Abraham Lincoln
Page: 19

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,