Their very soil has been
paid for out of the public treasury. Indeed, the Union is still in debt
under obligations incurred by their purchase.
How striking, too, is the contrast between the character and method of
the proceedings which originated and now sustain the Rebellion, and
those which initiated and carried through the Revolution! The Rebellion
exhibits to us a complete inversion of the course of measures which
inaugurated the Revolution. "Secession" was the invention of ambitious
leaders, who overrode the forms of law, and have not dared to submit
their votes and their doings to primary meetings of the people whom
they have driven with a despotic tyranny. In the Revolution the
people themselves were the prime movers. Each little country town and
municipality of the original Colonies, that has a hundred years of
history to be written, will point us boastfully to entries in its
records showing how it _instructed_ its representatives first to
remonstrate against tyranny, and then to resist it by successive
measures, each of which, with its limitations and its increasing
boldness, was dictated by the same people. The people of Virginia,
remembering the ancient precedent which won them their renown,
_intended_ to follow it in an early stage of our present strife.
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