Scott" case, given by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States, has been received with shouts of execration through
the North and West. The Southern gentry have been Uncle-Tommed into
madness. It is no light thing to be told daily by your fellow-
citizens, by your fellow-representatives, by your fellow-senators,
that you are guilty of the one damning sin that cannot be forgiven.
All this they could partly moderate, partly rebuke, and partly bear
as long as political power remained in their hands; but they have
gradually felt that that was going, and were prepared to cut the
rope and run as soon as it was gone.

Such, according to my ideas, have been the causes of the war. But I
cannot defend the South. As long as they could be successful in
their schemes for holding the political power of the nation, they
were prepared to hold by the nation. Immediately those schemes
failed, they were prepared to throw the nation overboard. In this
there has undoubtedly been treachery as well as rebellion. Had
these politicians been honest--though the political growth of
Washington has hardly admitted of political honesty--but had these
politicians been even ordinarily respectable in their dishonesty,
they would have claimed secession openly before Congress, while yet
their own President was at the White House. Congress would not have
acceded. Congress itself could not have acceded under the
Constitution; but a way would have been found, had the Southern
States been persistent in their demand. A way, indeed, has been
found; but it has lain through fire and water, through blood and
ruin, through treason and theft, and the downfall of national
greatness. Secession will, I think, be accomplished, and the
Southern Confederation of States will stand something higher in the
world than Mexico and the republics of Central America. Her cotton