The taking of the Little Rock arsenal produced a revulsion of feeling, which caused those who hoped to keep Arkansas in the Union to abandon that hope. The conviction that resistance by the Southern States to the authority of the general government was inevitable, seemed to possess all minds, however doubtful many may have been of its final success. These doubts were quickly discarded, and all concurred in the general desire for independence. It is a pleasure to remember that while there were those in Little Rock who indulged in unguarded expressions, there were no bitter conflicts, and the boldest expressions of opinion, Union or Confederate, were taken good-humoredly. Freedom of speech provoked no indication of angry repression. When information was brought that there were threats of coercion in Missouri and Kentucky, and of reinforcement of the small garrison of Federals at Fort Smith,
This text is part of:
[11]
theories, to be vigorously enforced in compelling obedience to official power.
He may have believed that he was commissioned to preserve ‘a government of the people, for the people and by the people,’ while he would ignore, in thus sustaining his power over the entire people, that vital element of republics which proclaims that government derives its just powers from ‘the consent of the governed,’ and that nearly half of the people were prepared to resist rather than ‘consent’ to his authority, assumed, as they believed, upon principles at variance with the law as enacted and expounded by the courts of last resort.
Mr. Lincoln had already, before the taking of the Little Rock arsenal, written to his friend Washburne, of Illinois, as follows:
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.