Oliver Cromwell; Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, all were rebels."
Then comes the question whether South Carolina and the Gulf States
had so suffered as to make rebellion on their behalf justifiable or
reasonable; or if not, what cause had been strong enough to produce
in them so strong a desire for secession, a desire which has existed
for fully half the term through which the United States has existed
as a nation, and so firm a resolve to rush into rebellion with the
object of accomplishing that which they deemed not to be
accomplished on other terms?

It must, I think, be conceded that the Gulf States have not suffered
at all by their connection with the Northern States; that in lieu of
any such suffering, they owe all their national greatness to the
Northern States; that they have been lifted up, by the commercial
energy of the Atlantic States and by the agricultural prosperity of
the Western States, to a degree of national consideration and
respect through the world at large which never could have belonged
to them standing alone. I will not trouble my readers with
statistics which few would care to follow; but let any man of
ordinary every-day knowledge turn over in his own mind his present
existing ideas of the wealth and commerce of New York, Boston,
Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburg, and Cincinnati, and compare them
with his ideas as to New Orleans, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile,
Richmond, and Memphis. I do not name such towns as Baltimore and
St. Louis, which stand in slave States, but which have raised
themselves to prosperity by Northern habits. If this be not
sufficient, let him refer to population tables and tables of
shipping and tonnage. And of those Southern towns which I have
named the commercial wealth is of Northern creation. The success of
New Orleans as a city can be no more attributed to Louisianians than