Page:The parallel between the English and American civil wars.djvu/16

THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN perish, and therefore essentially "a people's contest."

In America the claim of the minority to break up the government, if they could not direct it, linked the maintenance of free government and the maintenance of the union together. "I have thought it proper," said Lincoln, "to keep the integrity of our union prominent as the primary object of the contest on our side." The "war was commenced by the South to destroy our union," and "the administration accepted the war thus commenced for the sole avowed object of preserving our union." Any nation which accepted the principles of the Southern leaders must cease to be a nation. "If a minority will secede rather than acquiesce they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such a minority ." 8