Abraham Lincoln
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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.
Abolitionism, till within a year or two, was the despised heresy of a
few earnest persons, without political weight enough to carry the
election of a parish constable; and their cardinal principle was
disunion, because they were convinced that within the Union the
position of slavery was impregnable. In spite of the proverb, great
effects do not follow from small causes,--that is, disproportionately
small,--but from adequate causes acting under certain required
conditions. To contrast the size of the oak with that of the parent
acorn, as if the poor seed had paid all costs from its slender strong-
box, may serve for a child's wonder; but the real miracle lies in that
divine league which bound all the forces of nature to the service of
the tiny germ in fulfilling its destiny. Everything has been at work
for the past ten years in the cause of anti-slavery, but Garrison and
Phillips have been far less successful propagandists than the