The Life Story of Abraham Lincoln -16

The Life Story of Abraham Lincoln -16

Though Mr. Lincoln was too sagacious to give the Northern allies of the
Rebels the occasion they desired and even strove to provoke,
yet from the beginning of the war the most persistent efforts
have been made to confuse the public mind as to its origin
and motives, and to drag the people of the loyal States down
from the national position they had instinctively taken to
the old level of party squabbles and antipathies. The wholly
unprovoked rebellion of an oligarchy proclaiming negro
slavery the corner-stone of free institutions, and in the
first flush of over-hasty confidence venturing to parade the
logical sequence of their leading dogma, "that slavery is
right in principle, and has nothing to do with difference of
complexion," has been represented as a legitimate and gallant
attempt to maintain the true principles of democracy. The
rightful endeavor of an established government, the least
onerous that ever existed, to defend itself against a
treacherous attack on its very existence, has been cunningly
made to seem the wicked effort of a fanatical clique to force
its doctrines on an oppressed population. Even so long ago
as when Mr. Lincoln, not yet convinced of the danger and
magnitude of the crisis, was endeavoring to persuade himself
of Union majorities at the South, and to carry on a war that
was half peace in the hope of a peace that would have been
all war,- -while he was still enforcing the Fugitive Slave
Law, under some theory that Secession, however it might
absolve States from their obligations, could not escheat them
of their claims under the Constitution, and that slaveholders
in rebellion had alone among mortals the privilege of having
their cake and eating it at the same time,--the enemies of
free government were striving to persuade the people that the
war was an Abolition crusade. To rebel without reason was
proclaimed as one of the rights of man, while it was
carefully kept out of sight that to suppress rebellion is the
first duty of government. All the evils that have come upon
the country have been attributed to the Abolitionists, though
it is hard to see how any party can become permanently
powerful except in one of two ways, either by the greater
truth of its principles, or the extravagance of the party
opposed to it. To fancy the ship of state, riding safe at
her constitutional moorings, suddenly engulfed by a huge
kraken of Abolitionism, rising from unknown depths and
grasping it with slimy tentacles, is to look at the natural
history of the matter with the eyes of Pontoppidan.(1) To
believe that the leaders in the Southern treason feared any
danger from Abolitionism, would be to deny them ordinary
intelligence, though there can be little doubt that they made
use of it to stir the passions and excite the fears of their
deluded accomplices. They rebelled, not because they thought
slavery weak, but because they believed it strong enough, not
to overthrow the government, but to get possession of it; for
it becomes daily clearer that they used rebellion only as a
means of revolution, and if they got revolution, though not
in the shape they looked for, is the American people to save
them from its consequences at the cost of its own existence?
The election of Mr. Lincoln, which it was clearly in their
power to prevent had they wished, was the occasion merely,
and not the cause of their revolt.