Self-government will then have vindicated itself;
constitutional liberty will have triumphed; arms and coercion will lose
their old authority and power; for there will be an example of a
republican people recovering from convulsions which would have
demolished any throne or power which trusted in the sword. The
serf-boats in ports of the Bay of Bengal, which ride the swift, enormous
surges, are not nailed, but their parts are lashed one to another, and
thus the boats yield easily to the force of the water. Our government
has been likened to them; and now, by yielding, one part to another,
where a theoretically stronger government would have used coercion, we
shall, if it please God, pass safely through these fearful hazards,
furnishing a demonstration, which God may have been preparing by us for
the instruction of mankind, that fraternal blood is not the best
nourishment of the tree of liberty, and that 'wisdom,' resulting in the
victories of peace, 'is better than weapons of war.'
"I look, therefore, toward some change in Northern feelings with regard
to the South. A change in this respect will end our troubles. Opinions
may not be wholly reversed; people born and bred under totally different
institutions may not, for they cannot wholly, yield their convictions on
controverted sectional topics, even when they cherish mutual respect and
deference; but, the belief that the North will change its feelings
toward the South and its institutions, under a modification of views
entirely consistent with independence of judgment and self-respect, and
that the South will not be wanting in a corresponding temper, rests on
the same conviction as that God does not intend to destroy us by each
other's hands, nor to make the life of the two sections weary with
perpetual hatred and strife.
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