lity and
equality in the Union which were rights assured under the Federal
compact. There were others, and they the most numerous class, who
considered that the separation would be final, but peaceful. For my own
part, while believing that secession was a right, and properly a
peaceable remedy, I had never believed that it would be permitted to be
peaceably exercised. Very few in the South at that time agreed with me,
and my answers to queries on the subject were, therefore, as unexpected
as they were unwelcome.

On my arrival at Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, I found that the
Convention of the State had made provision for a State army, and had
appointed me to the command, with the rank of major-general. Four
brigadier-generals, appointed in like manner by the Convention, were
awaiting my arrival for assignment to duty. After the preparation of the
necessary rules and regulations, the division of the State into
districts, the apportionment among them of the troops to be raised, and
the appointment of officers of the general staff, as authorized by the
ordinance of the Convention, such measures as were practicable were
taken to obtain the necessary arms. The State had few serviceable
weapons, and no establishment for their manufacture or repair. This fact
(which is true of other Southern States as of Mississippi) is a clear
proof of the absence of any desire or expectation of war. If the purpose
of the Northern States to make war upon us because of secession had been
foreseen, preparation to meet the consequences would have been
contemporaneous with the adoption of a resort to that remedy--a remedy
the possibility of which had for many years been contemplated. Had the
Southern States possessed arsenals, and collected in them the requisite
supplies of arms and munitions, such preparation would not only have
placed them more nearly on an equality with the North in the beginning
of the war, but might, perhaps, have been the best conservator of peace.

Let us, the survivors, however, not fail to do credit to the generous
credulity which could not understand how, in violation of the compact of
Union, a war could be waged against the States, or why they should be
invaded because their people had deemed it necessary to withdraw from an
association which had failed to fulfill the ends for which they had
entered into it, and which, having been broken to their injury by the
other parties, had ceased to be binding upon them.