Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 9.djvu/24

14 duties of the State and Federal governments, barring the right of determining "the mode and measure of re- dress." At no time have the rights of the States been more clearly defined than now, some of the strongest decisions affirming them having been rendered since the war.

Great as was the sacrifice in blood and treasure, in view of the fact that sooner or later the conflict would have come and would have been more serious the longer it was deferred, it is the part of a wise philosophy to look upon the war as not wholly an unmixed evil. It has, in one sense, made the sections better acquainted and given each a better opinion of the other, while it has eliminated slavery, which would have always caused trouble in the body politic and perhaps could never have been removed except by some such desperate process of surgery. Above all, it has insured the peace and existence of the Republic and made firmer the foundations of our liberties and the guarantees of the Constitution. The most enlightened publicists of the world now reject the shallow allegation that the Southern States engaged in war merely to rivet the claims upon the slaves who proved their most faithful servants and recognized that they were making a heroic defense of the principle of community independence and the right to regulate their own domestic affairs, which is inseparable from the idea of true republican and federal liberty. The defense of this lone principle was worth the blood shed for it, and will make future generations count well the cost before either the central power or an aggregation of States undertakes to infringe upon the guaranteed rights of the co-equal States. In its national aspects the heroism evoked by the war is creditable to our martial spirit, while the final rehabilitation of the Union upon the terms of former equality, after the failure of Reconstruction, has taken from the vanquished the sting of defeat. To the nations of the world the spectacle has been a revelation, an en-