An intelligent Confederate
officer remarked that their Confederacy had not been in operation
three months before it became evident that the principle on
which it was founded, if not rejected, would insure its defeat.
It was that principle of State sovereignty, for which the States
seceded, more than the superior resources and numbers of the
Government, that caused the collapse of the Confederacy. The
numbers were relatively about equal, and the military resources
of the Confederacy were relatively not much inferior to those of
the Government. So at least the Confederate leaders thought, and
they knew the material resources of the Government as well as
their own, and had calculated them with as much care and accuracy
as any men could. Foreign powers also, friendly as well as
unfriendly, felt certain that the secessionists would gain their
independence, and so did a large part of the people even of the
loyal States. The failure is due to the disintegrating principle
of State sovereignty, the very principle of the Confederacy. The
war has proved that united states are, other things being equal,
an overmatch for confederated states.
The European states must unite either as equals or as unequals.
As equals, the union can be only a confederacy, a sort of
Zollverein, in which each state retains its individual
sovereignty; if as unequals, then someone among them will aspire
to the hegemony, and you have over again the Athenian
Confederation, formed at the conclusion of the Persian war, and
its fate.
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