United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Foreign public opinion; United States -- Politics and government -- 1861-1865
been perpetrated in some part or other of the South. And not upon
negroes only; the _Edinburgh Review_, in a recent number, gave the
hideous details of the burning alive of an unfortunate Northern
huckster by Lynch law, on mere suspicion of having aided in the escape
of a slave. What must American slavery be, if deeds like these are
necessary under it?--and if they are not necessary and are yet done,
is not the evidence against slavery still more damning? The South are
in rebellion not for simple slavery; they are in rebellion for the
right of burning human creatures alive.
But we are told, by a strange misapplication of a true principle, that
the South had a _right_ to separate; that their separation ought to
have been consented to, the moment they showed themselves ready to
fight for it; and that the North, in resisting it, are committing the
same error and wrong which England committed in opposing the original
separation of the thirteen colonies. This is carrying the doctrine of
the sacred right of insurrection rather far. It is wonderful how easy
and liberal and complying people can be in other people's concerns.
Because they are willing to surrender their own past, and have no
objection to join in reprobation of their great-grandfathers, they
never put themselves the question what they themselves would do in
circumstances far less trying, under far less pressure of real
national calamity. Would those who profess these ardent revolutionary
principles consent to their being applied to Ireland, or India, or the
Ionian Islands. How have they treated those who did attempt so to
apply them? But the case can dispense with any mere _argumentum ad
hominem_. I am not frightened at the word rebellion. I do not scruple
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,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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