Separatists

“ Scarcely any member of a congregation of separatists entered into a partnership, married a daughter, put a son out as apprentice, or gave his vote at an election, without consulting his spiritual guide. ”

“ The most of them, both Separatists and others, were very worthy and welcome; and they included women and children, who had been left behind until they could expect an assured settlement to occupy. Elder Brewster received his two daughters, Doctor Samuel [57] Fuller and Francis Cooke rejoiced to greet their wives, and there were brides to be.
Besides these sixty, certain prospective planters were accepted who did not wish to join Plymouth's colonial organization bound in partnership with the company in England. ”

“ The main line of separation is the same perplexing issue running through all political history, the rivalry between the state and nation, one seeking to minimize, the other to magnify the sphere of the central government. ”

“ In every case in which an integral community, whether consolidated or confederate, has been separated, it has been by violence, and commonly external violence—either by one nation, subjugating another, or by some successful leader succeeding by his arts and talents in arraying one part against the rest: or the parts of a great empire have been partitioned among the descendants or legatees of the last occupant—none of which causes of separation can be expected to operate here. ”

“ Separation is the alpha and omega of the spectacle. The institutionalization of the social division of labor in the form of class divisions had given rise to an earlier, religious form of contemplation: the mythical order with which every power has always camouflaged itself. Religion justified the cosmic and ontological order that corresponded to the interests of the masters, expounding and embellishing everything their societies could not deliver. ”

“ In their case, a certain disproportion of force frustrates, in a great measure, the advantage of separation. They are like the trader in Poland, who is the more despicable, and the less secure, that he is neither master nor slave. ”

“ But they have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which pronounces our separation, and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace, friends. ”

“ The concurrent agreement of all the members of this great republic to separate! A voluntary separation, with alimony on one side and on the other. Why, what would be the result? Where is the line to be drawn? What States are to secede? What is to remain American? What am I to be? An American no longer? Am I to become a sectional man, a local man, a separatist, with no country in common with the gentlemen who sit around me here, or who fill the other house of Congress? Heaven forbid! Where is the flag of the republic to remain? ”

“ Isolation, pride of lineage, independence of government, antiquity of law and custom, and jealousy of imperial influence or action have combined to make a race self-reliant even to perverseness, proud and maybe vain, sincere almost to commonplaceness, unimaginative and reserved, with the melancholy born of monotony—for the life of the little country has coiled in upon itself, and the people have drooped to see but just their own selves reflected in all the dwellers of the land, whichever way they turn. ”

“ Even as my descent into this world was for the regulation of the affairs of your community, so is my existence of equal advantage to you, and I will at all times be with you, never absent from you. Even in the other world will I be with you. Here below, separation is a thing unavoidable. In the other world there is union without disrupture, and junction without a parting. ”

“ Division is the strongest proof of fallibility in that which is divided, as unity is of truth in that which remains one mass. For this cause those who substitute national churches in a particular country under the political head of that country, whether king, president, or parliament, for the one divine polity in all countries, are divided from my argument by an impassable gulf. ”

“ From these we had the hatred one nation against another, men arrayed against each other to hew each other down, doing all iniquities, when interest or ambition called for them, enslaving one another, and selling one another, unmindful of all the claims of fraternity in the din of faction, and losing the sense of their common humanity in the difference of clime or the colour of the skin. ”

“ Still we say, in all earnestness and good faith, whenever a whole section of this republic, whether a half, a third, or only a fourth, shall truly desire and demand a separation from the residue, we shall earnestly favor such separation. If the fifteen slave States, or even the eight cotton States alone, shall quietly, decisively, say to the rest, "We prefer to be henceforth separated from you," we shall insist they be permitted to go in peace. ”

“ Truth now comes to us in such small segments that we no longer see the pattern of it; but this we are able to perceive: that the mystery of Separation is equal in degree with the mystery of Union, and that the child of separation is Pain. ”

“ Then, there is the separation regulation, dragging after it a long train of horrors and heart-rending sufferings—violating the law of holy writ—"Whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder"—and trampling upon the best feelings of human nature. ”

“ The discord may rend the nation asunder and the two elements separate and become distinct nations—a despotism with the idea of Slavery, a democracy with the idea of Freedom. Then each will be an equilibrious figure. ”

“ Let us have peace between the classes, for division in that way is even more dangerous than the division of the United Kingdom into its separate tribes or parishes.... We must keep united or we will be destroyed. ”

“ We could not separate the States by any such line, if we were to draw it. We could not sit down here to-day and draw a line of separation that would satisfy any five men in the country. There are natural cuases that would keep and tie us together, and there are social and domestic relations which we could not break if we would, and which we should not if we could. ”

“ Thus, within your State you will have two great parties under arms, neither of which can be called your own. Unless you stir yourself, and quickly, unless you choose now between friends and foes, you will find yourself alone, isolated, in grave peril, without authority or power. ”

“ And so I think that to leave any organization or human association except for a wider and larger association, to detach oneself in order to go alone, or to go apart narrowly with just a few, is fragmentation and sin. Even if one disagrees with the professions or formulae or usages of an association, one should be sure that the disagreement is sufficiently profound to justify one’s secession, and in any case of doubt, one should remain. ”

