Declaration of the dispositions, principles, and purposes of the Confederate States.
The Congress of the Confederate States of America, acknowledging their responsibility to the opinion of the civilized world, to the great law of Christian philanthropy, and to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, for the part they have been compelled to bear in the sad spectacle of war and carnage which this continent has, for the last three years, exhibited to the eyes of afflicted humanity, deem the present a fitting occasion to declare the principles, the sentiments, and the purposes by which they have been, and are still, actuated. They have ever deeply deplored the necessity which constrained them to take up arms in defence of their rights, and of the free institutions derived from their ancestors; and there is nothing they more ardently desire than peace, whensoever their enemy, by ceasing from the unhallowed war waged upon them, shall permit them to enjoy in peace the sheltering protection of those hereditary rights and of those cherished institutions.
The series of successes with which it has pleased Almighty God, in so signal a manner, to bless our arms on almost every point of our invaded borders since the opening of the present campaign, enables us to profess this desire of peace in the interests of civilization and humanity without danger of having our motives misinterpreted, or the declaration being
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ascribed to any unmanly sentiment, or any distrust of our ability fully to maintain our cause. The repeated and disastrous checks, foreshadowing ultimate discomfiture, which their gigantic army, directed against the capital of the Confederacy, has already met with, are but a continuation of the same providential successes for us. We do not refer to these successes in any spirit of vain boasting, but in humble acknowledgment of that Almighty protection which has vouchsafed and granted them.
The world must now see that eight millions of people, inhabiting so extensive a territory, with such varied resources, and such numerous facilities for defence as the benignant bounty of nature has bestowed upon us, and animated with one spirit to encounter every privation and sacrifice of ease, of health, of property, of life itself, rather than be degraded from the condition of free and independent states into which they were born, can never be conquered. Will not our adversaries themselves begin to feel that humanity has bled long enough, that tears, and blood, and treasure enough have been expended in a bootless undertaking, covering their own land, no less than ours, with a pall of mourning, and exposing them, far more than ourselves, to the catastrophe of financial exhaustion and bankruptcy, not to speak of the loss of their liberties by the despotism engendered in an aggressive warfare upon the liberties of another and kindred people? Will they be willing, by a longer perseverance in a wanton and hopeless contest, to make this continent, which they so long boasted to be the chosen abode of liberty and self-government, of peace and a higher civilization, the theatre of the most causeless and prodigal effusion of blood which the world has ever seen, of a virtual relapse into the barbarism of the ruder ages, and of the destruction of constitutional freedom, by the lawlessness of usurped power? These are questions which our adversaries will decide for themselves. We desire to stand acquitted, before the tribunal of the world, as well as in the eyes, of Omniscient justice, of any responsibility
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for the origin or prolongation of a war as contrary to the spirit of the age as to the traditions and acknowledged maxims of the political system of America. On this continent, whatever opinions may have prevailed elsewhere, it has ever been hold and acknowledged by all parties, that government, to be lawful, must be founded on the consent of the governed. We were forced to dissolve our federal connection with our former associates by their aggressions on the fundamental principles of our compact of union with them, and, in doing so, we exercised a right consecrated in the great charter of American liberty--the right of a free people, when a government proves destructive of the ends for which it was established, to recur to original principles, and to institute new guards for their security.
The separate independence of the states, as sovereign and coequal members of the Federal Union, had never been surrendered, and the pretension of applying to independent communities, so constituted and organized, the ordinary rules for coercing and reducing rebellious subjects to obedience, was a solecism in terms as well as art outrage on the principles of public law. The war made upon the Confederate States was, therefore, wholly one of aggression; on our side it has been strictly defensive. Born freemen, and the descendants of a gallant ancestry, we had no option but to stand up in defence of our invaded firesides, of our desecrated altars, of our violated liberties and birthright, and of the prescriptive institutions which guard and protect them. We have not interfered, nor do we wish in any manner whatever to interfere, with the internal peace and prosperity of the states arrayed in hostility against us, or with the freest development of their destinies in any form of action or line of policy they may think proper to adopt for themselves. All we ask is a like immunity for ourselves, and to be left in the undisturbed enjoyment of those inalienable rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" which our common ancestors declared to be the equal heritage of all parties to the social compact. Let them
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forbear aggressions upon us, and the war is at an end. If there be questions which require adjustment by negotiation, we have ever been willing, and are still willing, to enter into communication with our adversaries in a spirit of peace, of equity, and manly frankness. Strong in the persuasion of the justice of our cause, in the gallant devotion of our citizen-soldiers and the whole body of our people, and, above all, in the gracious protection of Heaven, we are not afraid to avow a sincere desire for peace on terms consistent with our honor and the permanent security of our rights, and an earnest aspiration to see the world once more restored to the beneficent pursuits of industry and of mutual intercourse and exchanges so essential, to its well-being, and which have been so gravely interrupted by the existence of this unnatural war in America. But if our adversaries, or those whom they have placed in authority, deaf to the voice of reason and justice, steeled against the dictates of both prudence and humanity, by a presumptuous and delusive confidence in their own numbers, or those of their black and foreign mercenaries, shall determine upon an indefinite prolongation of the contest, upon them be the responsibility of a decision so ruinous to themselves, and so injurious to the interests and repose of mankind. For ourselves, we have no fear of the result. The wildest picture ever drawn of a disordered imagination comes short of the extravagance which could dream of the conquest of eight millions of people resolved, with one mind, "to die freemen rather than live slaves," and forewarned by the savage and exterminating spirit in which this war has been waged upon them, and by the mad avowals of its patrons and supporters of the worse than Egyptian bondage that awaits them in the event of their subjugation.
With these declarations of our dispositions, our principles, and our purposes, we commit our cause to the enlightened judgment of the world, to the sober reflections of our adversaries themselves, and to the solemn and righteous arbitrament of Heaven.