There have been many attempts to frame the cause of the War Between the States as being one of constitutional inadequacies, and not simply that of slavery. Many of these works are of legal intricacy, difficult for those who are not trained in the law to comprehend, and thus disinteresting to a greater audience. Others have been written by those not trained in the law, but endowed with an abundance of enthusiasm that has confused and thwarted an attempt to present a logical and reasoned argument.
       Walter Neale was the President of The Neale Publishing Company, a somewhat obscure publishing firm in New York responsible for several decidedly pro-Confederate works in the early Twentieth Century. Neale opens this little book by admitting that the essays contained therein are “orations” and must be considered as such, laced with emotional appeals that should not undermine his intent: “The fact that there are incompetent workers in oratory and in poetry, as in all the affairs of men, does not supply proper motive for the debasement of two noble arts” (page 2). This leads to the suspicion that Neale was prepared to be jeered for his work. He does, however, offer a credible argument supported by Humphrey Gilbert’s 1587 patent to establish colonies in New World: “While the patent provided that the head of the British nation should also be the head of each of the American nations, the sovereignty of none was affected by that position. Two countries or more may acknowledge a king common to them all, yet each be a sovereign entity” (page 10).
       Neal further argues that nations “under God” owe no allegiance to any monarch save that of Heaven, submit themselves only to the supreme laws of God, and that no monarch has a right to exercise supreme authority. While admitting that the Revolution of 1776 may, under strict interpretation, have been illegal, Neal nevertheless argues that the Treaty of Paris in 1783 endowed each State with sovereignty of individual nations: “His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges that said United States, viz; New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, to be Free Sovereign and Independent States; that he treats with them as such” (pages 71-72; emphasis added). In that sense, under international law today, the sovereignty of the Southern States had been asserted and acknowledged by another nation, and nothing in the Constitution drafted in Philadelphia could remove those rights.
       While slavery has long been given as the reason for the war, it only sanctified the Union’s “moral right” to use force against the "rebellious" Southern States. The focus on the issue of slavery does not provide, however, an accurate account of the real reasons for the devastating struggle, and serves to deflect discussion away from that cause which has still not been resolved today. Chief among these reasons were the many inadequacies of the Constitution itself. Neal offers his case in simple terms: “Here I yield to the temptation to point out one more defect in the agreement between the American sovereignties [the Constitution]. The name of the holding company never should have been the United States of America; but that name should have been the American States United” (page 85). Among the other flaws in the current Constitution, Neal points out that terms such as “state,” “nation,” “union” and “sovereignty” were never clearly defined, and the interpretation of those terms was left to the side with the greater armed power, or greater political muscle.
       While the Constitution (which Neal describes as "the treaty between the American nations") should have been a defining moment for the States, Neal blames “highwaymen” like Alexander Hamilton for hijacking the agenda, and having fought against one king, sought to install another. He likens this to an “American Absolute Monarchy,” one against which, as they had in 1776, several States found themselves at war in 1861. Even then, the South did not fight as a nation:

Never spell the southern section of this continent that once consisted of sovereign countries with an initial capital letter. There never was a “South” in America. The Confederate States of America, a temporary association, was an agreement between sovereignties. The words in which that agreement was written never were intended to mean that sovereignty would be merged into a single nation (page 117).

       While this may be true, Neal effectively dispels any notion that the “South will rise again," for such would require a like-minded action by all those confederated States for history to repeat itself – if indeed it ever could – in a world where even international recognition of a single State’s declaration of independence would be overridden by the enormous political, military and economic power the United States wields throughout the globe today.

— reviewed by Jay Underwood