The Lust of Empire

If military preparedness is the best conservator of peace, then the American South might have gained its political independence with its reliance upon the text of the United States Constitution reinforced with arms, munitions and arsenals.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"

The Lust of Empire Impelled Them:

“If the purpose of the Northern States to make war upon us because of secession had been foreseen, preparation to meet the consequences would have been contemporaneous with the adoption of a resort to that remedy – a remedy the possibility of which had been for many years contemplated. Had the Southern States possessed arsenals, and collected in them the requisite supplies of arms and munitions, such preparations would not only have placed them more nearly on equality with the North in the beginning of the war, but might, perhaps, have been the best conservator of peace.

Let us, the survivors, however, not fail to do credit to the generous credulity which could not understand how, in violation of the compact of union, a war could be waged against the States, or why they should be invaded because their people had deemed it necessary to withdraw from an association which had failed to fulfill the ends for which they had entered into it, and which, having been broken to their injury by the other parties, had ceased to be binding upon them.

It is a satisfaction to know that the calamities which have befallen the Southern States were the result of their credulous reliance on the power of the Constitution, that if it failed to protect their rights, it would at least suffice to prevent an attempt at coercion, if, in the last resort, they peacefully withdrew from the Union.

When, in after times, the passions of the day shall have subsided, and all the evidence shall have been collected and compared, the philosophical inquirer, who asks why the majority of the stronger section invaded the peaceful homes of their late associates, will be answered by history: “The lust of empire impelled them to wage against their weaker neighbors a war of subjugation.”

(The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume I, Jefferson Davis, D. Appleton and Company, 1881, pp. 195-196)

The Lust of Empire