the body. This is the justification of war. If hesitating to undertake
it means the overthrow of liberty possessed, or the lying passive in
slavery already accomplished, then it is the duty of every man to fight
if he is standing, or revolt if he is down. And he must make no peace
till freedom is assured, for the moral plague that eats up a people
whose independence is lost is more calamitous than any physical rending
of limb from limb. The body is a passing phase; the spirit is immortal;
and the degradation of that immortal part of man is the great tragedy of
life. Consider all the mean things and debasing tendencies that wither
up a people in a state of slavery. There are the bribes of those in
power to maintain their ascendancy, the barter of every principle by
time-servers; the corruption of public life and the apathy of private
life; the hard struggle of those of high ideals, the conflict with all
ignoble practices, the wearing down of patience, and in the end the
quiet abandoning of the flag once bravely flourished; then the increased
numbers of the apathetic and the general gloom, depression, and
despair--everywhere a land decaying. Viciousness, meanness, cowardice,
intolerance, every bad thing arises like a weed in the night and blights
the land where freedom is dead; and the aspect of that land and the soul
of that people become spectacles of disgust, revolting and terrible,
terrible for the high things degraded and the great destinies
imperilled. It would be less terrible if an earthquake split the land in
two, and sank it into the ocean. To avert the moral plague of slavery
men fly to arms, notwithstanding the physical consequence, and those who
set more count by the physical consequences cannot by that avert them,
for the moral disease is followed by physical wreck--if delayed still
inevitable. So, physical force is justified, not _per se_, but as an
expression of moral force; where it is unsupported by the higher
principle it is evil incarnate. The true antithesis is not between moral
force and physical force, but between moral force and moral weakness.