The Separatist Feeling.
The separatist feeling has at times been strong in almost every section
of the Union, although in some regions it has been much stronger than in
others. Calhoun and Pickering, Jefferson and Gouverneur Morris, Wendell
Phillips and William Taney, Aaron Burr and Jefferson Davis--these and
many other leaders of thought and action, east and west, north and
south, at different periods of the nation's growth, and at different
stages of their own careers, have, for various reasons, and with widely
varying purity of motive, headed or joined in separatist movements. Many
of these men were actuated by high-minded, though narrow, patriotism;
and those who, in the culminating catastrophe of all the separatist
agitations, appealed to the sword, proved the sincerity of their
convictions by their resolute courage and self-sacrifice. Nevertheless
they warred against the right, and strove mightily to bring about the
downfall and undoing of the nation.
Evils of the Disunion Movements.
The men who brought on and took part in the disunion movements were
moved sometimes by good and sometimes by bad motives; but even when
their motives were disinterested and their purposes pure, and even when
they had received much provocation, they must be adjudged as lacking the
wisdom, the foresight, and the broad devotion to all the land over which
the flag floats, without which no statesman can rank as really great.
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