CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR DBQ - PBworks · CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR DBQ Directions: The following...

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CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR DBQ Directions: The following question requires you to construct a coherent essay that integrates your interpretation of the documents and your knowledge of the period referred to in the question. High scores will be earned only by essays that both cite key pieces of evidence from the documents and draw on outside knowledge of the period. 1. In 1913 historian James Ford Rhodes asserted that the American Civil War can be attributed to a “single cause, slavery.” Assess the validity of his interpretation. What caused the Civil War? Use the documents and your knowledge of the period from 1830 to 1861 to answer the question. DOCUMENT A Source: South Carolina Threatens Secession, Daily National Intelligencer, December 7, 1832 The separation of South Carolina would inevitably produce a general dissolution of the Union, and, as a necessary consequence, the protecting system, with all its pecuniary bounties to the Northern states, and its pecuniary burdens upon the Southern states, would be utterly overthrown and demolished, involving the ruin of thousands and hundreds of thousands in the manufacturing states…. With them, it is a question merely of pecuniary interest, connected with no shadow of right, and involving no principle of liberty. With us, it is a question involving our most sacred rights—those very rights which our common ancestors left to us as a common inheritance, purchased by their common toils, and consecrated by their blood. It is a question of liberty on the one hand, and slavery on the other. If we submit to this system of unconstitutional oppression, we shall voluntarily sink into slavery, and transmit the ignominious inheritance to our children. DOCUMENT B Source: Congressman Robert Toombs of Georgia, speech on the House floor, December 13, 1849 I do not, then, hesitate to avow before this House and the country, and in the presence of the living God, that if by your legislation you [Northerners] seek to drive us from the territories of California and New Mexico, purchased by common blood and treasure of the whole people, and to abolish slavery in this District [of Columbia], thereby attempting to fix a national degradation upon half the states of this Confederacy, I am for disunion. And if my physical courage be equal to the maintenance of my convictions of right and duty, I will devote all I am and all I have on earth to its consummation.

Transcript of CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR DBQ - PBworks · CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR DBQ Directions: The following...

Page 1: CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR DBQ - PBworks · CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR DBQ Directions: The following question requires you to construct a coherent essay that integrates your interpretation

CAUSES OF THE CIVIL WAR DBQ

Directions: The following question requires you to construct a coherent essay that integrates your

interpretation of the documents and your knowledge of the period referred to in the question. High scores

will be earned only by essays that both cite key pieces of evidence from the documents and draw on outside

knowledge of the period.

1. In 1913 historian James Ford Rhodes asserted that the American Civil War can be attributed to a “singlecause, slavery.” Assess the validity of his interpretation. What caused the Civil War?

Use the documents and your knowledge of the period from 1830 to 1861 to answer the question.

DOCUMENT A

Source: South Carolina Threatens Secession, Daily National Intelligencer, December 7, 1832

The separation of South Carolina would inevitably produce a general dissolution of the Union, and, as a

necessary consequence, the protecting system, with all its pecuniary bounties to the Northern states, and its

pecuniary burdens upon the Southern states, would be utterly overthrown and demolished, involving the

ruin of thousands and hundreds of thousands in the manufacturing states….

With them, it is a question merely of pecuniary interest, connected with no shadow of right, and involvingno principle of liberty. With us, it is a question involving our most sacred rights—those very rights which

our common ancestors left to us as a common inheritance, purchased by their common toils, and

consecrated by their blood. It is a question of liberty on the one hand, and slavery on the other.

If we submit to this system of unconstitutional oppression, we shall voluntarily sink into slavery, and

transmit the ignominious inheritance to our children.

DOCUMENT B

Source: Congressman Robert Toombs of Georgia, speech on the House floor, December 13, 1849

I do not, then, hesitate to avow before this House and the country, and in the presence of the living God,

that if by your legislation you [Northerners] seek to drive us from the territories of California and New

Mexico, purchased by common blood and treasure of the whole people, and to abolish slavery in this

District [of Columbia], thereby attempting to fix a national degradation upon half the states of this

Confederacy, I am for disunion. And if my physical courage be equal to the maintenance of my

convictions of right and duty, I will devote all I am and all I have on earth to its consummation.

