Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 35.djvu/187

Rh arms, was upheld by the belief that she was acting in accordance with the Constitution. The South, in asserting her independence and resisting coercion, found moral support in the same conviction, and the patriotism of those who fought for the Union was neither purer nor more ardent than the patriotism of those who fought for States' rights. Long ago, a Parliament of that nation to which Jackson and so many of his compatriots owed their origin, made petition to the Pope that he should require the English King to respect the independence of Scotland, and mind his own affairs. So long as 100 of us are left alive, said the signatories, 'we will never in any degree be subjected to the English. It is not for glory, or for riches, or for honor that we fight, but for liberty alone, which no good man loses but with his life.' More than 500 years later, for the same noble cause and in the same uncompromising spirit, the people of Virginia made appeal to the God of Battles."

The whole of this admirable summary, by an impartial historian, is applicable to the South as a whole, and forecasts, if it does not indeed itself pronounce, the final judgment of history.