understood the fathers of the republic. Their treatment of that question was fully conclusive to him that they so regarded it. Their prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern territory, and the published letters and opinions of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Jay and many others who took a conspicuous part in laying the foundation of the Government, showed that they regarded slavery as a great evil, inconsistent with the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the teachings and spirit of Christianity. Their letters and published opinions clearly satisfied Lincoln and indicated that they confidently expected that it would gradually pass away before the power of civilization and freedom, as it had already done in many of the States, and that thus shrunk from what they considered insurmountable obstacles at that time to immediate emancipation, they consented to give the system certain advantages which they expected would be temporary and not dangerous to the stability of the Government. The framers of the Constitution were tender and sensitive on that point. They were careful that the word slave or slavery should not appear in that instrument, they were not willing that in future ages that notable text book should convey, even by implication, that they considered slavery one of the sheet anchors of the republic. They had, however,. to deal with the institution as it then existed, and they did so gingerly and warily. They mentioned it as persons held to labor, and gave it such safe-guards as were absolutely necessary in the States where it then existed. The opinions and sentiments held by the framers of the Constitution were received and held as politic by the larger body of the Southern people at that day. The relation of master and slave was at that time considered more in the light of domestic and family relations than the servile and chattel relations which it afterwards assumed. In that day the family and parental relations were seldom severed by the sale of a portion of the family for transmission to labor for life in a distant State.

The invention of the cotton-gin by Eli Whitney in 1793, and the opening up of the sugar plantations, about 1800, in Louisiana, gave a new phase to the condition of the slave, creating a great demand for slave labor which could only be supplied by the purchase of slaves in the non-producing cotton and sugar States and their removal to the cotton and sugar plantations, since the supply from Africa was closed-the slave trade and supply from that source being prohibited. Slaves now rose in value, and this turned the attention of many of the citizens of the non-producing cotton and sugar States to the raising of slaves to supply the demand, and the income of many citizens was counted and predicated on the number and value of the slaves they could raise to supply the increasing demand. This new condition of the slave

interest, the great increase in the value of slaves, and the increasing demand for slave labor had a material and national effect in the slave and free States

in opposite directions. The principles and views held by many of the Southern people in reference to slavery in an early day had passed away, and slavery was now considered and upheld in the South as an excellent and profitable institution, and one to be fostered and extended in every way; while in the free States the opposition to its principles and to its extension was gathering strength and creating public sentiment which was in keeping with universal freedom, which seemed to be advancing throughout the civilized world. Mr. Lincoln, from early teachings of a christian mother, from personal observations and reading the writings of the fathers of the republic, had early in life imbibed those principles of anti-slavery which became the ruling feature of his political life. Those sentiments grew and strengthened with his observations of the effects of slavery in his own country, as well as in those countries where it was still tolerated.

In 1808, by the United States, the slave trade was abolished, in 1820, it was made an act of piracy; in 1818, Netherlands abolished the slave trade; Spain, in 1820; in 1834, the British Emancipation Act was passed; in 1846, Sweden abolished slavery; in 1848, France and Denmark passed similar enactments. In 1861, Nathaniel Gordon, master of the ship Erie, was arrested, tried, convicted and executed in New York under the laws making persons engaged in the slave trade guilty of piracy.

The writer has often heard Mr. Lincoln observe, that in a moral and personal view he saw but little difference in the magnitude of the crime between the captain of the vessel who purchased slaves and carried them away from home and friends in Africa to distant countries to spend a life of servitude, and the slave trader who purchased the husband or child in Virginia and conveyed them, manacled it might be, to work a life of servitude on the distant sugar plantations of Louisiana. Thus, from ideas garnered from the history of the republic, the increase of the anti-slavery feeling in the free States and the march of universal emancipation throughout the civilized world, Mr. Lincoln became satisfied that slavery was undergoing a process of ultimate extinction, and that would be the result finally in the United States; and feeling and acting under that view of the situation, he said, in his first speech after his nomination for Senator, in Springfield: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided." The method and means by which this result would be accomplished he believed would be by the prohibition of the further extension of slavery and the moral and christianizing influence, which would eventually lead the citi

zens of the slave holding States to inaugurate and carry out a system of emancipation which would result in its entire extinction. Mr. Lincoln was fully in accord with Henry Clay in his views of gradual emancipation, and was present at Lexington, in 1846, when he delivered his great speech on that subject. Subsequently, Mr. Lincoln, closing one of his speeches, said: "Henry Clay, my beau ideal of a statesman, the man for whom I fought all my humble life-he, Henry Clay-once said of a class of men who would repress all tendencies of liberty and ultimate emancipation, that they must, if they do this, go back to the era of our independence and muzzle the cannon that thunders the joyous annual return; they must blow out the moral lights around us; they must penetrate the human soul and eradicate there the love of liberty; and then, and not till then, could they perpetuate slavery.”

