Newspapers were as rabid
against each other as ever, but no newspaper could live which did
not support the war.
"The South has rebelled against the law, and
the law shall be supported." This has been the cry and the
heartfelt feeling of all men; and it is a feeling which cannot but
inspire respect.
We have heard much of the tyranny of the present government of the
United States, and of the tyranny also of the people. They have
both been very tyrannical. The "habeas corpus" has been suspended
by the word of one man. Arrests have been made on men who have
been hardly suspected of more than secession principles. Arrests
have, I believe, been made in cases which have been destitute even
of any fair ground for such suspicion. Newspapers have been
stopped for advocating views opposed to the feelings of the North,
as freely as newspapers were ever stopped in France for opposing
the Emperor. A man has not been safe in the streets who was known
to be a secessionist. It must be at once admitted that opinion in
the Northern States was not free when I was there. But has opinion
ever been free anywhere on all subjects? In the best built
strongholds of freedom, have there not always been questions on
which opinion has not been free; and must it not always be so?
When the decision of a people on any matter has become, so to say,
unanimous - when it has shown itself to be so general as to be
clearly the expression of the nation's voice as a single chorus,
that decision becomes holy, and may not be touched.
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