Or civil war. It is expected, since the country has yielded step by step to the exactions of slavery ever since the Government was instituted, that the free States will keep on yielding until the South has nothing more to ask for, and the North has nothing more to give. With such a servile compliance, the free States are assured that they will have no difficulty in keeping the peace. But the question to be decided is: Is such a kind of peace worth the price demanded for it? May it not be true that great as is the evil of civil war, it is less an evil than an unresisting acquiescence to the exactions of slavery, and the admission that any State that pleases can leave the Union? The theory of secession involves, if admitted, a greater disaster to the Federal Union than even the slow eating at its vitals of the cancer of slavery. National unity, one country, the sovereignty of the Constitution, are all sacrificed by secession. It i
