more of a foothold, it becomes nearly impossible to hold an intelligent conversation about the American Civil War. Many, maybe most Americans—especially those attending university—have been convinced that the war was about slavery, slavery, slavery.

Of course, those who have looked a little more deeply into the matter realize there are some fundamental flaws with this line of argumentation. If the war was about nothing but slavery, why were there more slave states in the Union than in the Confederacy when Fort Sumter was fired on? If the war was about nothing but the preservation of slavery, then why didn’t the seceding states rejoin the Union in early 1861 and ratify the original Lincoln-endorsed 13th amendment (Corwin amendment) which would have guaranteed the protection of slavery in perpetuity? If the war was over nothing but slavery, why did both the United States congress, and Abraham Lincoln himself, avow in public declarations that the war was not about slavery, but the preservation of the union?

But there is another question that far too seldom is asked, which should be at the root of every conversation of this great American calamity. Try to talk about the origins of the war today, and invariably somebody will begin citing the causes of secession put forth by the seven cotton states, all of which named the protection of slavery as a decisive factor for their departure from the union. For some reason, Americans have allowed themselves to be convinced that the act of secession is the same as a declaration of war.

Of course, it is not. There were, in fact, nearly four months between the first act of secession by South Carolina, and the firing on Fort Sumter, which precipitated the war. Even at that, the bloodless reduction of Sumter by Confederate forces under P.G.T. Beuaregard by no means need have started a war. After all, other nations engage in border skirmishes where people are killed frequently, without full-fledged war breaking out—North and South Korea, China and India, to name a couple.

“But American soldiers and the American flag were fired on!” Yes, and zero casualties were incurred. On January 3, 2020, President Donald Trump had Iranian leader Qassem Soleimani killed by drone strike. In retaliation, Iran fired missiles at a US base, and injured multiple American soldiers—in other words, far more damage was done than was done to US forces than at Fort Sumter. And yet, there was no invasion of Iran in response.

While it is important to know why the Southern states seceded, when we consider the war, the far more important question is this: Why did Lincoln choose coercion instead of negotiation and reconciliation? It is the question that no modern historians seem interested in asking or answering. Why? Doubtless, because the answer, if provided honestly, would reveal some truths that Americans weaned on the milk of righteous cause mythology would not want to hear.

Ask yourself the question: in what way would the North have been damaged if the seven cotton states had been allowed to depart in peace? We know, by the admission of Lincoln and the US Congress, that they waged war for union, not to end slavery, so we can rule out humanitarian motives. Why, then, did Lincoln call for 75,000 troops to invade and subjugate the South?

The answer is money. If the Southern states, whose cotton was a major staple of the world economy at that time, created a free trade zone, European trade would have fled Northern ports and their high tariffs for the South. The results for the economy of the United States would have been disastrous, without a drastic change in economic policy, that would have undermined everything the Republican Party stood for. Whether Lincoln ever cried out, when asked why he seemed intent on choosing war, “What about my tariff?” or not, it is clear that this was a primary factor in the Northern decision to go to war in 1861.

Wars are not fought over righteous moral indignation by one side against another, whether slavery or firing on the flag. These things may serve to galvanize the population behind a war, but governments go to war for money or power. Lincoln’s choice was based on the economic and political disaster facing the North if a free trade zone was created in the South to complete with the high tariff Northern ports. Instead of negotiating peacefully to restore the states to the union, or adjusting their economic policies to compete with the South, Lincoln chose a war that would take almost a million lives and do social and political damage we are still living with today.

Why the North Dared Not Try Jefferson Davis for Treason

The Boston Daily Adviser, July 25, 1865, stated exactly what was on the line:

“If Jefferson Davis is innocent, then it is the government of the United States which is guilty; if secession has not been rebellion, then the North in stifling it as such, has committed a crime.”

That the question was even asked tells us that the legality of secession was at minimum an open question. How then could Jeff Davis be convicted of treason? The North wanted legal vindication of its trial by battle in a trial by court, but recognized the stakes were high and vindication far from certain. The press in New York City was insisting that no treason had taken place and Jeff Davis was merely obeying an order of his rightful sovereign - the State of Mississippi. The New York World asserted, “To submit the secession question to a court is to imply that it is still open to doubt!” The paper then concluded that even if the court did “decide that secession is a constitutional right, Unionists would not yield their convictions on this subject.” Therefore the paper concluded “the trial of Mr. Davis is little better than a judicial farce.” (New York World, May 16, 1866.) Harpers Weekly noted the possibility of acquittal which if happened would mean the US Government had “waged war against those whom the courts would have justified in their actions.” (Harpers Weekly, May 26, 1866.)

The Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court G. W. Woodward wrote:

“But is secession treason? That’s a grand question. If it is not, war in support of it cannot be... It will have to be defined and made plain, unless indeed we continue to set aside all law and administer only drumbeat justice.” (G. W. Woodward to Jeremiah Black May 28, 1865)

Lincoln knew his claims about secession’s illegality were not certain, and therefore hoped Jeff Davis would escape. He told Gen. Sherman, “I’m bound to oppose the escape of Jeff Davis, but if you could manage to have him slip out unbeknownst-like, I guess it wouldn’t hurt me much!” (Sherman interview, New York Times, July 4, 1865). 

Jeff Davis believed a trial would vindicate the Confederate cause. For this reason he steadfastly refused to apply for a pardon. His private secretary wrote to his mother, “he has all along earnestly desired a trial, confident the world and posterity would see the thing in its right light...” (Burton Harrison to his mother, June 13, 1866.)

In light of the uncertainty regarding the illegality of secession, US Attorney General James Speed received pressure from all angles, including Sec of State Seward and Sec of War Stanton to try Davis in a way that would ensure his conviction at all costs.  Sen James Doolittle proposed a bill that would manipulate the qualifications of jurors to ensure they could be counted on to convict him. Representative William Lawrence introduced a bill that was a potential violation of the Constitution. When warned he declared himself “willing to go to the very verge of the Constitution...” (Congressional Globe, 39th Congress, 2nd sess, 12/11/1866). 

When an indictment was returned against Davis based on “thin” testimony, the New York Daily News protested that the prosecution had rigged the proceedings by selecting a grand jury predisposed against him. (The New York Daily News, May 12, 1866.) In charging the grand jury the Judge in the case, John C. Underwood, made it clear he thought Davis guilty prompting one courtroom observer to remark, “if he and his packed jury of ferrets and Yankees were to be permitted to have anything to do with Mr. Davis he would have but a slim chance for justice.” (New York Times, May 12, 1866; David Powell to Elizabeth Dabney Saunders, June 8, 1866.) When asked if he could pack a jury to convict Davis, Judge Underwood responded, “I could pack a jury to convict him: I know very earnest, ardent Union men in Virginia.” (Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 1866, testimony of John C. Underwood.)

Obviously the North was plagued by a culture of lawlessness. Is it any wonder the South sought to secede, and sought to do so not because of slavery, tariffs, internal spending, bounties, centralization, or any other numerous complaints they levied against the North? These were all symptoms of a more fundamental reason for secession - Northern infidelity to the legal compact that held the States in Union. The South simply sought independence from a section of States that had a long history of a culture of lawlessness. 

The North’s Involvement in Slavery

Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited From Slavery"

'Complicity' uncovers North's ties to slavery

Slavery in the South has been documented in volumes ranging from exhaustive histories to bestselling novels. But the North’s profit from–indeed, dependence on–slavery has mostly been a shameful and well-kept secret . . . until now.

In this startling and superbly researched new book, three veteran New England journalists de-mythologize the region of America known for tolerance and liberation, revealing a place where thousands of people were held in bondage and slavery was both an economic dynamo and a necessary way of life.

Complicity reveals the cruel truth about the Triangle Trade of molasses, rum, and slaves that lucratively linked the North to the West Indies and Africa; discloses the reality of Northern empires built on profits from rum, cotton, and ivory–and run, in some cases, by abolitionists; and exposes the thousand-acre plantations that existed in towns such as Salem, Connecticut.

Here, too, are eye-opening accounts of the individuals who profited directly from slavery far from the Mason-Dixon line–including Nathaniel Gordon of Maine, the only slave trader sentenced to die in the United States, who even as an inmate of New York’s infamous Tombs prison was supported by a shockingly large percentage of the city; Patty Cannon, whose brutal gang kidnapped free blacks from Northern states and sold them into slavery; and the Philadelphia doctor Samuel Morton, eminent in the nineteenth-century field of “race science,” which purported to prove the inferiority of African-born black people.

A startling new history exposes the plantations, slave ships, and rebellions in the North, upending the notion that slavery was a peculiarly Southern institution.

