ost
cherished principles within the Union, was ready to seize the first
pretext for leaving it; and the strength of the popular sentiment may
be measured by the willingness of every class, gentle and simple,
rich and poor, to risk all and to suffer all, in order to free
themselves from bonds which must soon have become unbearable. It is
always difficult to analyse the motives of those by whom revolution
is provoked; but if a whole people acquiesce, it is a certain proof
of the existence of universal apprehension and deep-rooted
discontent. The spirit of self-sacrifice which animated the
Confederate South has been characteristic of every revolution which
has been the expression of a nation's wrongs, but it has never yet
accompanied mere factious insurrection.

When, in process of time, the history of Secession comes to be viewed
with the same freedom from prejudice as the history of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it will be clear that the
fourth great Revolution of the English-speaking race differs in no
essential characteristic from those which preceded it. It was not
simply because the five members were illegally impeached in 1642, the
seven bishops illegally tried in 1688, men shot at Lexington in 1775,
or slavery threatened in 1861, that the people rose. These were the
occasions, not the causes of revolt. In each case a great principle
was at stake: in 1642 the liberty of the subject; in 1688 the
integrity of the Protestant faith; in 1775 taxation only with consent
of the taxed; in 1861 the sovereignty of the individual States.* (*
It has been remarked that States' Rights, as a political principle,
cannot be placed on the same plane as those with which it is here
grouped. History, however, proves conclusively that, although it may
be less vital to the common weal, the right of self-government is
just as deeply cherished. A people that has once enjoyed independence
can seldom be brought to admit that a Union with others deprives it
of the prerogatives of sovereignty, and it would seem that the
treatment of this instinct of nationality is one of the most delicate
and important tasks of statesmanship.)

The accuracy of this statement, as already suggested, has been
consistently denied. That the only principle involved in Secession
was the establishment of slavery on a firmer basis, and that the cry
of States' Rights was raised only by way of securing sympathy, is a
very general opinion. But before it can b