It Would Then Have
Seemed To Those Who Sat In Judgment On Her That She Might Have
Righted Everything By
That one blow from which she had abstained.
But having struck that one blow, and having found that it did
Not
suffice, could she then withdraw, give way, and own herself beaten?
Has it been so usually with Anglo-Saxon pluck? In such case as
that, would there have been no mention of those two dogs, Brag and
Holdfast? The man of the Northern States knows that he has
bragged - bragged as loudly as his English forefathers. In that
matter of bragging, the British lion and the star-spangled banner
may abstain from throwing mud at each other. And now the Northern
man wishes to show that he can hold fast also. Looking at all this
I cannot see that peace has been possible to the North.
As to the question of secession and rebellion being one and the
same thing, the point to me does not seem to bear an argument. The
confederation of States had a common army, a common policy, a
common capital, a common government, and a common debt. If one
might secede, any or all might secede, and where then would be
their property, their debt, and their servants? A confederation
with such a license attached to it would have been simply playing
at national power. If New York had seceded - a State which
stretches from the Atlantic to British North America - it would have
cut New England off from the rest of the Union.
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