The Last Year Of The War In North Carolina

The revolution of 1861 occurred in the North as a new radical interpretation of the Constitution gave impetus to an invasion of the American South to prevent its independence. As explained below, this new interpretation marginalized Jefferson’s words and founding intent, and erected a new centralized government that drew its authority from military force, not the republican States which created it. For more on Alfred Moore Waddell, see www.cfhi.net. “Historical Essays.” Bernhard Thuersam, Director Cape Fear Historical Institute Jefferson’s Vague Phrases: “No man volunteered to fight for the Confederacy who was not prompted to do so by the most natural and the most powerful incentives that can influence human conduct. Each and every one of them felt that, whether personally responsible for bringing on the dreadful issue or not, in shouldering his gun to meet it, he was defending not only his heritage of liberty, but his home and property from the lawless hand of an invader, who sought to subjugate them to his will – that he was obeying the first law of nature, and was therefore justified in the sight of God and man. We are now a great consolidated nation more or less loving brethren, moving on one path to a common destiny, and the statesmanship of the present day is teaching us new lessons in the science of government. Only last month we heard from a great Senator from the breezy West, that Thomas Jefferson “borrowed his ideas of the social contract from Rousseau and the French philosophers,” that “his dreamy imagination was captivated by their vague phrases and imperfect generalizations,” that “he had no conception of the moral forces which give a nation strength, duration and grandeur,” and that “he failed to comprehend the supreme obligation of law as the bond which united society.” This same great Senator, to be sure, had already apotheosized John Brown, whose soul, they say, is marching somewhere, but any embarrassment which that fact might suggest to his present argument could only arise in a disloyal mind, and is, therefore, unworthy of consideration. The Jeffersonian maxim that just government derive their powers from the consent of the governed is, in the eyes of this great Senator from the West, one of those vague phrases and imperfect generalizations by which the “dreamy imagination” of the father of modern Democracy was captivated; whereas the truth, according to the same authority, is that all governments rest “not upon consent, but upon force.” The South, he says, tried the theory that governments rest on consent and was logical in doing so, but Grant’s guns “refuted their fatal syllogism.” “The rule of the majority is still the rule of the strongest,” exultingly exclaims this great man. Alas! what answer can be made to this argument of numbers…Verily we should rejoice that we have lived to see the true character of our government thus explained and accepted, and the whole duty of citizenship, as well as the aim of successful statesmanship, resolved into the simple process of “going with the crowd.” May the crowd go right, henceforth, is at once the prayer and only hope of the patriot.” (An Address Before the Association of the Army of Northern Virginia, Hon. Alfred Moore Waddell, The Last Year of the War in North Carolina, W. Ellis Jones, Book and Job Printer, 1888, pp. 6-7)