The ambitious and aggressive States obtain possession of
the central authority which, having grown strong in the lapse of time,
asserts its entire sovereignty over the States. Whichever of them denies
it and seeks to retire, is declared to be guilty of insurrection, its
citizens are stigmatized as "rebels," as if they had revolted against a
master, and a war of subjugation is begun. If this action is once
tolerated, where will it end? Where is the value of constitutional
liberty? What strength is there in bills of rights--in limitations of
power? What new hope for mankind is to be found in written
constitutions, what remedy which did not exist under kings or emperors?
If the doctrines thus announced by the Government of the United States
are conceded, then, look through either end of the political telescope,
and one sees only an empire, and the once famous Declaration of
Independence trodden in the dust as a "glittering generality," and the
compact of union denounced as a "flaunting lie." Those who submit to
such consequences without resistance are not worthy of the liberties and
the rights to which they were born, and deserve to be made slaves. Such
must be the verdict of mankind.
Men do not fight to make a fraternal union, neither do nations. These
military preparations of the Government of the United States signified
nothing less than the subjugation of the Southern States, so that, by
one devastating blow, the North might grasp for ever that supremacy it
had so long coveted.
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