sure, expressed the real objects sought to be attained by secession by the great body of the Southern people. He said:
"Secession is not intended to break up the present Government, but to perpetuate it. We do not propose to go out by way of destroying the Union, as our fathers gave it to us, but we go out for the purpose of getting further guarantees and security for our rights,"&c.
MIGHT HAVE BEEN BETTER.
And so we believe, that with the success of the South, the "Union of our Fathers," which the South was the principal factor in forming, and to which she was far more attached than the North, would have been restored and re-established; that in this Union the South would have been again the dominant people, the controlling power, and that its administration of the Government in that union, would have been along constitutional and Just lines, and not through Military Districts, attempted Confiscations, Force Bills, and other oppressive and illegal methods, such as characterized the conduct of the North for four years after the war, in its alleged restoration of a Union which it denied had ever been dissolved.
As to the abolition of slavery: Whilst we know of no one in the South who does not rejoice that this has been accomplished, we know of no one, anywhere, so lost to every sense of right and justice as not to condemn the iniquitious way in which this was done. But we feel confident that no matter how the war had ended, it would have resulted in the freedom of the slave, and as surely with the success of the South as with that of the North, although perhaps not so promptly.
We are warranted in this conclusion, from several considerations—(1) It was conclusively shown in our last Report, that we did not fight for the continuation of slavery, and that a large majority of our soldiers were non-slaveholders; (2) That our great leader. General Lee, had freed his slaves before the war, whilst General Grant held on to his until they were free by the Emancipation Proclamation; and (3) Whilst Mr. Lincoln issued that proclamation, he said in his first inaugural:
