Nor can the loyal millions respect those who, in setting forth the grounds of their rebellion, and essaying to justify themselves in the eyes of the civilized world, do not hesitate to deny the most palpable truths. The rebel who rests on the inherent or reserved right of each State to secede from the Union at her sovereign pleasure, is a bad logician, and unsound in his constitutional theories; but he is not necessarily a knave. But the rebel apologist who says to Europe, 'This revolt was not impelled by Slavery, but by hostility to the policy of Protection, Internal Improvements, etc., which the North had power in the Union to fasten upon us in defiance of our utmost opposition,' he shows himself a dissembler and a liar. There was no tariff when the Cotton States seceded--there had been none for many years--which those States had not heartily aided to enact. For not more than ten years of the eighty-odd of our existence as a nation, has there been a tariff in operation that South-Carolina did not help enact and sustain. The tariffs which are now trumped up as an excuse for Secession, not only had no existence when that Secession was inaugurated, but could have had none had the Cotton States remained faithful to their constitutional obligations. When, therefore, such men as Lieutenant Maury assure Europe that Slavery did not incite the Southern Rebellion--that it had but a remote and subordinate relation to that outbreak--they betray their own recklessness of truth, and their knowledge that their case is one which can not abide the scrutiny and the dispassionate judgment of Christendom.
But the Southern Whites hate us vehemently. That is unfortunately true of what would seem to be a large majority of them. Misled by artful demagogues--excited by charges of Northern rapacity, perfidy, outrage, and venom, to which no contradiction in their hearing is permitted--the Poor Whites of the South really believe that the North is waging against them an unprovoked and fiendish, war of subjugation and rapine. Of course, they abhor us, and invoke all manner of curses on our heads. But their hatred rests upon and is impelled by egregious falsehoods, and will vanish when those falsehoods shall have been exposed and their influence dissipated. The Whisky Rebels of Western Pennsylvania intensely hated the rule of George Washington; but their rebellion being crushed, all trace of the bitterness it engendered soon faded away.