Secession, North and South

Address by Col. E. Polk Johnson at U.D.C. Convention in Louisville, April, 1919 (from Confederate Veteran magazine, Vol. XXVII, No. 5, May, 1919)

[Publisher's Note: It was this time of year, one hundred and sixty-one years ago, that seven Southern states, believing with every ounce of their being that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," seceded from the old Union and formed a new nation on this earth: the Confederate States of America.

For over a decade, those seven states along with the rest of the South, had endured abject hatred and violence encouraged by a political party that was determined to rally its voters in the populous North. They wanted political control of the country so they could continue to enrich themselves with high tariffs, bounties, subsidies and monopoly status for their businesses (not unlike the tyrannical monopoly status Google, Facebook and Twitter enjoy today).

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