and where political creeds were in such direct antagonism no compromise was possible.  Moreover, as the action of the abolitionists very plainly showed, there was a growing tendency in the North to disregard altogether the rights of the minority.  Secession, in fact, was a protest against mob rule.  The weaker community, hopeless of maintaining its most cherished principles within the Union, was ready to seize the first pretext for leaving it; and the strength of the popular sentiment may be measured by the willingness of every class, gentle and simple, rich and poor, to risk all and to suffer all, in order to free themselves from bonds which must soon have become unbearable.  It is always difficult to analyse the motives of those by whom revolution is provoked; but if a whole people acquiesce, it is a certain proof of the existence of universal apprehension and deep-rooted discontent.  The spirit of self-sacrifice which animated the Confederate South has been characteristic of every revolution which has been the expression of a nation’s wrongs, but it has never yet accompanied mere factious insurrection.

When, in process of time, the history of Secession comes to be viewed with the same freedom from prejudice as the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it will be clear that the fourth great Revolution of the English-speaking race differs in no essential characteristic from those which preceded it.  It was not simply because the five members were illegally impeached in 1642, the seven bishops illegally tried in 1688, men shot at Lexington in 1775, or slavery threatened in 1861, that the people rose.  These were the occasions, not the causes of revolt.  In each case a great principle was at stake:  in 1642 the liberty of the subject; in 1688 the integrity of the Protestant faith; in 1775 taxation only with consent of the taxed; in 1861 the sovereignty of the individual States.* (* It has been remarked that States’ Rights, as a political principle, cannot be placed on the same plane as those with which it is here grouped.  History, however, proves conclusively that, although it may be less vital to the common weal, the right of self-government is just as deeply cherished.  A people that has once enjoyed independence can seldom be brought to admit that a Union with others deprives it of the prerogatives of sovereignty, and it would seem that the treatment of this instinct of nationality is one of the most delicate and important tasks of statesmanship.)

The accuracy of this statement, as already suggested, has been consistently denied.  That the only principle involved in Secession was the establishment of slavery on a firmer basis, and that the cry of States’ Rights was raised only by way of securing sympathy, is a very general opinion.  But before it can be accepted, it is necessary to make several admissions; first, that the Southerners were absolutely callous to the evils produced by the institution they had