e a back-fire, and to use the desperate means which God
has put into their hands to be employed in the last extremity of free
institutions. And when we use the term coercion, nothing is farther
from our thoughts than the carrying of blood and fire among those whom
we still consider our brethren of South Carolina. These civilized
communities of ours have interests too serious to be risked on a
childish wager of courage,--a quality that can always be bought cheaper
than day-labor on a railway-embankment. We wish to see the Government
strong enough for the maintenance of law, and for the protection, if
need be, of the unfortunate Governor Pickens from the anarchy he has
allowed himself to be made a tool of by evoking. Let the power of the
Union be used for any other purpose than that of shutting and barring
the door against the return of misguided men to their allegiance. At
the same time we think legitimate and responsible force prudently
exerted safer than the submission, without a struggle, to unlawful and
irresponsible violence.

Peace is the greatest of blessings, when it is won and kept by manhood
and wisdom; but it is a blessing that will not long be the housemate of
cowardice. It is God alone who is powerful enough to let His authority
slumber; it is only His laws that are strong enough to protect and
avenge themselves. Every human government is bound to make its laws so
far resemble His that they shall be uniform, certain, and
unquestionable in their operation; and this it can do only by a timely
show of power, and by an appeal to that authority which is of divine
right, inasmuch as its office is to maintain that order which is the
single attribute of the Infinite Reason that we can clearly apprehend
and of which we have hourly example.

THE PICKENS-AND-STEALIN'S REBELLION

1861

Had any one ventured to prophesy on the Fourth of March that the
immediate prospect of Civil War would be hailed by the people of the
Free States with a unanimous shout of enthusiasm, he would have been
thought a madman. Yet the prophecy would have been verified by what we
now see and hear in every city, town, and hamlet from Maine to Kansas.
With the advantage of three months' active connivance in the cabinet of
Mr. Buchanan, with an empty treasury at Washington, and that reluctance
to assume responsibility and to inaugurate a decided policy, the common
vice of our politicians, who endeavor to divine and to follow popular
se