America's Civil War overview

America's Civil War

History 393
Easter Semester 2025
Professor John C. Willis
The University of the South

If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it — break it, so to speak — but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?

Abraham Lincoln,

"First Inaugural Address"

4 March 1861

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We feel that our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of honor and independence; we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms. This we will, this we must, resist to the direst extremity.

Jefferson Davis,

"Message on Constitutional Ratification"

29 April 1861

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