Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/54

48 war, it is surely lawful for the other to prosecute it to a victorious issue, even though that issue may be not the transfer of a province from one king to another, but the transfer of a world from Slavery to Freedom. The employment of arms for the propagation of principles or institutions is not to be justified. But this was a war to save principles and institutions from armed aggression; it was not only a righteous but a defensive war.

It is needless to give a history of the great conflict, and less to recall events and vicissitudes fresh in every memory, and at which our hearts have scarcely ceased to throb. The struggle was long, and its length made the extirpation of Slavery sure. Emancipation owes its completeness, under Providence, to the tenacity of President Davis and the skill of General Lee. The course of events remarkably resembled, in some respects, that of our civil war in the time of Charles I. The Federals, like the Parliamentarians, were superior in numbers and in wealth; but they were unwarlike in their habits, and wholly untrained to command and obedience; while the Confederates, like the Cavaliers, were accustomed to carry arms and to exercise command over their dependents, who again, from their habits of life, were soldiers almost ready made. The Federals began, like the Parliamentarians, with overweening confidence and humiliating failure. After Bull’s Run, after the failure of M’Clellan, the defeat of Pope, the defeat of Burnside, shouts of exultation and derision arose from the enemies of the Republic. The world laid down its money with confidence on the Confederate side and the hearts of all who hated freedom, civil or religious, were filled with an unwonted joy! The model Republic had fallen! To tyranny, to class privilege, to darkness,