In 1641, Massachusetts became the first colony to recognize slavery by statute. Four years later, a Boston ship made one of the earliest known slave voyages from New England to Africa.

By the late 1700s, tens of thousands of blacks were living as slaves in the North. "Complicity" shows just how integral slavery was to the region's economy.

The scope of the North's involvement with slavery is staggering to anyone raised with the notion that slavery was limited to the South.

In the mid-1800s, Charles Sumner, a Bay State abolitionist, railed against the unholy alliance "between the cotton-planters and flesh-mongers of Louisiana and Mississippi and the cotton spinners and traffickers of New England -- between the lords of the lash and the lords of the loom." In 1861, the mayor of New York suggested the city -- long a hub of illegal slave trade -- secede from the Union in large part so cotton trade with the South could continue.

"Complicity" grew out of The Hartford Courant's investigation of slavery throughout Connecticut. The reporters discovered that more than 5,000 Africans were enslaved in Connecticut during the year before the American Revolution. Now three Courant veterans have produced a rich history of slavery in the North that adds new dimensions to what you might have learned in school.

The successful voyage of a slave ship was 10 times as profitable as an ordinary trading voyage from New England to the West Indies. Rhode Island entered the slave trade in a big way, shipping nearly 50,000 slaves in less than 20 years. By the mid-18th century, plantations in the Narragansett area matched the plantations of Virginia's Tidewater region in acreage and numbers of slaves.

For more than a century, Ivoryton and Deep River, Conn., were an international center for milling elephant tusks into piano keys. As many as 2 million enslaved Africans carried tusks hundreds of miles to the coast so the tusks could be shipped to America. Two industry leaders were abolitionists who ignored the contradiction between their business and their politics.

"Complicity" joins a number of books published over the past year that have taken a closer look at slavery. "Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution" by David Waldstreicher analyzes Franklin's history as an indentured servant and, later in life, a slaveholder. "New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan" by Jill Lepore examines the fires of New York City in 1741 to which "Complicity" devotes a chapter. The fires were thought to be a slave rebellion and 30 slaves were executed.

Unlike the tighter focus of those two books, "Complicity" ranges across a wide swath of territory and time. This is the book's weakness as well as its strength. Each chapter moves to a new place and another facet of the North's entanglement with slavery. A reader can be forgiven for feeling that this is history for the fast-paced MTV generation.

Yet the sheer volume of numbers and narratives from Northern states brings home the extent to which slavery was a part of everyday life in a region largely defined by its antipathy toward the institution. Much of what's in "Complicity" was gleaned from old newspapers and more than 100 period drawings, photos, and documents bring a sense of immediacy to the storytelling. This is history at its best, a story not only of the government officials who made front-page news, but a story of the fugitive slaves for whom a bounty was offered in the classified ads.

Most Americans learn that slavery was a southern institution, but in fact, many enslaved Africans were held and worked in the North.

Many northern industries and businesses–shipbuilding, ports, banks, insurance companies, textile mills–were dependent on slave labor in both the North and South. Northern consumers were dependent on the products of this slave labor for food, clothing, and amenities like ivory piano keys.

In this video below, you will learn about the significant complicity of the northern states in the slave trade, slave labor, and slave-made products in the history of the United States.

https://youtu.be/hAQnlpLaj30

Why Lincoln Kept Slavery Out of the Territories

By Rob O’Barr, From FaceBook Post

In the popular “Righteous Cause” narrative, Lincoln’s stand against slavery in the territories is presented as a great moral line in the sand beyond which slavery was not to go. This is a myth. 

While it is true Lincoln expressed a lot of abstract moralizing about slavery as a violation of natural law, most all Americans  North and South believed slavery in the abstract a violation of natural law. As Lee stated in a letter to his wife in 1856, “There are few I believe in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery is a moral and political evil.” 

But as Aristotle pointed out, morality applies not just to what you believe but what you do and why you do it. Was Lincoln’s motive for keeping slavery out of the territories a moral humanitarian concern for the well being of the slave? Hear Lincoln’s reason for no slavery in the territories:

“There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation (mixing) of the white and black races.  A Separation of the races is the only perfect preventative of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas…”

In an 1860 campaign speech Lincoln’s future Secretary of State, William Seward, made it clear what motivated Northern “anti-slavery.” And it was far from a moral humanitarian concern:

“How natural has it been to assume that the motive of those who have protested against the extension of slavery, was an unnatural sympathy with the negro instead of what it always has really been, concern for the welfare of the white man.”

