le to look upon the appeal to God in this judicial form as a
light matter. How good men can, satisfy their consciences for the
deliberate violation of the oaths which so many of them have
deliberately taken to support the Constitution of the United States,
I know not. I know what they say in self-defence, for I have often
listened to their special pleading. The [Greek: proton pseudos], as
my good Professor Owen of the Free Academy would term it--the
foundation falsehood--of the whole Secession movement, is the
doctrine of State Rights, as held by the South. "I owe _allegiance_
to my State, and, when it commands, _obedience_ to the United
States." This idea has complete possession of the leading minds, and
a belief in it accounts for the conduct of many noble men, who
resisted Secession resolutely until their State was carried for the
Rebellion. Whenever a State act was passed they yielded, and the
people were a unit.

In addition to this fundamental error, they aver that they are
engaged in a revolution, not a rebellion; and that the right of
revolution is conceded, even by the North, now endeavoring to force
them back into an oppressive and hated union; and that if we justify
our fathers in forswearing allegiance to the British crown, we
should not condemn the South in refusing obedience to a Union
already dissolved. If this were as good an argument as it is a
fallacious one, ignoring as it does the total dissimilarity in the
two cases, and assuming falsely that the Union is already dissolved,
it fails to justify the individual oath-breaking of many of the
leaders in the revolt. They swore to support the Constitution of the
United States at the very time they were meaning to destroy it. Some
of them took the oath as Cabinet officers and members of Congress,
that they might have the better opportunity to overthrow the
government. The truth must be admitted--and here lies the darkest
blot upon the characters of the arch-conspirators--they know not
the sanctity of an oath, nor regard its solemn pledges and
imprecations. They have shown, it has been eloquently said, the
utmost recklessness respecting the oath of allegiance to the nation.
Men who sneered at the North as teaching a higher law to God which
should be paramount to all terrene statutes, have been themselves
among the first to hold the supreme law of the land and their oath
of fealty and loyalty to that land, abrogated by the lower law of
State claims and State