Tuesday, February 3, 2015

February 4, 1865---"No rebellion at all."



FEBRUARY 4, 1865:         

In an editorial entitled “Rebellion” the Richmond Daily Dispatch justifies the Civil War as “no rebellion at all” and quotes the British Foreign Minister in regard to the subject. Despite the Foreign Office’s supposed “endorsement” of the South, the United Kingdom has long since shrugged off the idea of recognizing the Confederacy. Graveyard whistling, the Editorial Staff tries to paint a rosier picture, raising the tired old argument of States’ Rights. The past-tense tone of the piece sounds like a post-mortem on The Cause. Their ruminations read in part:

Even Lord John Russell confesses his inability to see any cause for the excessive indignation manifested in the North at the crime of "rebellion." England, he observes, rebelled against Charles I [and] rebelled against James II . . .  Earl Russell says: ‘"The mere fact of rebellion is not, in my eyes, a crime of so deep a dye that we must renounce all fellowship and communion and relationship with those who have been guilty of it . . . “

What adds to the audacity of this outcry, is the simple fact that there has been no rebellion at all, unless it be that of the Black Republican party against the American Constitution. There must be allegiance to a government acknowledged before resistance of its authority becomes rebellion. The States never owed any such allegiance to their agency at Washington. They were the sovereigns, to whom, and to whom alone, the supreme allegiance of their respective inhabitants was due.



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