e discontented quarters a hope to rally
round, and the assurance of the support they have a right to expect.
There is probably a majority, and certainly a powerful minority, in the
seceding States, who are loyal to the Union; and these should have that
support which the prestige of the General Government can alone give
them. It is not to the North nor to the Republican party that the
malcontents are called on to submit, but to the laws and to the benign
intentions of the Constitution, as they were understood by its framers.
What the country wants is a permanent settlement; and it has learned,
by repeated trial, that compromise is not a cement, but a wedge. The
Government did not hesitate to protect the doubtful right of property
of a Virginian in Anthony Burns by the exercise of coercion, and the
loyalty of Massachusetts was such that her own militia could be used to
enforce an obligation abhorrent, and, as there is reason to believe,
made purposely abhorrent, to her dearest convictions and most venerable
traditions; and yet the same Government tampers with armed treason, and
lets _I dare not_ wait upon _I would_, when it is a question of
protecting the acknowledged property of the Union, and of sustaining,
nay, preserving even, a gallant officer whose only fault is that he has
been too true to his flag. While we write, the newspapers bring us the
correspondence between Mr. Buchanan and the South Carolina "Commissioners;"
and surely never did a government stoop so low as ours has done, not
only in consenting to receive these ambassadors from Nowhere, but in
suggesting that a soldier deserves court-martial who has done all he
could to maintain himself in a forlorn hope, with rebellion in his
front and treachery in his rear. Our Revolutionary heroes had
old-fashioned notions about rebels, suitable to the straightforward
times in which they lived,--times when blood was as freely shed to
secure our national existence as milk-and-water is now to destroy it.
Mr. Buchanan might have profited by the example of men who knew nothing
of the modern arts of Constitutional interpretation, but saw clearly
the distinction between right and wrong. When a party of the Shays
rebels came to the house of General Pomeroy, in Northampton, and asked
if he could accommodate them,--the old soldier, seeing the green sprigs
in their hats, the badges of their treason, shouted to his son, "Fetch
me my hanger, and I'll _accommodate_ the scoundrels!" Ge