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DOCUMENT C

DOCUMENT D

Source: John C. Calhoun, last speech in the Senate, read on March 4, 1850

I have, Senators, believed from the first that the agitation of the subject of slavery would, if not prevented

by some timely and effective measure, end in disunion….

To this question there can be but one answer,--that the immediate cause is the almost universal discontent

which pervades all the States composing the Southern section of the Union…. What has caused this widely

diffused and almost universal discontent?…

One of the causes is, undoubtedly, to be traced to the long-continued agitation of the slave question on the

part of the North, and the many aggressions which they have made on the rights of the South during the

time…

There is another lying back of it—with which this is intimately connected—that may be regarded as the

great and primary cause. This is to be found in the fact that the equilibrium between the two sections, in

the Government as it stood when the constitution was ratified and the Government put in action, has been

destroyed. At that time there was nearly a perfect equilibrium between the two, which afforded a means of

each to protect itself against the aggression of the other; but as it now stands, one section has the exclusive

power of controlling the Government, which leaves the other without any adequate means of protecting

itself against its encroachment and oppression…

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DOCUMENT E

Source: Daniel Webster, speech in the Senate, March 7, 1850

Then, Sir, there are the Abolition societies, of which I am unwilling to speak, but in regard to which I have

very clear notions and opinions. I do not think them useful. I think their operations for the last twenty years

have produced nothing good or valuable…. I do not mean to impute gross motives even to the leaders of

these societies, but I am not blind to the consequences of their proceedings. I cannot but see what mischiefs

their interference with the South has produced…. These Abolition societies commenced their course ofaction in 1835. It is said, I do not know how true it may be, that they sent incendiary publications into the

slave States; at any rate, they attempted to arouse, and did arouse, a very strong feeling; in other words,

they created great agitation in the North against Southern slavery….

Secession! Peaceable secession! Sir, your eyes and mine are never destined to see that miracle. The

dismemberment of this vast country without convulsion!… There can be no such thing as peaceable

secession. Peaceable secession is an utter impossibility.

DOCUMENT F

Source: Theodor Kauffman, Effects of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850

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DOCUMENT G

Source: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852

Tom spoke in a mild voice, but with a decision that could not be mistaken. Legree shook with anger; his

greenish eyes glared fiercely, and his very whiskers seemed to curl with passion. But like some ferocious

beast, that plays with its victim before he devours it, he kept back his strong impulse to proceed to

immediate violence, and broke out into bitter raillery.

“Well, here’s a pious dog, at least, let down among us sinners!—a saint, a gentleman, and no less, to talk to

us sinners about our sins! Powerful holy crittur, he must be! Here, you rascal, you make believe to be so

pious—didn’t you never hear, out of yer Bible, ‘Servants, obey your masters’? An’t I yer master? Didn’t I

pay down twelve hundred dollars, cash, for all there is inside yer old cussed black shell? An’t yer mine,

now, body and soul?” he said, giving Tom a violent kick with his heavy boot; “tell me!”

In the very depth of physical suffering, bowed by brutal oppression, this question shot a gleam of joy and

triumph through Tom’s soul. He suddenly stretched himself up, and, looking earnestly to heaven, while the

tears and blood that flowed down his face mingled, he exclaimed,

“No! no! no! my soul an’t yours, Mas’r! You haven’t bought it—ye can’t buy it! It’s been bought andpaid for by One that is able to keep it. No matter, no matter, you can’t harm me!”

“I can’t!” said Legree, with a sneer; “we’ll see—we’ll see! Here, Sambo, Quimbo, give this dog such a

breakin’ in as he won’t get over this month!”

The two gigantic Negroes that now laid hold of Tom, with fiendish exultation in their faces, might have

formed no unapt personification of powers and darkness. The poor woman screamed with apprehension,

and all rose, as by a general impulse, while they dragged him unresisting from the place.

