perience of this war, revealing these things as in the clear light of
midday, can speak softly and with 'bated breath' of secession. His
country's baptism of fire has not regenerated such a man.

The attempt, as the legitimate and inevitable result of secession, to
overthrow a Government whose burdens rested so lightly on its citizens
as to have given rise to a current phrase that they were unfelt; and yet
whose magnificent power gave it rank among the first of nations,
securing full protection to the humblest of its citizens, and causing
the name of American to be as proud a boast as Roman in the day of
Rome's power; and withal being the recognized refuge and hope of liberty
and humanity all over the globe, as vindicating the right royalty of
man;--the attempt to overthrow such a Government must stand forever as
the blackest of crimes. For the Confederate treason is more than treason
against the United States: it is a crime against humanity, and a
conspiracy in the interest of despotism, denying the royalty of man.

But, to return to our argument, a distinction is carefully to be noted
between the consequences of rebellion to the individuals who engage in
it and to the State which it assumes to control. It needs no argument to
show that rebellion against the supreme power of a State does not
necessarily affect the permanence of that power. If the rebellion fails,
the rightful authority resumes its functions. If the rebellion succeeds,
the movers of it assume the powers of the State, and succeed to all its
functions. The civil wars of England furnish abundant illustration of
this principle. However the course of Government may for the time have
been checked, and its whole machinery disarranged, the subsidence of the
tumult left the state, in every case, as an organic whole, the same. The
consequences of unsuccessful rebellion fell only upon the persons
engaged in it. So, in the successive changes that befell France after
the Revolution, the state, as the body politic, remained unchanged. In
dealing with the question of rebellion in our country the same principle
applies, only another element enters into the calculation. That element
results from the peculiar character of our Government in its twofold
relation to the people of State and Nation. The Government springs
directly from the people, who have ordained separate functions for the
two separate organisms, or bodies politic, the State and the Nation.
Strictly conside