Rebel an Honorable name.
Every brave man who at any time, anywhere, has resisted tyranny and given his life for liberty has been a rebel.
It is the decoration which tyrannical power always bestows on virtue and manhood, and liberty will have fled from earth and the rights of man will have become a byword when the sacred and inalienable right of resistance to wrong shall have no manhood to enforce it. The secession of the thirteen was no cause for war, nor was there any other necessity for it. The confederation was formed to create a ‘perpetual Union.’
When it was found inefficient, eleven States seceded and formed the
Union under the
Constitution of 1787, leaving
Rhode Island and
North Carolina, who refused to secede, alone to constitute the perpetual Union of 1777.
Instead of remaining in the perpetual Union and waging war on the seceding States they wisely united themselves with the ‘more perfect Union,’ and accepted the amended Constitution, which experience has proved was necessary in the altered conditions and changed relations of States and of society.
The thirteen, in 1861, following the precedent, took the
Constitution of 1787 and so amended it as to make its doubtful language plain, and to prevent a recurrence of the abuses of power which experience had showed were without remedy under the original instrument of
