" Draper's History of
the American Civil War volume 1 page 286.) The South, on the other
hand, holding, as it had always held, that each State was a nation in
itself, denied in toto that the will of the majority, except in
certain specified cases, had any power whatever; and where political
creeds were in such direct antagonism no compromise was possible.
Moreover, as the action of the abolitionists very plainly showed,
there was a growing tendency in the North to disregard altogether the
rights of the minority. Secession, in fact, was a protest against mob
rule. The weaker community, hopeless of maintaining its most
cherished principles within the Union, was ready to seize the first
pretext for leaving it; and the strength of the popular sentiment may
be measured by the willingness of every class, gentle and simple,
rich and poor, to risk all and to suffer all, in order to free
themselves from bonds which must soon have become unbearable. It is
always difficult to analyse the motives of those by whom revolution
is provoked; but if a whole people acquiesce, it is a certain proof
of the existence of universal apprehension and deep-rooted
discontent. The spirit of self-sacrifice which animated the
Confederate South has been characteristic of every revolution which
has been the expression of a nation's wrongs, but it has never yet
accompanied mere factious insurrection.
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