DOCUMENT H

Source: Charles Sumner, “The Crime Against Kansas,” May 19-20, 1856.

With regret, I come again upon the Senator from South Carolina [Butler], who, omnipresent in this debate,

overflowed with rage at the simple suggestion that Kansas had applied for admission as a state; and with

incoherent phrases, discharged the loose expectoration of his speech, now upon her representative, and then

upon her people….

But the Senator touches nothing that he does not disfigure—with error, sometimes of principle, sometimes

of fact…

Were the whole history of South Carolina blotted out of existence, from its very beginning down to the day

of the last election of the Senator to his present seat on this floor, civilization might lose—I do not say how

little; but surely less than it has already gained by the example of Kansas, in its valiant struggle against

oppression, and in the development of a new science of emigration. Already in Lawrence alone there are

newspapers and schools, including a high school, and throughout this infant territory there is more mature

scholarship far, in proportion to its inhabitants, than in all South Carolina. Ah, sir, I tell the Senator that

Kansas, welcomed as a free state, will be a “ministering angel” to the Republic when South Carolina, in the

cloak of darkness which she hugs, “lies howling.”

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DOCUMENT I

Source: John L. Magee, “Forcing Slavery Down the Throat of a Freesoiler,” 1856

DOCUMENT J

Source: Roger B. Taney, majority decision, Dred Scott v. Sanford, 1857

Now … the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution. The right to

traffic in it, like an ordinary article of merchandise and property, was guaranteed to the citizens of the

United States, in every state that might desire it, for twenty years. And the government in express terms is

pledged to protect it in all future time, if the slave escapes from his owner. This is done in plain

words—too plain to be misunderstood. And no word can be found in the Constitution which gives

Congress a greater power over slave property, or which entitles property of that kind to less protection, thanproperty of any other description. The only power conferred is the power coupled with the duty of

guarding and protecting the owner in his rights.

Upon these considerations, it is the opinion of the Court that the Act of Congress [Missouri Compromise]

which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind in the territory of the United

States north of the line [of 36 degrees, 30 minutes latitude] therein mentioned is not warranted by the

Constitution, and is therefore void; and that neither Dred Scott himself, nor any of his family, were made

free by being carried into this territory; even if they had been carried there by the owner with the intention

of becoming a permanent resident….

Upon the whole, therefore, it is the judgment of this Court that it appears by the record before us that the

plaintiff in error [Dred Scott] is not a citizen of Missouri, in the sense in which that word is used in theConstitution; and that the Circuit Court of the United States for that reason had no jurisdiction in the case,

and could give no judgment in it.

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DOCUMENT K

Source: Abraham Lincoln, “A House Divided,” delivered at Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858

We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident

promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation.

Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.

In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to

be divided.

It will become all one thing, or all the other.

Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shallrest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall

became alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new—North as well as South.

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DOCUMENT L

Source: James Henry Hammond, speech, March 4, 1858

Why the South has never yet had a just cause of war except with the North. Every time she has drawn her

sword it has been on the point of honor, and that point of honor has been mainly loyalty to her sister

colonies and sister States, who have ever since plundered and calumniated….

No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king….

But, sir, the greatest strength of the South arises from the harmony of her political and social institutions.

This harmony gives her a frame of society, the best in the world, and an extent of political freedom,

combined with entire security, such as no other people ever enjoyed upon the face of the earth…. The

South, so far as that is concerned, is satisfied, harmonious, and prosperous, but demands to be let alone.

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a

class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such

a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, andrefinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government…. Fortunately for the

South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand. A race inferior to her own, but eminently

qualified in temper, in vigor, in docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes. We use

them for our purpose, and call them slaves….

In short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and "operatives," as you call them, are essentially

slaves. The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no

starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either.

