all
sorts of ways and with various aggravations, that, in attempting to
rupture our Union, and to withdraw from it on their own terms, at their
own pleasure, the seceding States are but repeating the course of the
old Thirteen Colonies in declaring themselves independent, and sundering
their ties to the mother country. There is evidently the rankling of an
old smart in this plea for rebels, which, while it is not intended to
justify rebellion in itself, is devised as a vindication of rebels
against rebels. There is manifest satisfaction and a high zest, and
something of the morally awful and solemnly remonstrative, in the way in
which the past is evoked to visit its ghostly retribution upon us. The
old sting rankles in the English breast. She is looking on now to see us
hoist by our own petard. These pamphlet pages, with their circumscribed
limits and their less ambitious aims, do not invite an elaborate dealing
with the facts of the case, which would expose the sophistical, if not
the vengeful spirit of this English plea, as for rebels against rebels.
A thorough exposition of the relations which the present Insurrection
bears to the former Revolution would demand an essay. The relations
between them, however, whether stated briefly or at length, would be
found to be simply relations of difference, without one single point
of resemblance, much less of coincidence. We can make but the briefest
reference to the points of contrast and unlikeness between the two
things, after asserting that they have no one common feature. It might
seem evasive in us to suggest to our English critics that they should
refresh their memories about the causes and the justification of our
Revolution by reading the pages of their own Burke. We are content to
rest our case on his argument, simply affirming that on no one point
will it cover the alleged parallelism of the Southern Rebellion.

The relations of our States to each other and to the Union are quite
unlike those in which the Colonies stood to England. England claimed by
right of discovery and exploration the soil on which her Colonies here
were planted, though she had rival claimants from the very first. A
large number of the Colonists never had any original connection with
England, and owed her no allegiance. Holland, Sweden, and other
countries furnished much of the first stock of our settlers, who thought
they were occupying a wild part of God's earth rather than a portion of
the En