Saint Mary's beacon. [volume] (Leonard Town, Md.) 1867-1983, 1897-03-04

&8"h0A 1It 1uu are well 2Qaptel
Tor use as textbooks except for tn
very important fact that the,
entirely fail to do justice to tn,
South in the colonial, revolutionar,
military, civil, political, education
al, social or religious history prioI
70 1850. and when they come t.
treat of the great "war between tn,
States they are absolutely unfair
misleading and false in what they
say and what they omit concerning
the causes, conduct and results oil
the mighty contest, the motives,
character and deeds of our Confed
crate leaders, soldiers and people.
MISREPRESENTATION OF FAcrs.
In the colonial history they gross.
ly misrepresent the character and
history Of the Southern colonisfs
and exalt the settlers of the New
England and Middle States to the
disparagement of those of Maryland
Virginia, the Corolinas and
Georgia. In the accounts of the
Revolution they make the most of
the "Boston tea party" where men
so completely disguised as Mohawk
Indians that they were not known
at the time and whose names per-
ished threw the obnoxious tea into
Boston harbor, but they fail to tell
of the tea party at Annapolis, Md,
where in broad daylihgt and undis-
guised, men towed the tea ship
"Peggy Stewart" out into the har-
Dor and burned her and her cargo
to the waters edge, or the "'tea par
ty" at Wilmington, n. c., where
men without disguise, their names
coming down to us, pitched over
board the tea brought to that port.
They write as if the war was fought
chiefly by the North, ignoring the
fact that the South not only fur
nished the most men but sent them
to Boston and to New York and
New Jersey, shedding Southern
blood on every battlefield of the
war.
They tell glowing stories of Is
rael Putnam and other Northern
heroes. but have little to say of
Sumpter, Marion, Pickens, "Light
Horse Harry Lee, Morgan, Lewis
or George Rogers Clark, who with
his Virginia volunteers, conquered
back the Northwestern territory,
prevented the British boundary
line from extending, at the close of
the war, down to the Ohio, and en-
abled old Virginia to lay in the lap
of the Union this princely domain.
THE QUESTION OF SECESSION.
The same misrepresentation or
systematic omission of facts charac-
terizes the Northern historians
treatment Of the slavery question,
notification in South Carolina and
the discussion of secession and the
civil war. In regard to secession,
they ignore all the historical and
constitutional theories and facts
that tell against the North. They
fail to tell, of course, that New
England had through long period
of years an unbroken record in IA
vor of secession, that in 1902 the
Legislature of Massachusetts, passed
an act to the effect that the pur-
chase and annexation of Louisiana
would be a sufficient cause for the
dissolution of the Union and would
absolve the old States from their
allegiance to the Union; that dur
ing the war of 1912 the New Eng
land States not only nullifisd the
laws of Congress for the persecu-
ton of the war, but from pulpit,
press and rostrum boldly advocated
secession until the agitation culmi-
mated in the famous Hartford con-
vention, held December Is, 1914,
in which delegates from all Of the
New England States not only ad-
vocated the right of secession, but
formally resolved that the New
England States would actually Sc
cede if the war was not stopped by
a given day on which the conven-
tion was to assemble. and it was
only the close of the war, as far as
can be seen, that prevented the ac-
tual secession of the States; that
April 80, 1889, ex-President John
Quincy Adams made a speech,
which was heartily indorsed by
New England; in which he said
that it would be better for the
States to ''part in friendship from