Yours are hired by the day, not care for, and scantily compensated, which may be proved in the most

painful manner, at any hour in any street of your large towns. Why, you meet more beggars in one day, in

any single street of the city of New York, than you would meet in a lifetime in the whole South. We do not

think that whites should be slaves either by law or necessity. Our slaves are black, of another and inferior

race. The status in which we have placed them is an elevation. They are elevated from the condition in

which God first created them, by being made our slaves. None of that race on the whole face of the globecan be compared with the slaves of the South. They are happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly incapable,

from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations. Yours are white, of your own

race; you are brothers of one blood. They are your equals in natural endowment of intellect, and they feel

galled by their degradation….

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DOCUMENT M

Source: Stephen Douglas, speech delivered at Bloomington, Illinois, July 16, 1858

Thus Mr. Lincoln invites, by his proposition, a war of sections, a war between Illinois and Kentucky, a war

between the free States and the slave States, a war between the North and the South, for the purpose of

exterminating slavery in every Southern State, or planting it in every Northern State….

The difference between Mr. Lincoln and myself upon this point is, that he goes for a combination of theNorthern States, or the organization of a sectional political party in the free States to make war on the

domestic institutions of the Southern States, and to prosecute that war until they shall all be subdued, and

made to conform to such rules as the North shall dictate to them…. I am opposed to that whole system of

sectional agitation, which can produce nothing but strife, but discord, but hostility, and, finally, disunion….

There is but one possible way in which slavery can be abolished, and that is by leaving a State, according to

the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, perfectly free to form and regulate its institutions in its own

way…. But the moment the Abolition Societies were organized throughout the North, preaching a violent

crusade against slavery in the Southern States, this combination necessarily caused a counter-combination

in the South, and a sectional line was drawn which was a barrier to any further emancipation….

Mr. Lincoln is alarmed for fear that, under the Dred Scott decision, slavery will go into all the Territories ofthe United States. All I have to say is that, with or without that decision, slavery will go just where the

people want it, and not one inch further. You have had experience upon the subject in the case of

Kansas…. Thus you see that under the principle of popular sovereignty, slavery has been kept out of

Kansas, notwithstanding the fact that for the first three years they had a Legislature in that Territory

favorable to it. I tell you, my friends, it is impossible under our institutions to force slavery on an unwilling

people….

Hence, if the people of a Territory want slavery, they will encourage it by passing affirmatory laws, and the

necessary police regulations, patrol laws and slave code; if they do not want it they will withhold that

legislation, and by withholding it, slavery is as dead as if it was prohibited by a congressional prohibition,

especially if, in addition, their legislation is unfriendly, as it would be if they were opposed to it.

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DOCUMENT N

Source: Abraham Lincoln, Cooper Union Address, February 27, 1860

You [Southerners] charge that we [Republicans] stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and

what is your proof? Harper’s Ferry! John Brown!!

John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper’s Ferry

enterprise….

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper’s Ferry affair, but still

insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it….

Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the Republican Party was organized.

What induced the Southampton [Nat Turner’s] insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which at least three

times as many lives were lost as at Harper’s Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the

conclusion that Southampton was “got up by Black Republicanism.” In the present state of things in the

United States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive, slave insurrection is possible….

John Brown’s effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up

a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves,with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough that it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy,

corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An

enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to

liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution.

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DOCUMENT O

Source: Charleston Mercury, September 18, 1860

The leaders and oracles of the most powerful party in the United States [Republicans] have denounced us

as tyrants and unprincipled heathens, through the civilized world. They have preached it from their pulpits.

They have declared it in the halls of Congress and in their newspapers. In their schoolhouses they have

taught their children … to look upon the slaveholder as the special disciple of the devil himself. They have

published books and pamphlets in which the institution of slavery is held up to the world as a blot and astain upon the escutcheon of America’s honor as a nation.

They have established abolition societies among them for the purpose of raising funds—first to send troops

to Kansas to cut the throats of all the slaveholders there, and now send emissaries among us to incite our

slaves to rebellion against the authority of their masters, and thereby endangering the lives of our people

and the destruction of our property.

They have brought forth an open and avowed enemy to the most cherished and important institution of the

South, as candidate for election to the Chief Magistracy of this government—the very basis of whose

political principles is an uncompromising hostility to the institution of slavery under all circumstances.

