Such, then, was the attitude of the South towards slavery.  The institution had many advocates, uncompromising and aggressive, but taking the people as a whole it was rather tolerated than approved; and, even if no evidence to the contrary were forthcoming, we should find it hard to believe that a civilised community would have plunged into revolution in order to maintain it.  There can be no question but that secession was revolution; and revolutions, as has been well said, are not made for the sake of “greased cartridges.”  To bring about such unanimity of purpose as took possession of the whole South, such passionate loyalty to the new Confederacy, such intense determination to resist coercion to the bitter end, needed some motive of unusual potency, and the perpetuation of slavery was not a sufficient motive.  The great bulk of the population neither owned slaves nor was connected with those who did; many favoured emancipation; and the working men, a rapidly increasing class, were distinctly antagonistic to slave-labour.  Moreover, the Southerners were not only warmly attached to the Union, which they had done so much to establish, but their pride in their common country, in its strength, its prestige, and its prosperity, was very great.  Why, then, should they break away?  History supplies us with a pertinent example.

Previous to 1765 the honour of England was dear to the people of the American colonies.  King George had no more devoted subjects; his enemies no fiercer foes.  And yet it required very little to reverse the scroll.  The right claimed by the Crown to tax the colonists hardly menaced their material prosperity.  A few shillings more or less would neither have added to the burdens nor have diminished the comforts of a well-to-do and thrifty people, and there was some justice in the demand that they should contribute to the defence of the British Empire.  But the demand, as formulated by the Government, involved a principle which they were unwilling to admit, and in defence of their birthright as free citizens they flew to arms.  So, in defence of the principle of States’ Rights the Southern people resolved upon secession with all its consequences.

It might be said, however, that South Carolina and her sister States seceded under the threat of a mere faction; that there was nothing in the attitude of the Federal Government to justify the apprehension that the Constitution would be set aside; and that their action, therefore, was neither more nor less than rank rebellion.  But, whether their rights had been infringed or not, a large majority of the Southern people believed that secession, at any moment and for any cause, was perfectly legitimate.  The several States of the Union, according to their political creed, were each and all of them sovereign and independent nations.  The Constitution, they held, was nothing more than a treaty which they had entered into for their own convenience, and which, in the exercise of their sovereign powers, individually