It was no Insurrection or Rebellion, or even Civil War in any proper sense of these terms... The war... was a war between States regularly organized into two separate Federal Republics... In the beginning, and throughout the contest, the object of the 'Confederates' was to maintain the separate Sovereignty of each State, and the right of self-government, which that necessarily carries with it. The object of the 'Federals,' on the contrary, was to maintain a Centralized Sovereignty over all the States on both sides. This was the fundamental principle involved in the Conflict, which must be kept continually in mind.
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Luxury is the first, second and third cause of the ruin of republics. It is the vampire which soothes us into a fatal slumber while it sucks the lifeblood of our veins.
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The small progress we have made after four or five weeks close attendance and continual reasonings with each other is, methinks, a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the human understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of government, and examined the different forms of those republics which, having been formed with seeds of their own dissolution, now no longer exist.
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Many have dreamed up republics and principalities that have never in truth been known to exist; the gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to self-destruction rather than self-preservation.
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In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.
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Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.
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As in Athens, the right to participate was restricted to men, just as it was also in all later democracies and republics until the twentieth century.
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Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
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The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.
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Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.
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