s, appealed to the sword, proved the sincerity of their
convictions by their resolute courage and self-sacrifice. Nevertheless
they warred against the right, and strove mightily to bring about the
downfall and undoing of the nation.

Evils of the Disunion Movements.

The men who brought on and took part in the disunion movements were
moved sometimes by good and sometimes by bad motives; but even when
their motives were disinterested and their purposes pure, and even when
they had received much provocation, they must be adjudged as lacking the
wisdom, the foresight, and the broad devotion to all the land over which
the flag floats, without which no statesman can rank as really great.
The enemies of the Union were the enemies of America and of mankind,
whose success would have plunged their country into an abyss of shame
and misery, and would have arrested for generations the upward movement
of their race.

Eastern Jealousy of the Young West.

Yet, evil though the separatist movements were, they were at times
imperfectly justified by the spirit of sectional distrust and bitterness
rife in portions of the country which at the moment were themselves
loyal to the Union. This was especially true of the early separatist
movements in the West. Unfortunately the attitude towards the Westerners
of certain portions of the population in the older States, and
especially in the northeastern States, was one of unreasoning jealousy
and suspicion; and though this mental attitude rarely crystallized into
hostile deeds, its very existence, and the knowledge that it did exist,
embittered the men of the West. Moreover the people among whom these
feelings were strongest were, unfortunately, precisely those who on the
questions of the Union and the Constitution showed the broadest and most
far-seeing statesmanship. New England, the towns of the middle States
and Maryland, the tidewater region of South Carolina, and certain parts
of Virginia were the seats of the soundest political thought of the day.
The men who did this sane, wholesome political thinking were quite right
in scorning and condemning the crude unreason, often silly, often
vicious, which characterized so much of the political thought of their
opponents. The strength of these opponents was largely derived from the
ignorance and suspicion of the raw country districts, and from the sour
jealousy with which the backwoodsmen regarded the settled regions of the
seaboard.