The greatest error of modern historians is to read into 19th century Northern “anti-slavery” a moral meaning that for the most part simply did not exist. When it did not proceed from a rabid racism its motivation was political. 

On the other the other hand, the same error of presentism is made in regard to the meaning of Southern “pro-slavery.” More often then not it proceeded from a concern for the wellbeing of the black folk Southern whites had grown up with. Given the anti-black attitudes of the North which sought to separate the races and deport all blacks from the country, is it any wonder that the Mississippi Declaration of Secession laments:

“It (the North) seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.”

General Lee echoed the same concern:

 “The best men in the South have long desired to do away with the institution of slavery, and were quite willing to see it abolished.  But, unless some humane course, based on wisdom and Christian principles, was adopted, you do them great injustice in setting them free.”

Racism was a fact of life in both the North and South, but how that attitude played out was very different in both sections. Northerners did not live in close proximity to large numbers of black people, and that segregated society informed their “anti-slavery” attitudes. They did not want to live with blacks. While there was subordination in the South, there was not segregation, and living in close proximity to large numbers of black folk led to close bonds across racial lines that informed Southern “pro-slavery” attitudes. Reading “anti-slavery” and “pro-slavery” with a 21st century understanding of these terms causes us to miss the vastly different meaning of these terms in their 19th century context, and we badly misunderstand the motives informing these causes.

PRO-SOUTH BOOKS

The following is a list of pro-South books that I recommend for understanding the Confederacy and its righteous cause for political independence.  Click on the links to go to the Amazon page where you can order the books.

1.  The South Was Right, by James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy

2.  When In The Course of Human Events:  Arguing the Case for Southern Secession, by Charles Adams

3.  Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States:  the Irrefutable Argument, by Gene Kizer, Jr.

4.  Abraham Lincoln, the Southern View, by Lochlainn Seabrook

My Best Lincoln Meme

A few years back an article appeared on FaceBook praising Abraham Lincoln.  Several of my friends and family made favorable comments about Lincoln, which angered me.  So in response, I created a meme with Photoshop expressing the Southern view of the great tyrant. I live in California and feared a negative backlash by potential employers, so I did not sign the meme.  After first posting it on FaceBook, I posted it on my blog on June 30, 2015 at this link:  http://saberpoint.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-myth-of-abraham-lincoln-photoshop.html.

After a year or two the meme began showing up on social media sites by Southern patriots. I am pleased that my meme is useful to other Confederates.  Feel free to use it.

 

Basic Facts About the War for Southern Independence

I often encounter neo-Yankees on Twitter or this  site or elsewhere who want to argue about the causes of the so-called Civil War, the legality of secession, who was responsible for slavery, who started the war, ad infinitum.  Instead of having to argue the same defenses over and over again, I have decided to summarize the Southern arguments here, where I can point to a link and invite the Southern-adverse to read it.

Here is a list of subjects that I will cover, subject to change:

1.  The meaning of the Confederate Battle Flag.
2.  Fort Sumter:  How Lincoln deliberately started the Civil War.
3.  Lincoln's reasons for starting the war.
4.  The war was not about ending slavery.
5.  The North was equally responsible for slavery in America.
6.  The North never put forth any plan for peacefully ending slavery.
6.  The North cared nothing for the slaves, before or after emancipation.
7.  Secession was and is legal and Constitutional.
8.  The North was wrong and the South was right.
9.  Northern atrocities against Southern civilians.
10.  POWs and Andersonville Prison; how a Confederate officer was framed and murdered by a Northern kangaroo court.

More on this later.

Jefferson Davis's Response to the Emancipation Proclamation, Full Text

President Abraham Lincoln delivered his Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, to become effective on January 1, 1863.  Northern newspapers carried the news in January 1863, and Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, responded to the proclamation on January 14, 1863.

Unfortunately, someone unknown wrote and disseminated a forgery that was supposed to be Davis's address.  It was vile and put Jefferson Davis in a bad light, much to the glee of followers of the Northern Myth.  The forgery is reprinted in this blog at this link.  Some readers have argued that this document is not a forgery, as Davis's speech had been reprinted in Richmond newspapers.  However, they are assuming that the forgery is the speech that was reprinted.

To end this confusion, I searched for the actual text of Jefferson Davis's actual speech and response to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and the actual speech is nothing like the forgery.  I found the actual speech online, as recorded in the Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, January 14, 1863.  I had to refer to scanned copies of the original minutes, but I have transcribed the speech into Word, and now I copy and paste it here.

