It would be less terrible if an earthquake split the land in two, and sank it into the ocean.

To avert the moral plague of slavery men fly to arms, notwithstanding the physical consequence, and those who set more count by the physical consequences cannot by that avert them, for the moral disease is followed by physical wreck--if delayed still inevitable.

So, physical force is justified, not _per se_, but as an expression of moral force; where it is unsupported by the higher principle it is evil incarnate.

The true antithesis is not between moral force and physical force, but between moral force and moral weakness.
That is the fundamental distinction being ignored on all sides.

When the time demands and the occasion offers, it is imperative to have recourse to arms, but in that terrible crisis we must preserve our balance.