Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/61

Rh from the time when the conflict ceased, law has resumed its uninterrupted course. To preserve the Constitution unimpaired was, throughout, the aim, almost the passion, of the man who was under the greatest temptations to impair it: and he succeeded, for not a particle of it has perished. That the proclamation of liberty to the negroes in the insurgent states was not an act of lawless tyranny but a fair measure of war, became clear to all when the insurgents began to use the slaves as soldiers.

If the Government showed respect for law, did not the people show respect for authority? Those who declaim on the fickleness of Democracy may be safely challenged to produce from history an instance of a government so followed and supported through such trials and reverses. Never for a moment, even when the failure of the war seemed most complete, and when the elections of the great state of New York were going against the Government, did the constitutional ruler fail to command the constitutional obedience of the citizen. A popular Government, of course, felt it necessary to entitle itself to allegiance by showing a reasonable respect for public opinion and a paramount regard for the public interest. When an officer had decisively failed in supreme command (never, I apprehend, before he had decisively failed), he was removed, and he immediately became in the eyes of aristocratic critics a victim of democratic ingratitude. But the victims of ingratitude continued, with perhaps one notable exception, to serve their country zealously in inferior posts. It is one of the noblest features of the struggle; it speaks volumes for the beneficence of institutions, attachment to which can thus prevail over selfishness even in a case where selfishness so easily assumes the mask of dignity and self-respect.