Jefferson Davis Wrote About The Right of the South To Secede

 I wrote recently about an article in the History of the Confederate Memorial Associations of the South. The article is called Oration on the Life and Service of Jefferson Davis by Charles E. Fenner of New Orleans. It was published in 1903.

 

Fenner writes about the right to secede: "He (Jefferson Davis) formulated the whole argument in his 'Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government'...I pronounce it one of the most powerful and masterly legal and constitutional arguments of which I have any knowledge in the English language".

 

Fenner goes on:"It has never been answered, and it is unanswerable. it was intended and it serves as a complete vindication of the right of the Southern States to withdraw from the federal union, to terminate the compact which they had made with their sister States and to reassume the powers which had been delegated to the federal government as a common agent."

 

He says it would be a service to all the people of this country if  it (the section on the right to secede)were published by itself in a small volume or pamphlet so that people could have read it and have understood the grounds and motives on which the Southern States acted when they seceded from the Union. That was in 1903. It is even more true today when people don't have a clue.