asked for the opinion of his friends. All but William H. Herndon, the law partner of Mr. Lincoln, declared that the whole speech was too far in advance of the times, and they especially condemned that part which referred to a divided house. Mr. Herndon sat still while they were giving their respective opinions; then he sprang to his feet and said: "Lincoln, deliver it just as it reads. If it is in advance of the times, let us—you and I, if no one else-lift the people to the level of this speech now, higher hereafter. The speech is true, wise and politic, and will succeed now, or in the future. Nay, it will aid you, if it will not make you President of the United States."

"Mr. Lincoln sat still a short moment, rose from his chair, walked backward and forward in the hall, stopped and said: 'Friends, I have thought about this matter a great deal, have weighed the question well from all corners, and am thoroughly convinced the time has come when it should be uttered; and if it must be that I must go down because of this speech, then let me go down linked to truth-die in the advocacy of what is right and just. This nation cannot live on injustice. A house divided against itself cannot stand, I say again and again.""

The opening paragraph of the speech is as follows: "If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do and how to do it. We are now far on into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy that agitation has not only not ceased, but is constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government can

not 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. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South."

The blast of the trumpet gave no uncertain sound. The far-seeing suggestion of Mr. Herndon came true to the letter. I believe this speech made Abraham Lincoln President of the United States.

But the founders of the Constitution of the United States had built a house which was divided against itself from the beginning. They had framed a union of States which was part free and part slave, and that union was intended to last forever. Here was an irreconcilable conflict between the Constitution and the future President of the United States.

When the Republican Convention assembled at Chicago in May, 1860, in the heat of the contest, which soon became narrowed down to a choice between Mr. Seward and Mr. Lincoln, the latter dispatched a friend to Chicago with a message in writing, which was handed either to Judge Davis or Judge Logan, both members of the convention, which runs as follows: "Lincoln agrees with Seward in his irrepressibleconflict idea, and in negro equality; but he is opposed to Seward's higher law." But there was no substantial difference between the position of the two: Lincoln's "divided house" and Seward's "higher law" placed them really in the same attitude.

The seventh resolution in the Chicago platform condemned

what it described as the "new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery into any or all of the Territories of the United States." This resolution was a direct repudiation by a National Convention of the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case.

On the 6th of November, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. Of the actual votes cast there was a majority against him of 930,170. Next came Mr. Douglas, who lost the support of the Southern Democrats by his advocacy of the doctrine of "squatter sovereignty," as it was called, which was in effect, although not in form, as hostile to the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case as the seventh resolution of the Chicago Convention itself. Mr. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, the candidate of the Southern Democracy, fell very far, and Mr. Bell, of Tennessee, the candidate of the Union party, as it was called, a short-lived successor of the old Whig party, fell still farther in the rear of the two Northern candidates.

The great crisis had come at last. The Abolition party had become a portion of the victorious Republican party. The South, politically, was overwhelmed. Separated now from its only ally, the Northern Democracy, it stood at last alone.

It matters not that Mr. Lincoln, after his election, in sincerity of heart held out the olive branch to the nation, and that during his term of office the South, so far as his influence could avail, would have been comparatively safe from direct aggressions. Mr. Lincoln was not known then as he is known now, and, moreover, his term of office would be but four years.

What course, then, was left to the South if it was determined to maintain its rights under the Constitution? What but the right of self-defense?

The house of every man is his castle, and he may defend it to the death against all aggressors. When a hostile hand is raised to strike a blow, he who is assaulted need not wait until the blow falls, but on the instant may protect himself as best he can. These are the rights of self-defense known, approved and acted on by all freemen. And where constitutional rights of a people are in jeopardy, a kindred right of self-defense belongs to them. Although revolutionary in its character, it is not the less a right.

Wendell Phillips, abolitionist as he was, in a speech made at New Bedford on the 9th of April, 1861, three days before the bombardment of Fort Sumter, fully recognized this right. He said: "Here are a series of States girding the Gulf, who think that their peculiar institutions require that they should have a separate government. They have a right to decide that question without appealing to you or me. A large body of the people, sufficient to make a nation, have come to the conclusion that they will have a government of a certain form. Who denies them the right? Standing with the principles of '76 behind us, who can deny them the right? What is a matter of a few millions of dollars or a few forts? It is a mere drop in the bucket of the great national question. It is theirs just as much as ours. I maintain, on the principles of '76, that Abraham Lincoln has no right to a soldier in Fort Sumter."

And such was the honest belief of the people who united in establishing the Southern Confederacy.

Wendell Phillips was not wrong in declaring the principles of '76 to be kindred to those of '61. The men of '76 did not fight to get rid of the petty tax of three pence a pound on tea, which was the only tax left to quarrel about. They were determined to pay no taxes, large or small, then or

thereafter. Whether the tax was lawful or not was a doubtful question, about which there was a wide difference of opinion, but they did not care for that. Nothing would satisfy them but the relinquishment of any claim of right to tax the colonies, and this they could not obtain. They maintained that their rights were violated. They were, moreover, embittered by a long series of disputes with the mother country, and they wanted to be independent and to have a country of their own. They thought they were strong enough to maintain that position.

Neither were the Southern men of '61 fighting for money. And they too were deeply embittered, not against a mother country, but against a brother country. The Northern people had published invectives of the most exasperating character broadcast against the South in their speeches, sermons, newspapers and books. The abolitionists had proceeded from words to deeds and were unwearied in tampering with the slaves and carrying them off. The Southern people, on their part, were not less violent in denunciation of the North. The slavery question had divided the political parties throughout the nation, and on this question the South was practically a unit. They could get no security that the provisions of the Constitution would be kept either in letter or in spirit, and this they demanded as their right.

The Southern men thought that they also were strong enough to wage successfully a defensive war. Like the men of '76, they in great part were of British stock; they lived in a thinly settled country, led simple lives, were accustomed to the use of arms, and knew how to protect themselves. Such men make good soldiers, and when their armies were enrolled the ranks were filled with men of all classes, the rich as well as the poor, the educated as well as the ignorant.