It is this arbitrary and tyrannical spirit
embodied in Southern institutions which has seized on the pretext of
secession in order to destroy the Government of the Union. The efforts
of the loyal States and of the Federal authority in the present war are
antagonistic to this spirit. Their purpose is to break down and destroy
this system of arbitrary power, which has set itself up against the
Union; and in its stead to bring into play the great principle of
popular assent to the fundamental principles and conditions of
government. Annihilate the despotism which controls in the pretended
confederacy, give the masses of the people absolute freedom of choice
under the conditions necessary for deliberate and intelligent decision,
and they will certainly pronounce for the restoration of the old Union,
under which they have enjoyed such boundless prosperity. No friend of
the Union entertains any serious thought of disregarding or destroying
the great principle that governments are only rightly founded on the
consent of the governed. But it is not every temporary aberration of
thought, nor every outbreak of revolutionary violence, which may
properly be allowed to avail in changing the forms of an established
government. Some respect is due to obligations once assumed and long
recognized as the basis of a permanent political organization; and when
the minority in that organization have taken up arms against it, the
majority, in possession of the lawful power of the nation, are bound to
vindicate its constitutional authority.
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