“ The separation of interests, the disregard of common objects in the struggle for individual elevation, the tyranny of one class by another class, is the thing which really dissolves the national bonds in every wide-spread and free community. We see this source of discord operating with as much force in the divided representation of great popular states, as in the bloody contests of the Roman forum or the plain of Volo in Poland. ”

“ Communities so remote from each other as those which compose the Empire, it is said again, 'cannot have those common interests which are necessary to give cohesion to a nation.' Let us consider the point. ”

“ Local feelings and local parties, a notion sometimes a sedulously cultivated of opposite interests in different portions of the Union, evil prophecies respecting its duration, cool calculations upon the benefits of separation, a narrow feeling that cannot embrace all the States as one country, an unsocial, anti-national, and half-belligerent spirit, which sometimes betrays itself,—all these undoubtedly are causes which affect, more or less, our prospect of holding together. ”

“ Secondly, there are those, men of intellect and capacity, who, dissenting altogether from the doctrines propounded by the leaders of the revolution, and convinced that the separation will not be permanent, see the surest and safest mode of action in the total abstinence from all aggressive assertion of rights, and in a policy of laissez aller of indeterminate longitude and latitude. ”

“ Its place was taken by the modern but narrower ideal of separate polities, each pursuing its own course, independent of, and often in conflict with, other societies. Unity gave way to diversity of tongues, of churches, of states; and the cosmopolitan became nationalist, patriot, separatist. ”

“ How often political groups, torn by internal dissensions, have faced the alternative of war against others, which might either cause domestic quarrels to be forgotten, or might on the contrary aggravate them beyond reconciliation! ”

“ Men say: "Look at our history: revolutions have not been in our line; and look at our political map: its construction is unfavorable to an organized uprising, and without unity what could a revolt accomplish? It is disunion which has held our empire together for centuries, and what it has done in the past it may continue to do now and in the future." ”

“ If a comparison be made between the profound religious and political dissensions which separate the various parties in France, and are more especially the result of social questions, and the separatist tendencies which were manifested at the time of the Revolution, and began to again display themselves towards the close of the Franco-German war, it will be seen that the different races represented in France are still far from being completely blended. ”

“ It evinces a disposition to separate the people from their government; to persuade them that they have different affections, principles, and interests, from those of their fellow-citizens whom they themselves have chosen to manage their common concerns, and thus to produce divisions fatal to our peace. ”

“ This however is not to be taken in the wrong separatist sense (so dominant in our modern religiosity) representing the two as mutually exclusive, or as at bottom so capable of separation that their union is only imposed from without. ”

“ In the race for territorial expansion in the West, in the evolution of the theories of centralized government, and in the conception of the rights of the individual, these rivalries became so intense as to find a solution only in the grim realities of civil strife. ”

“ Social dissolution is accelerated by provincial revolts against central authority; by survival struggle between the empires which were coordinated and consolidated into the civilization; by revolt in the subordinate and dependent segments of the civilization; by rivalry and conflict between racial, cultural and political sub-groups forced into the civilization, held there by coercion, policed by armed force and taking the first opportunity to win political independence and self determination. ”

“ Inasmuch, as he says that separation tends more to destruction than edification, therefore the reader should know that we daily find, by experience, that the following benefits are derived from separation, among us: Firstly, that we thereby obey God's word. Secondly, that we thereby rid the community from false doctrine, discord, and offensiveness, as has been said. Thirdly, that the disobedient are thereby, daily admonished to reflect, repent, and return. Fourthly, that we thereby testify that we do not consent to, nor unite with the Munsterites, and other rebellious sects. ”

“ Divide us up, segregate us into denominations, into factions, and what would we amount to? Nothing; our strength would be dissipated, we would be enfeebled, and nothing particularly would be said about us more than is said about thousands and millions of others from whom we are separated. ”

“ Her age had not yet learned the lesson, which we have acquired slowly, bit by bit through experience, that political or religious existence is possible with divided factions, not only possible but that a nation is more vigorous because of them. ”

“ They who well consider the history of similar divisions and confederacies, will find abundant reason to apprehend, that those in contemplation would in no other sense be neighbors than as they would be borderers; that they would neither love nor trust one another, but on the contrary would be a prey to discord, jealousy, and mutual injuries; in short, that they would place us exactly in the situations in which some nations doubtless wish to see us, viz., formidable only to each other. ”

“ Do they disfranchise a race?—they are the party of equal rights. And the whole wretched imbroglio of creed which is the condemnation of their action, and of action, which is the death of their creed, is dubbed Nationality. If sectionalism be the reverse of all this, we confess that we prefer sectionalism. It is a nationality which has no Northern half, a conservatism which abolishes all our heroic traditions. ”

“ So long as the persecution lasted, a man who would not go to his parish church, pray in the new fashion, cross himself in the legal way, and bend his knee to Baal, was classed as a separatist, and treated by the civil power as a man false to his Emperor and his God. ”

“ The long conflict of a century and more, and the vicissitudes of fortune, which to-day gave one party the power of the persecutor and to-morrow made the same sect the victims of persecution, had simply forced all to the practical conclusion that they must tolerate one another,—that one sect must not attempt to put another down by force. ”

“ As the war clouds began to arise and seemingly to overshadow us, the mutterings of the distant thunder could be heard in the angry words of debate and discussion in the councils of the country, and at home among the extreme advocates of secession on the one hand, and those holding extreme views opposed to the principle and policy of secession on the other. ”