Who was to judge of whether there was a necessity for severing the connection, the oppressor or the oppressed? If the former, then the decision would have been against the colonies. If colonies, the mere offshoots from the mother country, could undertake to judge the sufficiency of the grievances and the mode and measure of redress, could not sovereign states which had framed the government of which they complained, do the same thing? In seceding from the Union, the Cotton States had acted as states, and not as factious individuals resisting the laws or authority of the government. The right of no one had been violated, and it was not proposed to violate the rights of any individuals or states, but merely to dissolve a compact, the terms of which had been violated. To undertake to coerce those states by military force was subversive of the whole spirit and purpose of the Constitution, and made the government the master, instead of the agent, of the powers which had created it. This doctrine of coercion had never been asserted by any respectable statesman since the foundation of the government, and was at war with all of its principles and aims. When therefore the other states were called upon to engage in this war of coercion against the Cotton States, it was not only their right but their duty to resist. By the very terms of the Constitution, it was made the duty of the Federal Government to protect the states against invasion. Did that government have the right to invade the state it was bound to protect? It was not authorized even to protect the states against domestic violence except upon invitation of the legislature or of the executive, when the legislature was not in session. Was it authorized to create that domestic violence? The power of coercion involved the anomalous consequence of reducing the states to conquered provinces when exercised, and this involved the self-destruction of the government itself. In regard to this question of the right of the states to withdraw, and the power of coercion, it is not inappropriate to call attention to the following views expressed by Mr. Horace Greeley, one of the ablest writers and firmest supporters of the Republican or abolition party. In an article published in the _New York Tribune_ a few days after the election of Lincoln in 1860, and reproduced in his work styled "The American Conflict" he says: