Excerpt from Events of the Civil War

The Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787, failed to deter mine the right of states to withdraw from the Union. Had that right been conceded by the convention the constitution then adopted would have been of no more binding force than a rope of sand.

Some of the separate colonies were at that time so jealous of their rights that they were only willing to make sufficient con cessions to enable the formation of a confederation, and had the denial of the right to withdraw from the Union been insisted upon at that time the adoption of the articles of confederation could not have been accomplished.

The desire of the people of the north or free states to restrict the limits of the slave holding section and prevent the introduction of that institution into new territory, was the cause 'of sectional differences to such an extent as to cause the southern or slave holding states to attempt to exercise what they deemed to be their reserved right to withdraw from the Union, thereby necessitating the right of secession to be determined by an appeal to arms, and thereby precipitating the greatest conflict in the world's history.

In contemplating the magnitude of the war of the Rebellion, and considering the fact that the tendency to arbitrate differences between nations, the fearful efficiency of modern weapons, in creased facilities for rapid transportation, as well as higher degrees of civilization and Christianizing influences on mankind must tend to decrease wars and cause the few that do occur to be of brief duration in the future, leaving the War of the Rebellion to always remain the greatest contest of arms in the world's history, and causing its most important events to be studied and viewed with an ever increasing interest, seems an incentive to those who participated in that contest to leave as complete a record as pos sible of the principal incidents as they actually occurred.

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