Mr. Lincoln, speaking on the 12th of January, 1848, in Congress, said:
"Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the
right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new
one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, most sacred
right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor
is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an
existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such
people that can may revolutionize and make their own any or so much of
the territory as they inhabit."[407]
Probably Mr. Gladstone expressed in the briefest possible compass the
general consensus of the Virginia people, when on the 24th of April,
1862, in his Manchester speech, referring to the attitude of the Federal
Government and the Northern people, he said: "We have no faith in the
propagation of free institutions at the point of the sword."[408]