insertion of the narrow end of the wedge. It was an action taken
against slavery--an action taken by men of the North against their
fellow-countrymen in the South. Under such circumstances, the
sooner such countrymen should cease to be their fellows the better
it would be for them. That, I take it, was the argument of the
South, or at any rate that was its feeling.

I have said that the reasons given for secession have been trifling,
and among them have so estimated this matter of the Fugitive Slave
Law. I mean to assert that the ground actually put forward is
trifling--the loss, namely, of slaves to which the South has been
subjected. But the true reason pointed at in this--the conviction,
namely, that the North would not leave slavery alone, and would not
allow it to remain as a settled institution--was by no means
trifling. It has been this conviction on the part of the South that
the North would not live in amity with slavery--would continue to
fight it under this banner or under that, would still condemn it as
disgraceful to men and rebuke it as impious before God--which has
produced rebellion and civil war, and will ultimately produce that
division for which the South is fighting and against which the North
is fighting, and which, when accomplished, will give the North new
wings, and will leave the South without political greatness or
commercial success.

Under such circumstances I cannot think that rebellion on the part
of the South was justified by wrongs endured, or made reasonable by
the prospect of wrongs to be inflicted. It is disagreeable, that
having to live with a wife who is always rebuking one for some
special fault; but the outside world will not grant a divorce on
that account, especially if the outside world is well aware that the