BEING CONVINCED in our consciences that secession would be disastrous to the material well-being of all Americans as well as of the whole of the US, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship, and perilous to the unity of our nation, we, whose names are underwritten, Americans, loyal patriots to our Nation and President, humbly relying on both Reason and/or the God whom our fathers in days of stress and trial confidently trusted, do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn Covenant, throughout this our time of threatened disunity, to stand by one another in defending, for ourselves and our children, our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United States, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to secede.



