The Crux of an Entire Movement

1st North Carolina

“Despite all the endless volumes that have been written on secession, the Northern lay mind sometimes fails to realize that to the Southerner the right of a State to withdraw from the Union was the very soul of freedom. The parallel which the Southerner readily drew between 1861 and 1776 either escapes the Northerner or leaves him cold. And yet that was the crux of an entire movement that nerved men and women alike to make the supreme sacrifices to the bitter end---the feeling that they were fighting for their freedom from an oppressive relationship.”

--Ella Lonn, Reconciliation Between the North and South, address delivered at Birmingham, Alabama, November 1, 1946, The Pursuit of Southern History, 1964

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The Question of Political Secession

"If the Union was formed by the accession of States, then the Union may be dissolved by the secession of States."

Daniel Webster, on the floor of the US Senate 15 February, 1833

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"North Carolinians of 1776 were highly particularistic and, when once the bond which united them to

Great Britain had been severed, they recognized no authority outside the borders of the State which might

control or in any way limit their freedom of action. When, therefore, they came to the task of constitution

making, it was of their own accord and not under the compulsion, instruction or permission of the Continental Congress.

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The Crux of an Entire Movement