Jeff Davis on Secession
Confederate President Jefferson
Davis, Message to the Confederate Congress (April 29, 1861)
"It was by the
delegates chosen by the several States . . . that the Constitution of the
" . . . Amendments
were added to the Constitution placing beyond any pretense of doubt the
reservation by the States of all their sovereign rights and powers not
expressly delegated to the
"Strange, indeed. .
. . [the Constitution has] proved unavailing to prevent the rise and growth in
the Northern States of a political school which has persistently claimed that
the government thus formed was not a compact between States, but was in effect
a national government, set up above and over the States.