nd other Federal and national affairs, this great
government may be broken; but in most of the essential liberties and
rights which government is the agent to establish and protect, the
seceding State has no revolution, and the remaining States can have
none. This arises from that refinement of our polity which makes the
States the basis of our instituted labor. Greece was broken by the
Persian power, but her municipal institutions remained. Hungary lost
her national crown, but her home institutions remain. South Carolina may
preserve her constituted domestic authority, but she must be content to
glimmer obscurely remote rather than shine and revolve in a constellated
band. She even goes out by the ordinance of a so-called sovereign
convention, content to lose by her isolation that youthful, vehement,
exultant, progressive life, which is our NATIONALITY! She foregoes
the hopes, the boasts, the flag, the music, all the emotions, all the
traits, and all the energies which, when combined in our United States,
have won our victories in war and our miracles of national advancement.
Her Governor, Colonel Pickens, in his inaugural, regretfully "looks
back upon the inheritance South Carolina had in the common glories
and triumphant power of this wonderful confederacy, and fails to find
language to express the feelings of the human heart as he turns from the
contemplation." The ties of brotherhood, interest, lineage, and history
are all to be severed. No longer are we to salute a South Carolinian
with the "_idem sententiam de republica_," which makes unity and
nationality. What a prestige and glory are here dimmed and lost in the
contaminated reason of man!

Can we realize it? Is it a masquerade, to last for a night, or a reality
to be dealt with, with the world's rough passionate handling? It is sad
and bad enough; but let us not over-tax our anxieties about it as yet.
It is not the sanguinary regime of the French revolution; not the rule
of assignats and guillotine; not the cry of "_Vivent les Rouges! A mort
les gendarmes!_" but as yet, I hope I may say, the peaceful attempt
to withdraw from the burdens and benefits of the Republic. Thus it is
unlike every other revolution. Still it is revolution. It may, according
as it is managed, involve consequences more terrific than any revolution
since government began.

If the Federal Government is to be maintained, its strength must not
be frittered away by conceding the theory of se