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When, therefore, the election of 1860 gave notice that the North proposed to force the struggle against all of our institutions with all the power of all the States, thirteen of those States, exercising the right of self-defence—of resistance to wrong—acting as States, took up arms for the protection of their institutions, secured by the struggles of their ancestors with so much blood on so many battle-fields.

I do not care to argue the question of the right of secession. I justify the action of the Southern States on the higher ground of the right of self-defence, which can never be surrendered nor bartered by any man or any people. But it seems too clear for demonstration that if they came into the Union as States they had the right to leave it as States. Rebellion has no terrors for us. Our ancestors have been rebels time, time and again for a thousand years. George Washington was a rebel; John Hampden was a rebel; Algernon Sydney was a rebel; Kosciusko was a rebel; William Tell was a rebel.

Every brave man who at any time, anywhere, has resisted tyranny and given his life for liberty has been a rebel. It is the decoration which tyrannical power always bestows on virtue and manhood, and liberty will have fled from earth and the rights of man will have become a byword when the sacred and inalienable right of resistance to wrong shall have no manhood to enforce it. The secession of the thirteen was no cause for war, nor was there any other necessity for it. The confederation was formed to create a "perpetual Union." When it was found inefficient, eleven States seceded and formed the Union under the Constitution of 1787, leaving Rhode Island and North Carolina, who refused to secede, alone to constitute the "perpetual Union" of 1777. Instead of remaining in the "perpetual Union" and waging war on the seceding States they wisely united themselves with the "more perfect Union," and accepted the amended Constitution, which experience has proved was necessary in the altered conditions and changed relations of States and of society. The thirteen, in 1861, following the precedent, took the Constitution of 1787 and so amended it as to make its doubtful language plain, and to prevent a recurrence of the abuses of power which experience had showed were without remedy under the original instrument of 1787.