A short time previous to Mr. Lincoln's first election to the Presidency, in an address to Kentuckians, he said, announcing his own principles and those of the Republican party in reference to slavery: "I say we must not interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists, because the Constitution forbids it, and the general welfare does not require us to do so. We must not withhold an efficient fugitive slave law, because the Constitution requires us, as I understand it, not to withhold such a law. But we must prevent the outspreading of the institution, because neither the Constitution nor the general welfare requires us to extend it. We must prevent the revival of the African slave trade and the Territorial slave code. We must prevent each of these things being done by either Congress or Courts."

These principles enunciated by Lincoln on this occssion were the fundamental tenets and dogmas of the Republican party on slavery when they came into power, and how they were observed will be noted in the succeeding chapter.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE REAL CAUSE OF THE REBELLION-THE PRESIDENT'S APPEAL.

At the National Republican Convention that nominated Mr. Lincoln for President, the following resolution in the platform was adopted:

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'Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment, exclusively, is essential to the balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends, and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as amongst the gravest of crimes."

In the session of Congress in the Winter of 1860-61, which was largely Republican, the following resolution was passed:

Resolved, That neither the Federal Government, nor the people, or the government of the non slave-holding States, have the right to legislate upon or interfere with slavery in any of the slave States holding slaves in the Union."

And still further to place the Republican party on positive ground, the same Congress passed a resolution recommending such an amendment to the Constitution as would forever put it out of the power of the Government or the people of the United States. It was in the following words: "Article 13. No amendment shall be made to the constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."

President Lincoln, in his inaugural on the 4th of March, said, referring to this amendment to the constitution: I have no objection to its being made. express and irrevocable." The Republican party and the President having by their public acts on record given evidence to the world and to the people of the slave States that they were fully committed against all and every interference with slavery in the slave-holding States, it would seem that the South

in its unnatural rebellion against the Government was left without any excuse. The real cause of the rebellion is to be found not so much in the fears of the leaders and public men of the South for the safety of their peculiar institution as in the loss of the control and patronage of the general Government.

Previous to 1860 and the admission of California into the Union, for half a century, with short, rare intervals, the South or slave States, had almost unlimited control of the Executive Department and patronage of the Government. They fed largely at the public crib, and they had so long enjoyed this highly esteemed favoritism that they had become to look upon it as a right established by long use and possession. It is true that the Democracy of the free States had shared in a measure in the distribution of public favors, and for these their subserviency to the Southern oligarchy was strikingly illustrated during President Buchanan's administration. The admission of California left the slave States in a minority, and the subsequent admission of Kansas and the prospective admission of other free States, destroyed the last lingering hope of slave supremacy in the councils of the Nation. This, and the growing public sentiment of the people of the free States, that free territory should remain free, were the chief moving causes of the rebellion against the Union.

It may be properly stated here that the South, in its treasonable movements, had material aid and sympathy from a portion of the press and leaders of the Democratic party, or copperheads, as they were styled. For years leaders, like President Buchanan, had been its submissive instruments, and the influence and numbers of those who secretly aided the South and openly espoused its cause did much to inaugurate and encourage the unnatural conflict. While this Northern sympathy gave aid and comfort to the secession movement, the Southern leaders had no cause to apprehend or fear any interference with slavery in the slave States. But in their zeal to fire the hearts of the Southern people they ignored the real causes and goaded the people to the adoption of desperate measures by the representation of their leaders in public addresses, and by the public press, that their dear and peculiar institution was really in danger of annihilation. In some of the slave States, meetings were held before the Presidential election, in which secession was advocated, and the leaders and public men in their public speeches strove earnestly to impress the minds of the people that their liberties and their peculiar institution were really in danger of being destroyed by the Yankee abolitionists, and urged them to arms and resistance against the authority and laws of the Union. In this act of resistance to the laws of the National Government, the leaders knew full well that their action at home must be called secession; rebellion would not do. They knew that the people