Jefferson Davis's Response to the Emancipation Proclamation, Full Text

An address to the Confederate Congress, January 14, 1863

The public journals of the North have been received, containing a proclamation dated on the first day of the present a month, signed by the President of the United States, in which he orders and declares all slaves within ten of the States of the Confederacy to be free, except such as are found within certain districts now occupied in part by the forces of the enemy.

We may leave it to the instincts of that common humanity which a beneficent Creator has implanted in the breasts of our fellow-men of all countries to pass judgment on a measure by which several millions of human beings of an inferior race, peaceful and contented laborers in their spheres, are doomed to extermination, while at the same time they are encouraged to a general assassination of their masters by the insidious recommendation “to refrain from violence unless in necessary self-defense.”  Our own detestation of those who have attempted the most execrable measure recorded in the history of guilty man is tempered by profound contempt for the impotent rage which it discloses.  So far as regards the action of this Government on such criminals as may attempt its execution, I confine myself to informing you that I shall, unless in your wisdom you deem some other course more expedient, deliver to the several State authorities all commissioned officers of the United States that may hereafter be captured by our forces in any of the States embraced in the proclamation, that they may be dealt with in accordance with the laws of those States providing for the punishment of criminals engaged in exciting servile insurrection.  The enlisted soldiers I shall continue to treat as unwilling instruments in the commission of these crimes, and shall direct their discharge and return to their homes on the proper and usual parole.

In its political aspect this measure possesses great significance, and to it in this light I invite your attention.  It affords our people the complete and crowning proof of the true nature of the designs of the party which elevated to power the present occupant of the Presidential chair at Washington, and by the perfidious use of the most solemn and repeated pledges on every possible occasion.  I extract, in this connection, as a single example, the following declaration made by President Lincoln, under the solemnity of his oath as Chief Magistrate of the United States, on the 4^th of March, 1861: “Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered.  There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehensions.  Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection.  It is found in nearly all the speeches of him who now addresses you.  I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.  I believe I have no lawful right to do so; and I have no inclination to do so.  Those who nominated and elected me did so with the full knowledge that I made this and many similar declarations, and have never recanted them.  And, more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read: “’Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest crimes.’”

Nor was this declaration of the want of power of disposition to interfere with our social system confined to a state of peace.  Both before and after the actual commencement of hostilities the President of the United States repeated in formal official communication to the cabinets of Great Britain and France that he was utterly without constitutional power to do the act which he has just committed, and that in no possible event, whether the secession of these States resulted in the establishment of a separate Confederacy or in restoration of the Union, was there any authority by virtue of which he could either restore a disaffected State to the Union by force of arms or make any change in any of its institutions.  I refer especially for verification of this assertion to the dispatches addressed to the Secretary of State of the United States under direction of the President to the ministers of the United States at London and Paris, under date of 10^th and 22d April, 1861.

The people of the Confederacy, then, can not fail to receive this proclamation as the fullest vindication of their own sagacity in foreseeing the uses to which the dominant party in the United States intended from the beginning to apply their power, nor can they cease to remember, with devout thankfulness, that it is to their own vigilance in resisting the first stealthy progress of approaching despotism that they owe their escape from the consequences now apparent to the most skeptical.  This proclamation will have another salutary effect in calming the fears of those who have constantly evinced the apprehension that this war might end by some reconstruction of the old Union or some renewal of close political relations with the United States.  These fears have never been shared by me, nor have I ever been able to perceive on what basis they could rest.   But the proclamation affords the fullest guarantee of the impossibility of such a result; it has established a state of things which can lead to but one of three possible consequences—the extermination of the slaves, the exile of the whole white population from the Confederacy, or absolute and total separation of these States from the United States.

This proclamation is also an authentic statement by the Government of the United States of its inability to subjugate the South by force of arms, and as such must be accepted by neutral nations, which can no longer find any justification in withholding our just claims to formal recognition.  It is also in effect an intimation to the people of the North that they must prepare to submit to a separation, now become inevitable, for that people are too acute not to understand that a restoration of the Union has been rendered forever impossible by the adoption of a measure which, from its very nature, neither admits of retraction nor can coexist with union.

From the Secretary of Jefferson Davis, N.B. Harrison

As recorded in the Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States of America, January 14, 1863

https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwcc.html

See Volume 3