Excerpt from The Rebellion, Vol. 1 of 8 The earth has been cursed with civil wars from the earliest times in which we have records of the race. Though characterized by more or less ferocity, and assuming various shapes, they all may be divided into two general classes. Those that occur under a despotic form of government, spring from oppression which the people, no longer able to bear, venture all the terrible hazard of a resolution to throw off. Those that take place under a democratic form of government, are brought about by a few ambitious men, who seek by faction to obtain power. Those of the former class possess dignity and grandeur, from the fact that they are based on the great doctrine of human rights. Man asserting his inherent, God-given rights on the battle field against overwhelm ing odds, is a sublime spectacle. The latter are based on falsehoods, and kept alive by deception. Such were the civil wars of the early republics. In the time of Cromwell, both religious. And civil liberty were the grand prizes of the struggle; and whether we look at Hampden, calmly suffering for the sake of liberty, or at Cromwell's Ironsides, sweeping like a thunder cloud to battle, with the fearful war cry, religion, on their lips, our deepest sympathies and admiration are excited, and we forget the horrors of the carnage in the mighty stake at issue. So in the bloody revolution of France; though the views of the masses were vague, and their speech often incoherent, yet when we behold inscribed on their banner the great charter of human rights, and the head of a king thrown down as the gage of battle, we no longer see the crimson field with its garments rolled in blood, we see only the divine image of human liberty hovering over it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.