We seem not to have been a happy family during our first one hundred
years as a Union of States. We quarrelled frequently among ourselves,
and like the dissatisfied children of the household there was
oft-threatened disruption. If you do not treat me fairly I will leave
home, said the stubborn Northern child, no less than the warm-hearted
Southern offspring. And they stood alike in the attitude of going out
the door the moment the provocation became unbearable. The right of
secession and the thought of secession was frequently in the mind all
along the infant years of the Republic. But the word "Secession" did not
become a familiar term until the early sixties. Then the greeting was
"Hello! old Secesh!" or "Are you secesh?" One might have thought that
this awful thing the South had done was heard of for the first time,
and had birth alone in the brains of the fiery aristocrats who tore
themselves away from their plebean cousins; whereas history shows, as
I have said, that every State believed it had a right to secede from
the general government by the wording of our constitution, so when the
pressure grew too close the terms, "Southern Rights," and "Secession,"
became the slogan of battle and sounded the tocsin of war.

Let us begin at the beginning and get at the actual situation. The
thirteen original colonies were as follows: Virginia settled by the
English, called the cavaliers, in 1607, became a royal colony in 1624.
Massachusetts, settled by the Puritans in 1620, became a royal colony
in 1629; New York, called Amsterdam, settled by the Dutch in 1623,
became a royal colony in 1688; the English were in New York in 1664.
New Hampshire, settled by Puritans in 1729, became a royal colony in
1679; Maryland, settled by Catholics from England, in 1632, became a
royal colony in 1691; Connecticut, settled by Dutch and English in 1633,