We’re used to the U.S. president presenting a state of the union address in January each year. 150 years ago this week the first Congress of the Confederate States completed its term. The day before the final adjournment the legislators issued a report to the Confederate people: The South intended a legal, peaceful separation, but Yankees were warring against the Confederacy and inciting slaves against their masters. By perseverance and “self sacrificing patriotism” the people could achieve peace and freedom.
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch February 19, 1864:
The address of Congress to the people of the Confederate States.
In the House of Representatives on Wednesday last Mr. Corry, of Alabama, made a report from the joint committee of the two Houses appointed under a resolution to prepare an address to the people of the Confederate States.
The address is quite lengthy, and opens with a review of what has been accomplished under circumstances the most adverse, and invites attention to the prospects ahead, and the duty of every citizen in this crisis.–Throughout its tone is hopeful and encouraging and its diffusion among the people must evert some influence to dispel despondency where it exists.
The long series of oppressive and tyrannical acts which led to a separation of the South from the North are forcibly and truthfully set forth, and the aims and objects of the new Government clearly and intelligibly defined. In alluding to the measures which were enacted and the steps taken in the formation of the Confederacy, the committee say “that this Government is a child of law instead of sedition, of right instead of violence, of deliberation instead of insurrection. Its early life was attended by no anarchy, no rebellion, no suspension of authority, no social disorders, no lawless disturbances.–Sovereignty was not for one moment in abeyance. The utmost conservatism marked every proceeding and public act. The object was to do what was necessary and no more, and to do that with the utmost temperance and prudence.”
It refers to the efforts made for peaceable separation when it was determined that we could no longer live with the Northern people without degradation, and when it was hoped that the obvious interests of the two sections would restrain the wild frenzy of excitement and turn into peaceful channels the thoughts of those who had but recently been invested with power in the United States.
After a lengthy but not overdrawn recital of the cruelties which have been practiced by the enemy during the war, the committee say that, “disregarding the teachings of the approved writers on international law, and the practice and claims of his own Government in its purer days, President Lincoln has sought to convert the South into a St. Domingo, by appealing to the cupidity, lists, ambition, and ferocity of the slave.”
The condition of those States which have been in the complete or partial control of the enemy is referred to as furnishing the best evidences of subjugation, at which the fanaticism of the North is arriving. Upon this subject the committee say: …
In Virginia, the model of all that illustrated human heroism and self denying patriotism, although the tempest of desolation has swept ever her fair domains, no sign of repentance for her separate from the North can be found. Her old homestead dismantled, her ancestral relies destroyed, her people impoverished, her territory made the battle ground for the rude shocks of contending hoses, and then divided, with hireling parasites mockingly claiming jurisdiction and authority, the Old Dominion still stands with proud crest and defiant mein, ready to tramp beneath her heel every usurper and tyrant, and to illustrate afresh her sic semper tyrannis, the “proudest motto that every blazed on a nation’s shield or a warrior’s arms.”
The address, which is signed by all the members of the House of Representatives, and by the Committee on the part of the Senate, concludes with the following exhortation to the people:
In conclusion, we exhort our fellow-citizens to be of good cheer and spare no labor, nor sacrifices that may be necessary to enable us to win the campaign upon which we have just entered. We have passed through trials of affliction, but suffering and humiliation are the schoolmasters that lead nations to self reliance and independence. These disciplinary providence but mature and develop and solidity our people. We beg that the supplies and resources of the country, which are ample, may be sold to the Government to support and equip its armies. Let all spirit of faction and past party differences be forgotten in the presence of our cruel foe. We should [n]ot despond. We should be self denying. We should labor to extend to the utmost the productive resources of the country. We should economic — The families of soldiers should be cited for and liberally supplied. We entreat from all a generous and hearty co-operation with the Government in all branches of its administration, and with the agents, civil or military in the performance of their duties. Moral aid has the “power of the incommunicable,” and by united efforts, by an all comprehending and self sacrificing patriotism, we can, with the blessing of God, avert the perils which environ us, and achieve for ourselves and children peace and freedom. Hitherto the Lord has interposed graciously to bring us victory, and in His hand there is present power to prevent this great multitude which come against us from casting us out of the possession which He has given us to inherit.
Before it adjourned the CSA Congress passed a major law dealing with “Taxes, Currency and Conscription.” You can read a good account of the law’s effect on inflation in the Confederacy at Seven Score and Ten
