Under Such Circumstances I Cannot Think That Rebellion On The Part
Of The South Was Justified By Wrongs Endured, Or Made Reasonable By
The Prospect Of Wrongs To Be Inflicted.
It is disagreeable, that
having to live with a wife who is always rebuking one for some
special fault; but the outside world will not grant a divorce on
that account, especially if the outside world is well aware that the
fault so rebuked is of daily occurrence.
"If you do not choose to
be called a drunkard by your wife," the outside world will say, "it
will be well that you should cease to drink." Ah! but that habit of
drinking, when once acquired, cannot easily be laid aside. The
brain will not work; the organs of the body will not perform their
functions; the blood will not run. The drunkard must drink till he
dies. All that may be a good ground for divorce, the outside world
will say; but the plea should be put in by the sober wife, not by
the intemperate husband. But what if the husband takes himself off
without any divorce, and takes with him also his wife's property,
her earnings, that on which he has lived and his children? It may
be a good bargain still for her, the outside world will say; but
she, if she be a woman of spirit, will not willingly put up with
such wrongs. The South has been the husband drunk with slavery, and
the North has been the ill-used wife.
Rebellion, as I have said, is often justifiable but it is, I think,
never justifiable on the part of a paid servant of that government
against which it is raised. We must, at any rate, feel that this is
true of men in high places - as regards those men to whom by reason
of their offices it should specially belong to put down rebellion.
Had Washington been the governor of Virginia, had Cromwell been a
minister of Charles, had Garibaldi held a marshal's baton under the
Emperor of Austria or the King of Naples, those men would have been
traitors as well as rebels. Treason and rebellion may be made one
under the law, but the mind will always draw the distinction. I, if
I rebel against the Crown, am not on that account necessarily a
traitor. A betrayal of trust is, I take it, necessary to treason.
I am not aware that Jefferson Davis is a traitor; but that Buchanan
was a traitor admits, I think, of no doubt. Under him, and with his
connivance, the rebellion was allowed to make its way. Under him,
and by his officers, arms and ships and men and money were sent away
from those points at which it was known that they would be needed,
if it were intended to put down the coming rebellion, and to those
points at which it was known that they would be needed, if it were
intended to foster the coming rebellion.
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