boundaries of the local and general authorities, and to fix them
permanently and unalterably. This might possibly have been accomplished
in the appointed way, by conventions and explanatory amendments to the
Constitution. But such proceedings would have been subject to all the
uncertain contingencies and delays involved in partisan struggles and
popular elections, and to all the imperfections of halfway measures and
expedients of compromise, born amid angry contentions, and bartered for
by ambitious aspirants to place and power. By no other means could a
complete and adequate arrangement of the difficulty be brought about so
effectually as by the terrible lessons of this lamentable civil war.
Nothing else would have been so well calculated to clear the eyes of the
people of all illusions, and to give them an accurate insight into the
character and demands of the crisis. Great disasters, which destroy the
fortunes of men, and disturb the prosperity of nations, never fail to
awaken the human soul, and impart to it some new and important truths.
The sufferings and calamities of the war are indeed great and
overwhelming; yet there will be some compensation for them all, in the
sad experience we shall gain, and in the stability which will result to
our sorely tried institutions in the future. Even if, against all
apparent possibilities, the rebellious States should finally conquer
their independence, not only the old Government, but even the new one
itself, or the batch of new ones that will spring up, will have learned
the most salutary lessons from the whole course of this sanguinary
struggle. No sundering of such ties as have always heretofore existed
among these States can ever take place peaceably. Both we and our
enemies will have been taught the never-to-be-forgotten truth that
secession is civil war. And we should probably have reason thereafter to
add to this sad lesson the still more solemn and portentous one, that
permanent separation of these States is nothing more or less than
perpetual war, with the accompaniments of large standing armies, vast
public debts, oppressive taxes, loss of liberty, and progressive decline
of civilization. This state of things would, however, eventually cure
itself. What is called the balance of power in Europe has been brought
to its present condition of imperfect stability only through centuries
of war. What bloody commotions should we experience before the
conditions of stable equili