renewed Secession? Plainly, the central idea of Secession is the essence
of anarchy." That was the key-word of the situation, in the court of
reason and conscience,--"the central idea of Secession is the essence of
anarchy."

The system which the Secessionists proposed to break up had a part of
its highest value in that very division of authority between State and
nation which gave them their pretext for a separation. The Federal plan
was the special contribution of America to the evolution of popular
self-government. Until that step had been taken, not only did the
practical difficulties of democracy increase enormously with the
increase of area and population, but a vast centralized democracy was
liable to be itself an oppressive despotism, as France has learned at
bitter cost. The Federal plan, like most other great advances, came not
as the conception of an ingenious brain, but from the growth of social
facts. The thirteen colonies started and grew as individual offshoots
from Great Britain. Under a common impulse they broke loose from the
mother-country; then, by a common necessity, they bound themselves
together in a governmental Union, each member retaining jurisdiction in
such affairs as were its special concern. The resulting Federal Union
was a combination of strength and freedom such as the world had never
seen. With this for its organic form, with its spiritual lineage drawn
from the Puritan, the Quaker and the Cavalier, with Anglo-Saxon stock
for its core, yet with open doors and assimilating power for all races,
and with a continent for its field of expansion,--the American people
became the leader and the hope of humanity. This was the nation which
the Secessionists proposed to rend asunder.

All government implies a principle of authority, and requires the
occasional sacrifice of the individual's pleasure. The national bond has
one strand in mutual good-will, but another strand is personal
sacrifice, and another is stern command. The Union required some
sacrifices, not only of material price,--as when a man pays just taxes,
or acquiesces in a fiscal system which he considers unjust,--but
sacrifices sometimes even of moral sentiment. Lincoln, explaining his
position in 1855 to his old friend Speed, of Kentucky, repelled the
suggestion that he had no personal interest in slavery. He says that
whenever he crosses the border he sees manacled slaves or some similar
sight which is a torment to him. "You oug