Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 30.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[11] heresy; but, none the less, it was a heresy indisputably then preached, and to which many, not in Virginia only but in New England also, pinned their political faith. Even the Devil is proverbially entitled to his due.

So far, however, as the abstract question is of consequence, as the utterances of Professor Smith and Mr. Lodge conclusively show, the secessionists of 1861 stand in history's court by no means without a case. In that case, moreover, they implicitly believed. From generation to generation they had grown up indoctrinated with the gospel, or heresy, of State sovereignty, and it was as much part of their moral and intellectual being as was clanship of the Scotch highlanders.