Southern Quotes

Confederate Quotes

Historical Southern Quotes
Current Southern Quotes
Southern Heritage
The War for Southern Independence
The Constitutional Right of Secession
States Rights
An interesting sideline of Freedom Quotes is the all too often realization that intelligent and once honorable men and women sometimes over time adjust their ideas and public remarks to meet the needs of the powerful eliteâ€™s among us that control much of the political and economic power. Youâ€™ll find great scholars and intellectuals such as Abraham Lincoln change their ideas and beliefs as political and economic power take control of their great intellects and their integrity. A historical example, would be the changing statements of Abraham Lincoln: This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. Years later, just prior to the War Between the States he states: No state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy. Please note that I have been building this list for years and there are obviously misspellings and maybe even some words misplaced. . All the quotes so listed are from other sources - usually current quotes are from articles and books I've read and the older quotes are from quotes I've found in other publications. Any errors in text are mine alone made when entering the quotes. I would appreciate notification of any mistakes Iâ€™ve made and also feel free to forward me additional quotes for inclusion in the list. Great men fall from grace and are seduced by powerful special interests and the result is often murderous wars or catastrophic financial crises. It is my hope that Freedom Quotes will go a little way toward halting the onslaught of Washington against free people around the world. Please feel free to use the quotations in speeches, articles and publications that advance the cause of freedom and liberty around the world. Also help us publicize Freedom Quotes by making others aware of this Internet resource at http://www.newdemocratmagazine.org/fq1.htm

Historical Quotes

A legitimate union of states "depends for its continuance on the free consent and will of the Sovereign people of each state," and " when that consent and will is withdrawn on either part, their union is gone." Any state forced to remain in a union by military force" can never be a co-equal member of the American Union " and can be viewed only as a "subject province." --Daily Union Newspaper, Bangor, Maine Nov. 13, 1860

We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained that the ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on the 23^rd day of May, in the year of our Lord 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts of the General Assembly of this State ratify the amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed, and that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and the other States under the name of the United States of America is hereby dissolved. --The South Carolina Legislature, December 20, 1860

We protest solemnly in the face of mankind, that we desire peace at any sacrifice, save that of honor. In independence we seek no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the states with which we have lately been 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, we must resist to the direst extremity. The moment that this pretension is abandoned, the sword will drop from our grasp, and we shall be ready to enter into treaties of amnesty and commerce that cannot but be mutually beneficial. So long as this pretension is maintained, with a firm reliance on that Divine Power which covers with its protection the just cause, we must continue to struggle for our inherent right to freedom, independence, and self government.
--President Jefferson Davisâ€™ first address to the Confederate Congress

...make them so sick of war that generations would pass before they would again appeal to it. --William T. Sherman

Though many refuse to admit it, the United States has become a vast centralized power, overwhelmingly dominated and controlled by a liberal-leftist intelligentsia who continually pull this country to the left, against the wishes of the Southern people. --William L Cawthon, Jr., The South As An Independent Nation

The war against the Confederate Flag - and against traditional Southern songs, statues and memorials - is only part of a wider war against the American heritage. The same coalition of Big Business, political oligarchs and multiracialist and multiculturalist mafias seeks to erase that heritage and write their own vapid New World Order in its place. --Samuel Francis

If the South had been an independent nation for the past 30 years it would have had budgets more closely in balance, less governmental taxation, a tougher policy on crime and welfare, greater local control over schools, protected prayer in schools, a more conservative Supreme Court, and an immigration policy that would not flood the country with Third World immigrants.--William L. Cawthon, Jr., The South As An Independent Nation

On a personal level it is time for Southerners to wean themselves from dependence on federal largesse. Since the New Deal, Washington has funneled more tax dollars into the South than it has taken out, and this has caused the region to be bound tightly by the attached strings. If Southerners are ever to be free from federal dictates, we must learn to provide for our own needs without depending on government wealth transfers. --Michael Hill, president of the League of the South

The federal government that invaded the South in 1861 is now destroying the rights and liberties of middle-class Americans - North, South, East, and West. The problems faced by middle-class Americans today are proof that in 1861, the South was right!
--The Kennedy Brothers, Why Not Freedom!

In Sherman's famous march through Georgia, his soldiers left a swaft of death and destruction, destroying crops, burning homes and killing civilians. Sherman himself acknowledged that only 20% of the destruction inflicted by his invasion was inflicted on military objectives. Civilian non-combatants, essentially innocents, suffered 80% of the losses.
--John Pugsley, John Pugsley's Journal, Jan 95.

[The South] is damned for its virtues and praised for its faults, and there are those who wish its annihilation. But most revealing of all is the fear that it gestates the revolutionary impulse of our future. --Richard Weaver, The Southern Tradition at Bay

The South is not ashamed of the lost cause, which can never be lost as long as men preach patriotism, glorify valor, and worship sacrifice. --Rev. James S. Vance

Most of you are probably thinking that secession is a fanciful and far-reaching idea. Well, maybe it is, but no more fanciful and far-fetched than believing that Republicans ever will live up to their conservative speeches. Charley Reese, Syndicated Columnist, The Orlando Sentinal

And just think, fellow Southrons, what kind of a Confederate nation we could have, if after independence, politicians abandoned equivocation and spoke honestly and firmly on all issues? If they were to do their duty to God, nation, and people, there would be virtually no need for any form of federal litigation.
--Charley Reese, "General Lee's Timeless Lessons On Life

Southern Heritage

Old institutions and symbols of a heroic and tragic past, from Columbus Day to The Citadel in South Carolina, from Christmas carols in public schools to Southern war memorials, are all under assault.
--Patrick J. Buchanan, "My Campaign To Take Back Our Country"

No nation can long survive without pride in its tradition. --Winston Churchill

The War for Southern Independence

The war had "tended, more than any other event in the history of the country, to militate against the Jefferson idea that the best government is that which governs least. --Illinois Gov. Richard Yates, to the Illinois State Assembly, Jan. 2, 1865.

...the contest is not over, the strife is not ended. It has only entered upon a new and enlarged arena. --Jefferson Davis, address to the Mississippi legislature 16 years after the war ended.

We invoke the blessings of Providence on a just cause. --Jefferson Davis

So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many many other evils...the quarrel between North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel. --Charles Dickens, as editor of All the Year Round, a British periodical in 1862

The Constitutional Right For Secession

Gary Alexander
November 15, 1315: In the Battle at Morgarten, the Swiss beat the powerful Austrian empire. This was the first great military triumph of the Swiss Confederation against the reigning Austrian Hapsburgs. In that battle, the men of Schwyz (canton) lured the Austrians into the hills, then ambushed them in a mountain pass, killing 1500, driving hundreds more into Lake Lucerne, and putting the rest to flight. Less than a month later, the Swiss confederation of three cantons decided to name their young nation after the men who fought so well at Morgarten. That's how "Helvetia" came to be called Switzerland.

On November 15, 1777, the Articles of Confederation were adopted by the Continental Congress, modeled after the Swiss Confederation, which likewise contained 13 states (cantons), since 1513. These Articles vested the conduct of war and foreign policy in a federal government (Congress) and left the rest to the states. Article II stated, "each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to Congress."

On November 15, 1860, just nine days after Abraham Lincoln's election, South Carolina circulated a petition among the 13 southern states regarding creation of a new Confederacy, modeled after the 1777 confederacy, and, in turn, on the 1315 Swiss confederation. The odds against secession didn't faze them. The South justified their rebellion by analogy to the American & Swiss revolutions. Just as George Washington was painted as America's William Tell, Robert E. Lee soon became the south's Washington. --Gary Alexander's speech at New Orleans Investment Conference, 11/15/2000

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. --Abraham Lincoln, January 12, 1848 speech in Congress

Federalism is not when the central government graciously allows the states to do this or that. That is just another form of administration. True federalism is when the people of the states set limits to the central government. Fundamentally, federalism means states rights. The cause of states rights is the cause of liberty. They rise or fall together. -- Clyde C. Wilson

For 134 years the American people have been led to believe that the right of secession had been overturned by a â€˜verdict of arms,â€™ but that isnâ€™t trueâ€¦.It is true the shot fired at Fort Sumter was a mistake since it provided the pretext for the Southland to be invaded by foreign troop, but the right of secession realized through the ballot box remains an essential part of our constitutional order.
--George Kalas, , Chairman Emeritus, The Southern Party

We are patient people and our goal long-term is good government and cultural renewal for the Southern peopleâ€¦.If by some miracle good government can be secured within the present federal system, so be it.
--George Kalas, Chairman Emeritus, The Southern Party

Over a hundred years ago, the Confederate States of America tried unsuccessfully to lead our nation into disunion for all of the wrong reasons - preservation of slavery, racism, and the 'southern way of life' After military defeat, occupation, and Reconstruction, they were dragged kicking and screaming back into the Union. Maybe it's high time the South reconsidered secession - this time for the right reasons. --Dr. Thomas Naylor, Downsizing the United States of America, Nov/Dec 1994 Challenge

The American people, North and South, went into the {Civil} war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjectsâ€¦And what they thus lost they have never got back. --H.L. Mencken

Concerning Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, It is generally stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination - 'that government of the people, by the people, for the people, 'should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the states, i.e., of the people of the States. --H.L. Mencken, 1920

Contrary to popular belief, the War Between the States did not prove that the Southern States had no legal right to secede. In fact, many incidents both preceding and following the War support the proposition that the Southern States did have the right to secede from the Union. Instances of nullification prior to the War Between the States, contingencies under which certain states acceded to the Union, and the fact that the Southern States were made to surrender the right to secession all affirm the existence of a right to secede.

In addition, the national Constitutionâ€™s failure to forbid secession and the various amendments concerning secession that were proposed while the Southern States were seceding each strengthen the proposition: that the Southern States had an absolute right to secede from the Union prior to the War Between the States. --H. Newcomb Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson Law Review 15 (1986) p. 420.

