The Last Americans To Believe in the Voluntary Union of the States
“If there is to be a separation [i.e., secession of New England], then God bless them [the two countries] both, & keep them in the union if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better.”
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John C. Breckenridge, Aug. 12, 1803, regarding the New England secession movement
“No state . . can lawfully get out of the union . . . acts against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary . . .”
- Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address
“Extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least of the trouble, but the people [of the South].”
- Letter from General Sherman to his wife, July 31, 1862, explaining his purpose in the war
Anyone who knows anything about the War to Prevent Southern Independence has heard of General Sherman’s “march to the sea” through Georgia, a pleasant euphemism for all the rape, pillage, plunder, murder, arson, and terrorism of the civilian population by Sherman’s “bummers,” under his direct, personal supervision. It wasn’t just a pleasant springtime march through the South with bands playing “Yankee Doodle” and “John Brown’s Body.” Less known, however, is what Sherman’s rapists, plunderers, and murderers did in South Carolina. A new book by Karen Stokes entitled South Carolina in 1865 compiles letters and diaries by South Carolinians of the day describing what happened when Sherman’s “army” went through Columbia, Charleston, and other South Carolina towns. (Stokes is an archivist at the South Carolina Historical Society).
Since South Carolina was considered to be the birthplace of the Southern secession movement (A half century after the 1801-1814 New England secession movement culminating in the Hartford Secession Convention of 1814), Sherman had an especially murderous hatred for the people of that state. In other words, the previous generation of Yankees believed what all Americans believed – that the union was voluntary; the people of the free and independent states were sovereign; that they created the Constitution of the federal government as an instrument to serve them by delegating certain powers to it; and that that they reserved the right to reassume those powers should the federal government inte
Article from LewRockwell