Had He Combated
Secession With Emancipation Of The Slaves, No Slave State Would Or
Could Have Held By The Union.
Abolition for a lecturer may be a
telling subject.
It is easy to bring down rounds of applause by
tales of the wrongs of bondage. But to men in office abolition was
too stern a reality. It signified servile insurrection, absolute
ruin to all Southern slaveowners, and the absolute enmity of every
slave State.
But that task of steering between the two has been very difficult.
I fear that the task of so steering with success is almost
impossible. In England it is thought that Mr. Lincoln might have
maintained the Union by compromising matters with the South - or, if
not so, that he might have maintained peace by yielding to the
South. But no such power was in his hands. While we were blaming
him for opposition to all Southern terms, his own friends in the
North were saying that all principle and truth was abandoned for the
sake of such States as Kentucky and Missouri. "Virginia is gone;
Maryland cannot go. And slavery is endured, and the new virtue of
Washington is made to tamper with the evil one, in order that a show
of loyalty may be preserved in one or two States which, after all,
are not truly loyal!" That is the accusation made against the
government by the abolitionists; and that made by us, on the other
side, is the reverse. I believe that Mr. Lincoln had no alternative
but to fight, and that he was right also not to fight with abolition
as his battle-cry.
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