nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or by any of the acts of Congress.”  In May, 1864, he spurned the absurdity of depending “upon coaxing, flattery, and concession to get them [the Secessionists] back into the Union.”  He said:  “There have been men base enough to propose to me to return to slavery our black warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee, and thus win the respect of the masters they fought.  Should I do so, I should deserve to be damned in time and eternity.  Come what will, I will keep my faith with friend and foe.”  He meant never to be misunderstood on this point.  Recurring to it after the election, in his message to Congress in December, 1864, he quoted his language of the year before and added:  “If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it an executive duty to reinslave such persons, another, and not I, must be their instrument to perform it.”  All this was plain and spirited.  But it is impossible to praise Mr. Lincoln for contemning a course which it is surprising to find any person sufficiently ignoble to recommend.  It was, nevertheless, recommended by many, and thus we may partly see what extremities of feeling were produced by this most debasing question which has ever entered into the politics of a civilized nation.

The anxieties of the war Democrats, who feared that Mr. Lincoln was making abolition an essential purpose of the war, have already been set forth.  In truth he was not making it so, but by the drifting of events and the ensnarlment of facts it had practically become so without his responsibility.  His many utterances which survive seem to indicate that, having from the beginning hoped that the war would put an end to slavery, he now knew that it must do so.  He saw that this conclusion lay at the end of the natural course of events, also that it was not a goal which was set there by those to whom it was welcome, or which could be taken away by those to whom it was unwelcome.  It was there by the absolute and uncontrollable logic of facts.  His function was only to take care that this natural course should not be obstructed, and this established goal should not be maliciously removed away out of reach.  When he was asked why his expressions of willingness to negotiate with the Confederate leaders stipulated not only for the restoration of the Union but also for the enfranchisement of all slaves, he could only reply by intimating that the yoking of the two requirements was unobjectionable from any point of view, because he was entirely assured that Mr. Davis would never agree to reunion, either with or without slavery.  Since, therefore, Union could not be had until after the South had been whipped, it would be just as well to demand abolition also; for the rebels would not then be in a position to refuse it, and we should practically buy both in one transaction.  To him it seemed an appalling blunder to pay the price of this great war simply in order