Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

[51] Goverment, he becomes a traitor to that Government. He is thus a traitor either way, and there is no helping himself. Is this consistent with the supposed wisdom of the political Fathers, those practical, common sense men, who formed the Federal Constitution?

The mutations of governments, like all human events, are constantly going on. No government stands still, anymore than the individuals of which it is composed. The only difference is, that the changes are not quite so obvious to the generation which views them. The framers of the Constitution did not dare to hope that they had formed a government, that was to last forever. Nay, many of them had serious misgivings as to the result of the experiment they were making. Is it possible, then, that those men so legislated, as to render it morally certain, that if their experiment should fail, their descendants must become either slaves or traitors? If the doctrine that secession is treason be true, it matters not how grievously a State might be oppressed, by the Federal Government; she has been deprived of the power of lawful resistance, and must regain her liberty, if at all, like other enslaved States, at the hazard of war, and rebellion. Was this the sort of experiment in government, that our forefathers supposed they were making? Every reader of history knows that it was not.