170 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



persons, accustomed always to be influenced by the 

 sound of certain words, rather than to reflect upon the 

 principles which give them meaning. For, though Seces- 

 sion involves the manifest absurdity of denying to a 

 State the right of making war against any foreign power 

 while permitting it against the United States ; though 

 it supposes a compact of mutual concessions and guaran- 

 ties among States without any arbiter in case of dissen- 

 sion ; though it contradicts common-sense in assuming 

 that the men who framed our government did not know 

 what they meant when they substituted Union for Con- 

 federation ; though it falsifies history, which shows that 

 the main opposition to the adoption of the Constitution 

 was based on the argument that it did not allow that 

 independence in the several States which alone would 

 justify them in seceding; — yet, as slavery was univer- 

 sally admitted to be a reserved right, an inference could 

 be drawn from any direct attack upon it (though only in 

 self-defence) to a natural right of resistance, logical 

 enough to satisfy minds untrained to detect fallacy, as 

 the majority of men always are, and now too much dis- 

 turbed by the disorder of the times, to consider that the 

 order of events had any legitimate bearing on the argu- 

 ment. Though Mr. Lincoln was too sagacious to give 

 the Northern allies of the Eebels the occasion they 

 desired and even strove to provoke, yet from the begin- 

 ning of the war the most persistent efforts have been 

 made to confuse the public mind as to its origin and 

 motives, and to drag the people of the loyal States down 

 from the national position they had instinctively taken 

 to the old level of party squabbles and antipathies. The 

 wholly unprovoked rebellion of an oligarchy proclaim- 

 ing negro slavery the corner-stone of free institutions, 

 and in the first flush of over-hasty confidence venturing 

 to parade the logical sequence of their leading dogma, 



