set itself up against the
Union; and in its stead to bring into play the great principle of
popular assent to the fundamental principles and conditions of
government. Annihilate the despotism which controls in the pretended
confederacy, give the masses of the people absolute freedom of choice
under the conditions necessary for deliberate and intelligent decision,
and they will certainly pronounce for the restoration of the old Union,
under which they have enjoyed such boundless prosperity. No friend of
the Union entertains any serious thought of disregarding or destroying
the great principle that governments are only rightly founded on the
consent of the governed. But it is not every temporary aberration of
thought, nor every outbreak of revolutionary violence, which may
properly be allowed to avail in changing the forms of an established
government. Some respect is due to obligations once assumed and long
recognized as the basis of a permanent political organization; and when
the minority in that organization have taken up arms against it, the
majority, in possession of the lawful power of the nation, are bound to
vindicate its constitutional authority. If the Union cannot be
maintained by force, it ought not to be destroyed by force. The instinct
of self-preservation, which is but the impulse of a solemn duty, would
necessarily and rightfully lead it to suppress the lawless force that
assailed it. If this assault is wholly wrong and unjustifiable, if it is
in reality as injurious to the seceding States themselves as to those
which remain in the Union, then it is certain that, with the suppression
of the violence prevailing in the disaffected region, the spirit of
disunion itself will disappear. The Federal Government cannot escape the
necessity of performing this duty, of suppressing and destroying the
lawless power which assails it, and permitting the Southern people to
return to the Union. At the present moment, in the midst of a sanguinary
conflict, they are blinded with passion and overflowing with enmity. But
set them free from the power which now deceives and abuses them, which
arrays them against their own best interests, and makes them the
helpless victims of a wicked war, and they will, at no distant period,
gladly pronounce for the unity of the great nation with which Providence
has cast their lot. Innumerable indications of this disposition among
the masses of the Southern people are visible in the events of