to support
it (the Constitution). Can we, therefore, for the mere election of a
man to the Presidency--and that too, in accordance with the prescribed
forms of the Constitution--make a point of resistance to the Government,
and, without becoming the breakers of that sacred instrument ourselves,
withdraw ourselves from it? Would we not be in the wrong?"

But the occasional words of wisdom that fell from the lips of the few
far-seeing statesmen of the South, were as chaff before the storm of
Disunion raised by the turbulent Fire-eaters, and were blown far from
the South, where they might have done some good for the Union cause,
away up to the North, where they contributed to aid the success of the
contemplated Treason and Rebellion, by lulling many of the people there,
into a false sense of security. Unfortunately, also, even the ablest of
the Southern Union men were so tainted with the heretical doctrine of
States-Rights, which taught the "paramount allegiance" of the citizen to
the State, that their otherwise powerful appeals for the preservation of
the Union were almost invariably handicapped by the added protestation
that in any event--and however they might deplore the necessity--they
would, if need be, go with their State, against their own convictions of
duty to the National Union.

Hence in this same speech we find that Mr. Stephens destroyed the whole
effect of his weighty and logical appeal against Secession from the
Union, by adding to it, that, "Should Georgia determine to go out of the
Union I shall bow to the will of her people. Their cause is my cause,
and their destiny is my destiny; and I trust this will be the ultimate
course of all."--and by further advising the calling of a Convention of
the people to decide the matter; thus, in advance, as it were, binding
himself hand and foot, despite his previous Union utterances, to do the
fell bidding of the most rampant Disunionists. And thus, in due time,
it befell, as we shall see, that this "saving clause" in his "Union
speech," brought him at the end, not to that posture of patriotic
heroism to which he aspired when he adjured his Georgian auditors to
"let us be found to the last moment standing on the deck (of the
Republic), with the Constitution of the United States waving over our
heads," but to that of an imprisoned traitor and defeated rebel against
the very Republic and Constitution which he had sworn to uphold and
defend!

The action of the S