Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/491

 Address of Hon. B. H. Hill. 485

touching the abstract right of secession, or the sufficiency of the causes which provoked its exercise, surrender was a confession of inability to maintain it by the sword, and honor and fair dealing demanded that the sword should be sheathed. But defeat in a phy- sical contest does not prove that the defeated party was in the wrong. It is certainly no evidence of criminal motive. It is a confession of weakness, not of crime. Were it otherwise, the robber is a law- abiding citizen and his victim a thief Socrates was a felon, and the mob that sentenced him to death were patriots. In a wicked world innocence and right are not at all incompatible with failure, sorrow and humiliation, else the man who fell among thieves on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho was a criminal, and his plunderers were entitled to the plaudits — the oil and the wine of all good Samaritans. Nay, the Saviour himself was a malefactor, and his crucifiers were Christian gentlemen. Failure to dissolve the Union, and nothing more, was the confession of surrender, and the obligation to remain in the Union and discharge all its duties under the Constitution neces- sarily resulted.

So, on the other hand, the Northern States- the asserters of the right of coercion — were equally under every obligation to accept sur- render, as meaning this and only this. They proclaimed no other purpose in making the war of coercion, but to defeat secession and preserve the Union. They had no right, political, moral or honor able, to enlarge the issue after the contest had ended, and the issue made by the contest was exhausted and determined.

The Southern States and people accepted, in a frank and liberal spirit, all the just consequences of their defeat. They abandoned secession, and the doctrine of secession, as a practical remedy for all grievances, past or future, and for all time. They did more. Pro- perty in slaves was not the cause of the war. It was not the great fundamental right for which the Southern States went into secession. It was only an incident to that right. The right of the States to regulate their own internal affairs, by the exercise of the powers of government which they had never delegated, and the conviction that independence was necessary to preserve that right of self govern- ment, was the great, moving inspiring cause of the seceding States. There was not a day of the struggle when the Southern people would not have surrendered slavery to secure independence. But slavery was the particular property which, it was believed, was endangered without independence, and which, therefore, made the assertion of secession necessary. The disciples of coercion denied this, and as-

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