MC #5"What fault has there been on the part of the General Government of the United States? Why break up this Union? Will any gentleman be so kind as to particularize a single instance worthy of debate, in which the Federal Government has been - derelict [negligent] in the discharge of its duty, or has failed to accomplish the purposes of its organization? . . ."I am not here . . . to defend the election of Abraham Lincoln. I believe that his election was virtually a fraud upon the people of the United States . . . nominated, as he was, by a sectional party, and upon a sectional platform, with no representation in the body which nominated him from the South; but he was nominated and elected according to the forms of law. . . ."Let us look . . . at the evils that must result from secession. The first, in my opinion, would be that our country would not only be divided into a Northern Confederacy and into Southern Confederacy, but, soon or later it would be divided into sundry [several] petty Confederacies. We would have a Central Confederacy, a Confederacy of the States of the Mississippi Valley, a Pacific Confederacy, a Western Confederacy, an Eastern Confederacy, a Northern and a Southern Confederacy.". . . It is easy perhaps to break down this Government; but, sir, when we break it down it will not be so easy a matter to build it up. . . . Gentlemen cry out against the tyranny of their own government, and yet denounce [those opposed to secession] because we hesitate to allow ourselves to be thrust into the embraces of such a military dictatorship."Waitman T. Willey, addressing the Virginia State Secession Convention, March 4, 1861

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