"But we might have permitted secession." No, we could not. It was
clearly impracticable. "But why not?" _Because that would have been
to surrender the whole under the guise of giving up half_. Such a
concession could have meant to the people of the rebellious States, and,
in the existing state of national belief, could have meant to our very
selves, nothing other than this:--"We submit; do what you will; we are
shopkeepers and cowards; we must have your trade; and besides, though
expert in the use of yardsticks, we have not the nerve for handling
guns." From that moment we should have lost all authority on this
continent, and all respect on the other.
The English papers have blamed us for fighting; but had we failed to
fight, not one of these censuring mouths but would have hissed at us
like an adder with contempt Nay, we ourselves should, as it were, soon
have lost the musical speech and high carriage of men, and fallen to
a proneness and a hissing, degraded in our own eyes even more than in
those of our neighbors. Of course, from this state we should have risen;
but it would have been to see the redness of war on our own fields
and its flames wrapping our own households. We should have risen, but
through a contest to which this war, gigantic though it be, is but a
quarrel of school-boys.
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