"Amen!" replied Harold, with much feeling. "But I do not understand why
we should be enemies. You surely will not lend your voice to this
rebellion?"

"When the question of secession is before the people of my State, I
shall cast my vote as my judgment and conscience shall dictate.
Meanwhile I shall examine the issue, and, I trust, dispassionately. But
whatever may become of my individual opinion, where Virginia goes I go,
whatever be the event."

"Would you uphold a wrong in the face of your own conscience?"

"Oh, as to that, I do not hold it a question between right and wrong,
but simply of advisability. The right of secession I entertain no doubt
about."

"No doubt as to the right of dismembering and destroying a government
which has fostered your infancy, developed your strength, and made you
one among the parts of a nation that has no peer in a world's history?
Is it possible that intellect and honesty can harbor such a doctrine!"

"My dear Harold, you look at the subject as an enthusiast, and you allow
your heart not to assist but to control your brain. Men, by association,
become attached to forms and symbols, so as in time to believe that upon
their existence depends the substance of which they are but the signs.
Forty years ago, in the Hawaiian Islands, the death-penalty was
inflicted upon a native of the inferior caste, should he chance to pass
over the shadow of one of noble birth. So would you avenge an insult to
a shadow, while you allow the substance to be stolen from your grasp.
Our jewel, as freemen, is the right of self-government; the form of