Mr. Horace Greeley frequently and emphatically, previous to the war, affirmed the right of changing its political association asserted by the South. Three days after the election of Mr. Lincoln, in November, 1860, his paper, the New York _Tribune_, said: "If the Cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace.... We must ever resist the right of any State to remain in the Union, and nullify or defy the laws thereof. _To withdraw from the Union is quite another matter; and whenever any considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in._ We hope never to live in a Republic whereof one section is pinned to another by bayonets." On the 17th of December, 1860, the _Tribune_ said: "If it [the Declaration of Independence] justifies the secession of three millions of colonists in 1776, _we do not see why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southerners from the Federal Union in 1861_." Such are a few illustrations, to which might be added innumerable quotations, of the same import, from the most prominent sources of Northern opinion. Never has there been a question so capable of positive solution and easy comprehension, when subjected to the test of candid investigation, and never so successful a purpose to exclude the illumination of facts by persistent and ingenious misrepresentation. The North has reason for its extravagant exultation at the skill and audacity with which the brazen front of hypocrisy, for a time, at least, has successfully sustained, in the name of humanity and liberty, the most monstrous imposition and transparent counterfeit of virtue ever designed upon an intelligent age. To the triumphant historical vindication of the South, there remains only the essential condition of a clear and truthful statement of the provocations which impelled her to adopt that long-deferred remedy, which is the last refuge of a people whose liberties are imperiled. Secession, however strong in its prescriptive or implied justification as a principle, was not to be undertaken from caprice, or trivial causes of dissatisfaction. Abuses, numerous, serious, and consecutive, were required before disunion became either desirable or acceptable to the South. The native conservatism of the Southern character renders it peculiarly averse to agitation; to this were added social features, the safety of which would be greatly imperiled by civil war, and thus a train of influences tended to make Southern soil, of all others, the least favorable to the growth of revolutionary principles.