Concerning CSA President Jefferson Davis, "He was imprisoned after the war, was never brought to trial. The North didn't dare give him a trial, knowing that a trial would establish that secession was not unconstitutional, that there had been no 'rebellion', and the South had got a raw deal.---but he refused to ask the United States for a 'pardon', demanding that the government either offer him a pardon or give him a trial or admit that he had been unjustly death with. He died, "unpardoned" by a government that was leery of giving him a public hearing." --James Street, The Civil War

I am for preserving to the States the powers not yielded by them to the Union.. --Thomas Jefferson

...the destruction of our State governments or the annihilation of their control over the local concerns of the people would lead directly to revolution and anarchy...--Andrew Jackson, the 2nd Inaugural Address

That government being instituted for the common benefit, the doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind. --Article of Rights, Constitution of Tennessee

The future inhabitants of {both} the Atlantic and Mississippi states will be our sons. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove otherwise; and if they see their interest in separating why should we take sides? God bless them both, and keep them in union if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better. --Thomas Jefferson

Over a hundred years ago, the Confederate States of America tried unsuccessfully to lead our nation into disunion for all of the wrong reasons - preservation of slavery, racism, and the 'southern way of life'

After military defeat, occupation, and Reconstruction, they were dragged kicking and screaming back into the Union. Maybe it's high time the South reconsidered secession - this time for the right reasons.

--Dr. Thomas Naylor, Downsizing the United States of America, Nov/Dec 1994 Challenge

.....they turned in the final stages of resistance to thoughts about the nature of free government. In the end, they came reluctantly to the conclusion that secession was their only recourse. --James McClellan, Liberty, Order And Justice

Some people ask: "What happens when a country, composed of one rich province and several poor ones, falls apart because the rich province secedes?" Most probably the answer is "Nothing very much happens." The rich will continue to be rich and the poor will continue to be poor. "But if, before secession, the rich province had subsidized the poor, what happens then?" Well then, of course, the subsidy might stop. But the rich rarely subsidize the poor, more often they exploit them.
--F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp.76-77

We are a nation born in secession, consecrated to the right of a free people to rule themselves, and our inherited desire for local control flickers onâ€¦But home rule is an old American story, and may be due for a revival by some band of cowlick Jeffersons. For when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands that have tied them to another, self-evident truths have a funny way of asserting themselves. --Bill Kauffman, "Smaller is Beautiful," American Enterprise, March/April 1995, p. 41.

The first thing I have at heart is American liberty; the second thing is American Union. --Patrick Henry

I expect to see trade wars, foreign policy disasters, a few race riots, a decrease in personal liberty, higher taxes, higher inflation and probably, economic collapse. The silver lining is, secession will probably become more feasible. --Charley Reese, What next four years has in store for us column Nov. 8.1996 in Orlando Sentinal

Up until the late unpleasantness of the Civil war, then, the right of secession was more or less taken for granted in many quarters, and there has never been any amendment or even a Supreme Court decision saying it's improper. --Samual Francis, Secession May Be Legal But Not Expedient, Conservative Chronicles

If there be any among us who wish to dissolve the Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed, as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. -- Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address

The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their Nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the States chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so... --Alex de Tocqueville, Democracy In America

the great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration is that governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed" so if the Southern states wanted to secede "they have a clear right to do so." If a tyrannical government justified the Revolution of 1776, "we do not see why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861. --Horace Greeley, New York Tribune editor, Feb 18, 1861

We hold with Jefferson that governments are made for the people and not people for the governments...When any portion of the Union large enough to form an independent nation shall show that, and say authentically. 'We want to get away from you,' regard for the principle of self-government will constrain the residue to say "Go". We shall willingly do nothing that looks like bribery or wheedling any state or section to remain in the Union... --Horace Greeley

Brilliant though the crafters of the U.S. Constitution may have been, they could not have anticipated the size and diversity of the United States today. We have created an unworkable mega-nation that defies central management and control. The time has come to begin planning the rational downsizing of America. States such as Vermont should be allowed to secede - an act which clearly is not prohibited by our Constitution.
--Dr. Thomas Naylor

If it {Declaration of Independence} justifies the secession from the British empire of 3,000,000 of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of 5,000,000 of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861. If we are mistaken on this point, why does not some one attempt to show wherein why? --New York Tribune, December 17, 1860

The United States has become too big, too authoritarian, and too undemocratic. Its states assume too little responsibility for the solution of their own social, economic, and political problems. So starved for revenue are our states that they are all too willing to abdicate to the federal government their responsibilities for public education, criminal justice, employment, and environmental protection. Fine tuning or patch our badly crippled political system will do little to turn the situation around. There is only on solution to the problems of America- peaceful dissolution, not piecemeal devolution. --Thomas H Naylor & William H. Willimon, Downsizing the U.S.A.

Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.

The said states hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their Liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any another pretense whatever.
--The Articles of Confederation

The procedure of secession was to have an election for delegates to a state convention, to meet in convention, and to adopt ordinances of secession. This was done in accord with the Southern understanding of what would be in keeping with the United States Constitution. It had, after all, been ratified by the states acting through conventions. Could they not "un-ratify"it - secede from the Union - in the same fashion? --Clarence Carson, A Basic History Of The United States