Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:
chapter:
Shall
Cromwell
have a statue?
Graduates of the
United States Military Academy
at
West Point, N. Y.
, [from the
Richmond, Va.
, Dispatch,
March
30
,
April
6
,
27
, and
May
12
,
1902
.]
Treatment and exchange of prisoners.
Battle of Cedar Creek
,
Va.
,
Oct.
19th
,
1864
.
Narrative of events and observations connected with the wounding of General T. J. (
Stonewall
)
Jackson
.
chapter 1.6
Lee
,
Davis
and
Lincoln
.
chapter 1.8
The last tragedy of the war. [from the
New Orleans, La.
,
Picayune
,
January
18
,
1903
.]
chapter 1.10chapter 1.11chapter 1.12chapter 1.13chapter 1.14chapter 1.15
Elliott
Grays
of
Manchester, Va.
[from the
Richmond, Va.
, times,
November
28
,
1902
.]
Thrilling Chapter [from the
Richmond
, Va, Dispatch,
July
21
,
1902
.]
chapter 1.18chapter 1.19chapter 1.20chapter 1.21chapter 1.22chapter 1.23chapter 1.24
Fatal wounding of General J. E. B
Stuart
.
chapter 1.26chapter 1.27
Johnson's Island
.
Refused to burn it. [from the
Richmond, Va.
, Dispatch,
April
27
,
1902
.]
chapter 1.30chapter 1.31
The campaign and battle of
Lynchburg
.
Appendix.
chapter 1.34chapter 1.35chapter 1.36
Roll and roster of
Pelham
's,
chapter 1.38chapter 1.39
Why we failed to win.
Recollections of
Cedar Creek
and
Fisher's Hill
,
October
19th
,
1864
.
Index
This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
Graduates of the
United States Military Academy
at
West Point, N. Y.
, [from the
Richmond, Va.
, Dispatch,
March
30
,
April
6
,
27
, and
May
12
,
1902
.]
Treatment and exchange of prisoners.
The campaign and battle of
Lynchburg
.
Appendix.
[362]
independence, and they were the architects of the American Union and the authors of the chart of its powers and limitations.
Their descendants inherited from these sages and statesmen a genius for government; an instinctive apprehension of those fundamental principles which constitute at once the sanction of all ruling authority and the boundaries of its power.
They inherited a love for lawful liberty—a reverence for constitutional obligations—a fearless impatience of oppression—a jealous regard for the rights of the States--a positive credence in the doctrine that ‘all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed’—and a readiness to do and suffer all things in maintenance of a principle.
To such a race, so sired, so reared—so competent to know their rights, so trained in political perception, so loving peace and yet so brave, there came a crisis which forced them to a choice between two imperative evils.
If they waived their claim to constitutional protection of their property and domestic institutions, allowed the executive and legislative departments of the United States to nullify constitutional guarantees, and submitted that legislatures of Northern States should treat as empty words the decisions of the Supreme Court, they would but abandon their natural fortress for the open country and be thereafter dependent upon the caprice of a sectional majority.
Experience has taught them that every concession made to fanaticism but whetted the appetite of that raving beast for further aggression.
Within ten years the cry of the ruling faction has changed from ‘compromise’ to ‘surrender.’
The ultimate fate of the weaker section, if a policy of submission should be accepted, was plain as the handwriting on the wall at the feast of Belshazzar.
Not slavery alone was involved, but the sanctity of the constitutional compact and all the rights of the States which that involved, and under a government, controlled and administered by the experiments of a ‘higher law,’ the only measure of forbearance in denial of their rights, antagonism to their interests, confiscation of their property, would be the unselfish mercy and elastic conscience of a party which had cannonized John Brown, pilloried Chief-Justice Taney for deciding the law according to the law, and had denounced the constitution as ‘a league with Satan and a covenant with hell.’
On that road lay no safety; but, on the contrary, self-stultification, treason to their convictions, humiliation and ultimate ruin.
The alternative was to revert to the theory and practice of their revolutionary sires, to insist that the consent of the governed was
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.
show
Browse Bar
hide
Places (automatically extracted)
View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.
Sort places
alphabetically,
as they appear on the page,
by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
United States (United States) (1)Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.
hide
People (automatically extracted)
Sort people
alphabetically,
as they appear on the page,
by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Taney (1)Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
John Brown (1)
hide
Search
hide
Display Preferences