to say that I have sympathized more or less ardently with most of the
rebellions, successful and unsuccessful, which have taken place in my
time. But I certainly never conceived that there was a sufficient
title to my sympathy in the mere fact of being a rebel; that the act
of taking arms against one's fellow-citizens was so meritorious in
itself, was so completely its own justification, that no question need
be asked concerning the motive. It seems to me a strange doctrine that
the most serious and responsible of all human acts imposes no
obligation on those who do it of showing that they have a real
grievance; that those who rebel for the power of oppressing others,
exercise as sacred a right as those who do the same thing to resist
oppression practised upon themselves. Neither rebellion nor any other
act which affects the interests of others, is sufficiently legitimated
by the mere will to do it. Secession may be laudable, and so may any
other kind of insurrection; but it may also be an enormous crime. It
is the one or the other, according to the object and the provocation.
And if there ever was an object which, by its bare announcement,
stamped rebels against a particular community as enemies of mankind,
it is the one professed by the South. Their right to separate is the
right which Cartouche or Turpin would have had to secede from their
respective countries, because the laws of those countries would not
suffer them to rob and murder on the highway. The only real difference
is that the present rebels are more powerful than Cartouche or Turpin,
and may possibly be able to effect their iniquitous purpose.

Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that the mere will to
separate were in this case, or in any case, a sufficient ground for
separation, I beg to be informed _whose_ will? The will of any knot of
men who, by fair means or foul, by usurpation, terrorism, or fraud,
have got the reins of government into their hands? If the inmates of