Page "belles_lettres" Paragraph 205

Its appeal from ballots to bullets at Fort Sumter ended by costing the Southerners their right to have slaves -- a right that was even less compatible with the sovereignty of man.

The very fact that they came so near to winning by the wrong method, war, led directly to their losing both the war and the wrong thing they fought for, since it forced Lincoln to free their slaves as a military measure.

There was a divine justice in one wrong thus undoing another.

There was also a lesson, one that has served ever since to keep Americans, in their conflicts with one another, from turning from the ballot to the bullet.

Yet though the Southern States lost the worst errors in their case, they did not lose the truth they fought for.

The lives so many of them gave, to forestall what they believed would be a fatal encroachment by the Union on the powers reserved to their states have continued ever since to safeguard all Americans against freedom's other foe.