Note 25 — Chapter VIII · (continued 2)

From whom come these objections to the "propriety" of the general government's interfering to maintain republicanism in the states? Do they not come from those who have ever hitherto claimed that the general government was bound to interfere to put down republicanism? And that those who were republicans at the north, might with perfect "propriety" and consistency, pledge their assistance to the despots of the south, to sustain the worst, the meanest and most atrocious of tyrannies? Yes, from the very same. To interfere to assist one half of the people of a state in the cowardly, cruel and fiendish work of crushing the other half into the earth, corresponds precisely with their chivalrous notions of "propriety;" but it is insufferable officiousness for them to form any political compacts that will require them to interfere to protect the weak against the tyranny of the strong, or to maintain justice, liberty, peace and freedom.