its own integrity, certainly it cannot be stated as
a further truth that no portion of a nation can ever
be justified in endeavoring to obtain an independent
national existence; no citizen of this country can
admit this, but must say that such an endeavor is
justifiable or not justifiable according as its cause
and basis are right or wrong. Far down, then,
at the very bottom lay the question whether the Southerners
had a sufficient cause upon which to base a revolution.
Now this question was hardly conclusively answered
by the perfectly true statement that the North had
not interfered with Southern rights. Southerners
might admit this, and still believe that their welfare
could be best subserved by a government wholly their
own. So the very bottom question of all still
remained: Was the South endeavoring to establish
a government of its own for a justifiable reason and
a right purpose? Now the avowed purpose was to
establish on an enduring foundation a permanent slave
empire; and the declared reason was, that slavery
was not safe within the Union. Underneath the
question of the Union therefore lay, logically, the
question of slavery.
Lincoln and the other Republican leaders said that,
if slavery extension was prevented, then slavery was
in the way of extinction. If the assertion was
true, it pretty clearly followed that the South could
retain slavery only by independence and a complete
imperial control within the limits of its own homogeneous
nationality; for undeniably the preponderant Northern
mass was becoming firmly resolved that slavery should
not be extended, however it might be tolerated within
its present limits. So still, by anti-slavery
statement itself, the ultimate question was:
whether or not the preservation of slavery was a right
and sufficient cause or purpose for establishing an
independent nationality. Lincoln, therefore,
went direct to the logical heart of the contention,
when he said that the real dispute was whether slavery
was a right thing or a wrong thing. If slavery
was a right thing, a Union conducted upon a policy
which was believed to doom it to “ultimate extinction”
was not a right thing. But if slavery was a wrong
thing, a revolution undertaken with the purpose of
making it perpetual was also a wrong thing. Therefore,
from beginning to end, Lincoln talked about slavery.
By so doing he did what he could to give to the war
a character far higher even than a war of patriotism,
for he extended its meaning far beyond the age and
the country of its occurrence, and made of it, not
a war for the United States alone, but a war for humanity,
a war for ages and peoples yet to come. In like
manner, he himself also gained the right to be regarded
as much more than a great party leader, even more than
a great patriot; for he became a champion of mankind
and the defender of the chief right of man. I
do not mean to say that he saw these things in this
light at the moment, or that he accurately formulated
Print
Word
PDF
