Disunion Feed

"But let an arrogant and besotted minority curb the majority by tricks like these, and when you have compromised away Lincoln, you revive John Brown. [...] Strictly speaking, I repudiate the term “insurrection.” The slaves are not a herd of vassals. They are a nation, four millions strong; having the same right of revolution that Hungary and Florence have. I acknowledge the right of two million and a half of white people in the seven seceding states to organize their government as they choose. Just as freely I acknowledge the right of four million of black people to organize their government, and to vindicate that right by arms."

Ten days after Montgomery, Phillips grants the seceding states the right to organize their government as they choose — and in the same breath grants four million enslaved people the identical right, by arms. The symmetry IS the argument. This is the SECOND of the two Music Hall discourses (Feb 17); the first is Jan 20, in chapter 3 (se-025). Non-contiguous passages from the one discourse joined with [...]; each verified against the archive.org scan. OCR line-wrap hyphens rejoined ("arro-gant", "seced-ing").

Read it in the original — "Progress," Music Hall, Feb 17, 1861 ↗

"Our present political position has been achieved in a manner unprecedented in the history of nations. It illustrates the American idea that governments rest on the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish them at will whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established. [...] Thus the sovereign States here represented have proceeded to form this Confederacy; and it is by abuse of language that their act has been denominated a revolution. They formed a new alliance, but within each State its government has remained; so that the rights of person and property have not been disturbed."

Davis claims the Declaration of Independence for the slaveholding republic in his first breath as president: secession as the American idea fulfilled, not betrayed. Then he insists that founding a nation is not a revolution — and that "the rights of person and property have not been disturbed," in a speech founding a government whose property is people. Avalon's text derives from Richardson's 1905 compilation; it reads "rest on the consent" where the Papers of Jefferson Davis reads "rest upon." Non-contiguous passages joined with [...].

Read it in the original — Inaugural Address, Montgomery, Feb 18, 1861 ↗