The comment of the historian is: "The speeches" (he was speaking through the States) "seem to have been rather disappointing at the time, as the people longed for less cautious declarations."

It was this all-consuming soul-passion that peculiarly fitted him, and him alone, for the terribly cruel mission for which destiny seems to have elevated him to power. Was Charles Francis Adams, the scholar and historian of Massachusetts, right when he says, "It was foreordained-predestined?" It required just such a passion-a passion that was absolutely madness itself -to ride rough shod through the smoke of battle, and over the prostrate forms of suffering, bleeding, dying patriots to reach the goal of his ambition, "the end of slavery." How terrible must have been his picture of the horrors of slavery in the South! What "legion of demons" must have inspired his imagination! Whether to pity the more, or condemn the more, we know not.

Lincoln's great trouble was, not simply this madness. He either did not see, or could not see, or would not see, his own responsibility, and that of his party for the conditions then existing. His madly impassioned soul could see nothing but “our form of Government saved to the world, its beloved history and cherished memories vindicated, and its happy future fully assured and rendered inconceivably grand"-words of his own to the Border States representatives, to whom he added, "To you more than any others the privilege is given to assure that happiness and swell that grandeur and to link your names therewith forever." What mattered it to him that the Constitution furnished a remedy? That remedy was not fast enough. The surgery of the sword must take its place.

When Lincoln was elevated to power this was the most prosperous Government in the world. Its great charter of safety was the Constitution. In vain the South clung to it as their only hope, saying, "Give us this and we shall be satisfied." He had it in his power to assure the South and calm her fears. But he answered her pleas in terms the South understood to mean threats and war; and which the North construed as ambigous, yea, in reality self-contradictory. A great number de

clared it was conciliatory, while equally as great a number declared it meant "war to the hilt." The ministers of the Gospel and the great masses believed slavery was the one issue, while Congress and the President were instant in denial. "A splendid popular delusion" prevailed among the Northern masses, while a more personal and more powerful delusion occupied the President's chair.

"Our form of Government" was not imperiled till the tall, shrewd, delusive form of Abraham Lincoln rose above the plains of Illinois. Till then, therefore, it needed not be "saved to the world." All "its beloved history," all "its cherished memories," antedated his rise to power and delusion. Two years of "a brothers' war" had been draining the best blood of the veins of the Nation when he addressed these soft persuasive words just quoted, to the Border States Representatives. The bloody battle of Antietam had just been fought. That great battle and the many that had preceded it had not then furnished to the Government any "cherished memories," or "beloved history" during Lincoln's two years' reign. Besides, every day was one of anticipated battle, every hour one of unrest, and every moment, one of agony. He seemed supremely ignorant of his responsibility for the conditions his policy had brought about. The highest boast of these awful conditions was the matchless display of heroism by the soldiers of the armies of the two sections on the field of struggle.

In all this pathetic address to the Border States representatives, not a tear moistened his eyes, for the heroes wounded and suffering and dying in the strife; not a sigh or word of commiseration escaped his lips for the homes draped in mourning in all the crowded East, in all the Sunny South, or in all the Wild West. The one great thought that now possessed his mind, that now crowded out all other thoughts, was "a happy future fully assured and rendered inconceivably grand." That picture was ever incomplete without himself conspicuously at the head of the victorious procession. The intense imagination that painted this splendid picture of future happiness and grandeur was colored by the all-absorbing "end of slavery."

Time with him was too short to pause to consider whether this picture could have come without making our country a cemetery in which to lay for their final sleep the blood stained forms of a million heroes. Were the lives of our heroes so cheap as not to deserve a more serious consideration? Was the Constitution of so little importance that its method of solution was considered unworthy of trial? Was there any absolute necessity for substituting the Chicago Platform for the Constitution of the States? The platform meant war, the Constitution meant peace. The platform meant the will of less than 39 per cent of the people; in the Constitution the will of more than 65 per cent. The platform meant the rule of madness, the Constitution that of sanity.

When the splendid picture of "future happiness and future grandeur" failed to captivate the Border States representatives, Lincoln did not despair. In all the earnestness of an indomitable passion he exclaimed, "I must save this Government if possible. What I cannot do I will not do, but it may as well be understood once for all, that I shall not surrender this game, leaving an available card unplayed." The next day he explained to Seward and Wells what he meant by "available card." It was the emancipation proclamation, admitted by himself to be unconstitutional, and yet issued in the name of that instrument and by virtue of its authority.

How President Davis viewed it may be seen from his message of January 1863:

"The public journals of the North have been received containing a proclamation dated on the first day of the present month, signed by the President of the United States, in which he orders and declares all slaves within ten of the States of the Confederacy to be free, except in such as are to be found within certain districts now occupied in part by the armed forces of the enemy. We may well leave it to the instincts of that common humanity which a beneficent Creator has implanted in the breasts of our fellow men of all countries to pass judgment on a measure by which several millions of human beings of an inferior race-peaceful and contented laborers in their sphere-are doomed to extermination, while at the same time they are en

couraged to a general assassination of their masters by the insiduous recommendation to abstain from violence unless in necessary self-defence. Our own detestation of those who have attempted the most exercrable measure recorded in the history of guilty men, is tempered by profound contempt for the impotent rage which it discloses. So far as regards the action of this Government on such criminals as may attempt its execution, I confine myself to informing you that I shall-unless in your wisdom you deem some other course more expedient-deliver to the several State authorities all commissioned officers of the United States that may hereafter be captured by our forces in any of the States embraced in the proclamation, that they may be dealt with in accordance with the laws of those States providing for the punishment of criminals engaged in exciting servile insurrection. The enlisted soldiers I shall continue to treat as unwilling instruments in the commission of these crimes, and shall direct their discharge and return to their homes on the proper and usual parole."

A WIDER VIEW AND REPLY TO DISTIN

GUISHED AUTHORS.

In the last chapter devoted to the Emancipation Proclamation, we showed how Lincoln in the beginning of his administration denied having any right whatever to interfere with slavery in the States; and how, by gradual approaches upon constitutional ground, he finally proclaimed he had absolute authority to free all slaves without regard to State lines:-that is, that his approaches were from no authority whatever to absolute authority from zero to infinity.

In this chapter we shall feel at liberty to take a wider scope, and reply to arguments presented by distinguished authors, per taining to any phase of the subject, even including that of the last chapter. In fact this chapter may develop mostly into a continuation of the last.

In the "American Statesman," (Abraham Lincoln) edited by John T. Morse, Jr., Vol. 2, page 95, are these words: "While loyalty to the Union operated as a bond to hold together the people of the North, slavery entered as a wedge to force them asunder." Slavery was not always a wedge. The time has been when it was a binding force. It must therefore have been forged into a wedge by beating and hammering. As it had not changed its character in the South, the wedge must have been. forged in the North. But a wedge even when placed is harmless unless driven home. All know that the same section which did the forging did the driving. Mr. Morse said: "It was not long before the wedge proved a more powerful force than the bond, for the wedge was driven home"-by the North.

Many were the men of the North who believed that the South would be satisfied with a true construction of the Constitution. They so proclaimed. They were denounced as "Northern men with Southern principles" (compliments) and were christened "copperheads." Pronounced "more odious than avowed secessionists," they were ridiculed, mobbed, and denounced as "auxiliaries to the Confederate army." It was derisively said of them,