President Johnson issued a general amnesty proclamation. [115] _Reuben Davis’ Recollections_, p. 395. Undoubtedly the confidence of the South in its assumed superiority in courage and fighting qualities had great influence in inducing its attempted secession. Jefferson Davis in his history gives instances of advantages gained at the outset by the Southern soldiers through their skill in the use of firearms. He did not tell us, and it seems to have escaped notice generally, that the Southern States had also the great benefit of the military academies they had established, which furnished at once trained officers for their troops. Their renowned general, Stonewall Jackson, was a professor in that of Virginia, and went from the academy to the Confederate army.[116] [116] See article by John S. Wise in the _Century Magazine_, Jan., 1890. The Virginia Military Academy was established by the State in 1839. Col. Smith, a graduate of West Point, was at the head. It was continued during the civil war under the charge of disabled officers. In 1860 a professor in this school informed the writer that there were similar academies in all the Southern States. Apparently they have been discontinued in most of them, South Carolina, however, yet maintaining hers. The seceding States in forming their new compact, in article after article followed the Constitution they rejected, prefacing it with the declaration, “We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a more permanent Federal Government,” instead of “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, for ourselves and our posterity.” They took particular care, however, by their new “Compact,” to provide for the perpetuity of slavery in their Confederacy,--and, looking to conquests, in any new territory that might be acquired. Instead of slavery being perpetuated, the whole system was annihilated under and within the Constitution. The amendment abolishing it forever was passed in the manner required in the Constitution by all the States that had refused an obedience to the United States laws. No longer is the declaration of independence that all men are born free and equal, in the language of Calhoun, “a glittering generality.” The seceding States were not without their internal trouble, and the authority of the Confederate Government was questioned by Georgia.