The Name Of Secession Claimed By The
South For This Movement Is A Misnomer.
If any part of a nationality
or empire ever rebelled against the government established on behalf
of the whole,
South Carolina so rebelled when, on the 20th of
November, 1860, she put forth her ordinance of so-called secession;
and the other Southern States joined in that rebellion when they
followed her lead. As to that fact, there cannot, I think, much
longer be any doubt in any mind. I insist on this especially,
repeating perhaps unnecessarily opinions expressed in my first
volume, because I still see it stated by English writers that the
secession ordinance of South Carolina should have been accepted as a
political act by the Government of the United States. It seems to
me that no government can in this way accept an act of rebellion
without declaring its own functions to be beyond its own power.
But what if such rebellion be justifiable, or even reasonable? what
if the rebels have cause for their rebellion? For no one will now
deny that rebellion may be both reasonable and justifiable; or that
every subject in the land may be bound in duty to rebel. In such
case the government will be held to have brought about its own
punishment by its own fault. But as government is a wide affair,
spreading itself gradually, and growing in virtue or in vice from
small beginnings - from seeds slow to produce their fruits - it is
much easier to discern the incidence of the punishment than the
perpetration of the fault.
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