is only despotisms that are capable of the sudden and
selfish energy of protecting themselves from destruction.

The Republican party has thus far borne itself with firmness and
moderation, and the great body of the Democratic party in the Free
States is gradually being forced into an alliance with it. Let us not
be misled by any sophisms about conciliation and compromise.
Discontented citizens may be conciliated and compromised with, but
never open rebels with arms in their hands. If there be any concessions
which justice may demand on the one hand and honor make on the other,
let us try if we can adjust them with the Border Slave States; but a
government has already signed its own death-warrant, when it consents
to make terms with law-breakers. First re-establish the supremacy of
order, and then it will be time to discuss terms; but do not call it a
compromise, when you give up your purse with a pistol at your head.
This is no time for sentimentalisms about the empty chair at the
national hearth; all the chairs would be empty soon enough, if one of
the children is to amuse itself with setting the house on fire,
whenever it can find a match. Since the election of Mr. Lincoln, not
one of the arguments has lost its force, not a cipher of the statistics
has been proved mistaken, on which the judgment of the people was made
up. Nobody proposes, or has proposed, to interfere with any existing
rights of property; the majority have not assumed to decide upon any
question of the righteousness or policy of certain social arrangements
existing in any part of the Confederacy; they have not undertaken to
constitute themselves the conscience of their neighbors; they have
simply endeavored to do their duty to their own posterity, and to
protect them from a system which, as ample experience has shown, and
that of our present difficulty were enough to show, fosters a sense of
irresponsibleness to all obligation in the governing class, and in the
governed an ignorance and a prejudice which may be misled at any moment
to the peril of the whole country.

But the present question is one altogether transcending all limits of
party and all theories of party policy. It is a question of national
existence; it is a question whether Americans shall govern America, or
whether a disappointed clique shall nullify all government now, and
render a stable government difficult hereafter; it is a question, not
whether we shall have civil war under cer