1862.] LINCOLN'S ATTITUDE TOWARD SLAVERY. 201

Union. The old habit of compromise and conciliation half paralyzed the arm of war, and thousands of well-meaning citizens were unable to comprehend the fact that we were dealing with a question that it was useless to compromise and a force that it was impossible to conciliate.

Mr. Lincoln had hated slavery ever since, when a young man, he made a trip on a flat-boat to New Orleans, and there saw it in some of its more hideous aspects. That he realized its nature and force as an organized institution and a power in politics, appears from one of his celebrated speeches, delivered in 1858, wherein he declared. that as a house divided against itself cannot stand, so our Government could not endure permanently half slave and half free. "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." Why then, hating slavery personally, and understanding it politically, and knowing it to be the cause of the war, did he not sooner declare it abolished?

On the one hand, he was not, like some of our chief magistrates, under the impression that he had been placed in office to carry out irresponsibly a personal policy of his own; and on the other he was shrewd enough to know that it would be as futile for a president to place himself far in advance of his people on a great question, as for a general

202

THE COST OF EMANCIPATION.

[1862.

to precede his troops on the battle-field. Hence he turned over and over, and presented again and again, the idea that the war might be stopped and the question settled by paying for the slaves and liberating them. It looked like a very simple calculation to figure out the cost of purchased emancipation and compare it with the probable cost of the war. The comparison seemed to present an unanswerable argument, and in the end the money cost of the war was more one thousand dollars for every slave emancipated, while in the most profitable days of the institution the blacks, young and old together, had not been worth over half that price. The fallacy of the argument lay in its blindness to the fact that the Confederates were not fighting to retain possession of their actual slaves, but to perpetuate the institution itself. The unthrift of slavery as an economic system had been many times demonstrated, notably in Helper's 'Impending Crisis," but these demonstrations, instead of inducing the slaveholders to seek to get rid of it on the best attainable terms, appeared only to excite their anger. And it ought to have been seen that a proud people with arms in their hands, either flushed with victory or confident in their own prowess, no matter where their real interests may lie, can never be reasoned with except through the syllogisms of lead and steel. Perhaps Mr. Lincoln did know it, but was waiting for his people to find it out.

The Louisville, Ky., "Courier," in a paragraph quoted on page 70 of this volume, had told a great

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M'CLELLAN'S POSITION.

203

deal of bitter and shameful truth; but when it entered upon the prophecy that the North would soon resume the yoke of the slaveholders, it was not so happy. And yet it had strong grounds for its confident prediction. Not only had a great Peace Convention been held in February, 1861, which strove to prevent secession by offering new guarantees for the protection of slavery, but the chief anxiety of a large number of Northern citizens and officers in the military service appeared to be to manifest their desire that the institution should not be harmed.

The most eminent of the Federal generals, McClellan, when he first took the field in West Virginia, issued a proclamation to the Unionists, in which he said: " Notwithstanding all that has been said by the traitors to induce you to believe our advent among you will be signalized by an interference with your slaves, understand one thing clearly not only will we abstain from all such interference, but we will, on the contrary, with an iron hand crush any attempt at insurrection on their part." In pursuance of this, he returned to their owners all slaves that escaped and sought refuge within his lines. It was an every-day occurrence for slaveholders who were in active rebellion against the Government that he was serving to come into his camps under flag of truce and demand and receive their runaway slaves. The Hutchinsons, a family of popular singers, by permission of the Secretary of War, visited his camp in the winter of 1861-2, to sing to the soldiers.

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THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY'S POSITION.

[1862.

But when the General found them singing some stanzas of Whittier's that spoke of slavery as a curse to be abolished, he forthwith issued an order that their pass should be revoked and they should not sing any more to the troops. And even after his retreat on the Peninsula, McClellan wrote a long letter of advice to the President, in the course of which he said: "Neither confiscation of property . . . nor forcible abolition of slavery should be contemplated for a moment. . . . Military power should not be allowed to interfere with the relations of servitude, either by supporting or impairing the authority of the master, except for repressing disorder."

In all this, General McClellan was only clinging blindly and tenaciously to the idea that had underlain the whole administration of the government while it was in the hands of his party: that the perpetuation of slavery, whether against political opposition or against the growth of civilization and the logic of political economy, was the first purpose of the Constitution and the most imperative duty of the Government. Democratic politicians had never formulated this rule, but Democratic Presidents had always followed it. President Polk had obeyed it when with one hand he secured the slave State of Texas at the cost of the Mexican War, and with the other relinquished to Great Britain the portion of Oregon north of the 49th parallel, but for which we should now possess every harbor on the Pacific coast. President Pierce had obeyed it when he sent troops to Kansas to

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EFFECT UPON ELECTIONS.

205

assist the invaders from Missouri and overawe the free-State settlers. President Buchanan had obeyed it when he vetoed the Homestead Bill, which would have accelerated the development of the northern Territories into States. And innumerable other instances might be cited. The existence of this party in the North was the most serious embarrassment with which the Administration had to contend in the conduct of the warnot even excepting the border States. As individuals, its members were undoubtedly loyal to the Constitution and Government as they understood them, though they wofully misunderstood them. As a party, it was placed in a singular dilemma. It did not want the Union dissolved; for without the vote of the slave States it would be in a hopeless minority in Congress and at every Presidential election; but neither did it wish to see its strongest cohesive element overthrown, or its natural leaders defeated and exiled. What it wanted was "the Union as it was," and for this it continued to clamor long after it had become as plain as daylight that the Union as it was could never again exist. Whenever the National armies met with a reverse, if an election was pending, this party was the gainer thereby; if they won a victory, it became weaker. Whenever a new measure was proposed, Congress and the President were obliged to consider not only what would be its legitimate effect, but whether in any way the Democratic press could use it as a weapon against them. Hence the idea of emancipation, though