<emph>Senate Bill, No. 16.</emph><emph>Joint Resolution Defining the Position of the Confederate States, and Declaring the Determination of the Congress and the People Thereof to Prosecute the War Till their Independence is Acknowledged:</emph> Electronic Edition.

<emph>Senate Bill, No. 16.</emph><emph>Joint Resolution Defining the Position of the Confederate States, and Declaring the Determination of the Congress and the People Thereof to Prosecute the War Till their Independence is Acknowledged:</emph> Electronic Edition. Confederate States of America. Congress. Senate. Funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this title. Text scanned (OCR) by Christie Mawhinney Text encoded by Melissa Maxwell Edwards and Natalia Smith First edition, 1999 ca. 20K Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1999.

© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.

Call number 183 Conf. (Rare Book Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Joint resolution defining the position of the Confederate States, and declaring the determination of the Congress and the people thereof to prosecute the war till their independence is acknowledged Confederate States of America. Congress. Senate. [Richmond][The Senate]1864

The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-CH digitization project, Documenting the American South.

Any hyphens occurring in line breaks have been removed, and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line.

All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity references.

All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as ” and “ respectively.

All single right and left quotation marks are encoded as ’ and ‘ respectively.

All em dashes are encoded as —

Indentation in lines has not been preserved.

Spell-check and verification made against printed text using Author/Editor (SoftQuad) and Microsoft Word spell check programs.

Library of Congress Subject Headings, 21st edition, 1998 United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Law and legislation. Legislation -- Confederate States of America. Confederate States of America -- Foreign relations. Secession -- Southern States. 1999-05-28, Celine Noel and Wanda Gunther revised TEIHeader and created catalog record for the electronic edition. 1999-05-21, Natalia Smith, project manager, finished TEI-conformant encoding and final proofing. 1999-05-21, Melissa Maxwell Edwards finished TEI/SGML encoding 1999-05-19, Christie Mawhinney finished scanning (OCR) and proofing. [SENATE BILL, No. 16.]

SENATE, Nov. 18, 1864.—Read first and second times and placed on calendar and ordered to be printed. Nov. 29, 1864.—Referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations. Dec. 13, 1864.—Reported with an amendment, engrossed and read the third time and passed.

JAMES H. NASH, Secretary.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Dec. 15th, 1864.—Read the first and second times and referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs and ordered to be printed.

JOINT RESOLUTION Defining the position of the Confederate States, and declaring the determination of the Congress and the people thereof to prosecute the war till their independence is acknowledged.

1. Resolved by the Congress of the Confederate States of 2 America, That the people of the Confederate States are endowed 3 by their Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty 4 and the pursuit of happiness That, to secure these rights, governments 5 were instituted among men, deriving their just powers 6 from the consent of the governed, and whenever any government 7 becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the 8 people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, 9 laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its 10 powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect 11 their safety and happiness. That, on these principles, embodied 12 in the Declaration of American Independence, the United Colonies, 13 in 1776, dissolved the connection that bound them to the 14 government of Great Britain, and on them the Confederate 15 States have severed the bonds of that political union which connected 16 them with the people and the government of the United 17 States of America, rather than submit to the repeated injuries 18 inflicted upon them by that people and to the usurpations of that 19 government, all of which had the direct object to deprive them 20 of their rights, rob them of property secured to them by constitutional 21 guarantees, and to establish an absolute tyranny over 22 these States.

1. Resolved, That the Confederate States appealed to arms in 2 defence of these rights and to establish these principles only 3 after they had in vain conjured the people and the government 4 of the United States, by all the ties of a common kindred, to discountenance 5 and discontinue these injuries and usurpations, and 6 after they had petitioned for redress in the most appropriate 7 terms, and received in answer only a repetition of insults and injuries, 8 which foreshadowed usurpations still more dangerous to 9 liberty.

1. Resolved, That after nearly four years of cruel, desolating 2 and unnatural war, in which the people of the Confederate States 3 have unquestionably established their capacity for self-government, 4 and their ability to resist the attempts of the enemy to subjugate 5 them, this Congress does not hesitate to avow its sincere desire 6 for peace, and to that end proclaims to the world the readiness 7 of the Government of the Confederate States to open negotiations 8 to establish a permanent and honorable peace between the Confederate 9 States and the United States, upon the basis of the separate 10 independence of the former.

1. Resolved, That the time has come when the Confederate Congress, 2 in the name of the people of the Confederate States, deem 3 it proper again to proclaim to the world their unalterable determination 4 to be free, and that they do not abate one jot of their 5 high resolve to die freemen rather than endure the tyranny which 6 must follow subjugation; and further, if the people of the United 7 States, by re-electing Abraham Lincoln, mean to tender to them 8 four years more of war, or re-union with them on any terms, 9 deeply deprecating the dire necessity so wantonly thrust upon 10 them, and relying upon the justice of their cause and the gallantry 11 of their soldiers, they accept the gage of battle, and leave 12 the result to the righteous arbitrament of Heaven.

1. Resolved, That in view of the determination of the enemy to 2 prosecute this horrid war still further, against which the Confederate 3 States have at all times protested, and which the enemy have 4 waged with extraordinary vigor, and which has been marked by 5 acts of extraordinary atrocity, in violation of all the usages of 6 civilized warfare, the Congress of the Confederate States will, 7 from this hour, dedicate themselves anew to the great cause of 8 self-defence against the combined tyranny of the enemy. That it 9 shall no longer be the momentary occupation of the Congress and 10 the people of the Confederate States, but the business of their lives 11 to gather together the entire strength of the country in men and 12 materials of war, and put it forth as with the will of one man, 13 and with an unconquerable determination to defend their altars 14 and their firesides till the last votary of freedom falls around 15 them.