They have virtually repealed the Fugitive Slave Law, and declare their determination not to abide by thedecision of the Supreme Court guaranteeing to us the right to claim our property wherever found in the

United States.

And, in every conceivable way, the whole Northern people, as a mass, have shown a most implacable

hostility to us and our most sacred rights; and this, too, without the slightest provocation on the part of the

South….

Then why should we any longer submit to the galling yoke of our tyrant brother—the usurping,

domineering, abolition North!…

All admit that an ultimate dissolution of the Union is inevitable, and we believe the crisis is not far off.

Then let it come now; the better for the South that it should be today; she cannot afford to wait.

DOCUMENT P

Source: Alexander Stephenson, Cornerstone Speech, March 21, 1861

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone

rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the

superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of

the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth…. All fanaticism springs from an

aberration of the mind—from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking

characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous

premises: so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume

that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white

man….

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DOCUMENT Q

Source: S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama, letter to Governor Magoffin of Kentucky, December 27,1860

I have the honor of placing in your hands herewith, a Commission from the Governor of the State of

Alabama, accrediting me as a Commissioner from that State to the sovereign State of Kentucky, to consult

in reference to the momentous issues now pending between the Northern and Southern States of this

Confederacy….

I therefore submit, for the consideration of Your Excellency, the following propositions, which I hope will

command your assent and approval:

1. The people are the source of all political power; and the primary object of all good Governments is to

protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property; and whenever any form of Government

becomes destructive of these ends, it is the inalienable right, and the duty of the people to alter or abolish it.

2. The equality of all the States of this Confederacy, as well as the equality of rights of all the citizens of

the respective States under the Federal Constitution, is a fundamental principle in the scheme of the Federal

Government. The Union of these States under the Constitution, was formed "to establish justice, insure

domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure theblessings of liberty to her citizens and their posterity;" and when it is perverted to the destruction of the

equality of the States, or substantially fails to accomplish these ends, it fails to achieve the purposes of its

creation, and ought to be dissolved.

4. … African slavery has not only become one of the fixed domestic institutions of the Southern States, but

forms an important element of their political power, and constitutes the most valuable species of their

property, worth according to recent estimates, not less than $4,000,000,000; forming, in fact, the basis upon

which rests the prosperity and wealth of most of these States, and supplying the commerce of the world

with its richest freights, and furnishing the manufactories of two continents with the raw material, and their

operatives with bread. It is upon this gigantic interest, this peculiar institution of the South, that the

Northern States and their people have been waging an unrelenting and fanatical war for the last quarter of acentury. An institution with which is bound up, not only the wealth and prosperity of the Southern people,

but their very existence as a political community. This war has been waged in every way that human

ingenuity, urged on by fanaticism, could suggest….

As the last and crowning act of insult and outrage upon the people of the South, the citizens of the Northern

States, by overwhelming majorities, on the 6th day of November last, elected Abraham Lincoln and

Hannibal Hamlin, President and Vice President of the United States….

What, then are the circumstances under which, and the issues upon which he was elected? His own

declarations, and the current history of the times, but too plainly indicate he was elected by a Northern

sectional vote, against the most solemn warnings and protestations of the whole South. He stands forth asthe representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making

war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of

that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and

acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality

of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white

and black….

But in the South, where in many places the African race largely predominates, and as a consequence the

two races would be continually pressing together, amalgamation or the extermination of the one or the

other would be inevitable. Can Southern men submit to such degradation and ruin? God forbid that they

should.

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DOCUMENT R

Source: A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State ofMississippi from the Federal Union, January 9, 1861

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the

world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of

commerce of the earth…. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a

blow at commerce and civilization…. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates ofabolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin….

The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution,…

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within

its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It tramples the original equality of the South under foot….

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our

midst.

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a

better….

It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply

flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives….

It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security.

It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and

to destroy our social system….

It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and

destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.

Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of

choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four

billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every

other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.