If the confederacy is broken up, the government is dissolved, and it behooves every distinct community, as well as every individual, to take care of themselves.

When disunion has become a fixed and certain act, why may not New York disrupt the bands which bind her to a venal and corrupt master... Amid the gloom which the present and prospective condition of things must cast over the country, New York, as a free city, may shed only light and hope of a future reconstruction of our once blessed confederacy.

The American Civil War (ACW), also known as the War of the Rebellion, the Great Rebellion, and several other names, was a civil war that was fought in the United States of America from 1861 to 1865. Fearing that the future of slavery was in jeopardy after the election of an anti-slavery U.S. president, eleven slave-holding U.S. states located in the southern United States declared their secession from the country and formed the Confederate States, also known as "the Confederacy", sparking war. Led by Democrat Jefferson Davis, they fought against the United States, also known as "the Union", led by Republican Abraham Lincoln, which consisted of every free U.S. state as well as five slave-holding states, known as "border states". In 1865, after four years of warfare, the Confederacy surrendered, and slavery was abolished in the United States with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution by three-fourths of the states.