also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race,
     I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what
     I forbear I forbear because I do not believe it would help
     to save the Union.  I shall do less whenever I shall
     believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do
     more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the
     cause.  I shall try to correct errors when shown to be
     errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall
     appear to be true views.

      I have here stated my purposes according to my view of
     official duty; and I intend no modification of my
     oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere,
     should be free.

                         Yours,
                                A. LINCOLN

Everything—­humanity, justice, posterity—­was placed upon the sacrificial altar of the Union, and the slave-power was repeatedly and earnestly invited to lay down its traitorous arms, be forgiven, and keep its slaves.  With Mr. Lincoln, as President, it was the Union, first, last, and all the time.  And he but echoed the prevailing opinions of his time.  I do not question or criticise his personal attitude; but what he himself called his “view of official duty” was to execute the will of the people, and that was not to abolish slavery, at that time.

As the politicians only took hold of the great question when they thought it would advance their selfish interests, they were prepared to abandon it or immolate it upon the altar of “expediency,” when the great clouds of treason burst upon them in the form of gigantic rebellion.  The politicians of that time, like the politicians of all times, were incapable of appreciating the magnitude of the questions involved in the conflict.

But the slave-power had been aroused.  It was not to be appeased by overtures; it wanted no compromise.  It would brook no interference inimical to its “peculiar institution.”  In the Congress of the nation, in the high places of power, it had so long been permitted to dictate the policy to be pursued towards slavery, it had so inoculated the institutions of the government with the virus of its vicious opinions, that, to be interfered with, to be dictated to, was out of the question.  It was Ephraim and his idol repeated.

The South forced the issue upon the people of the country.  The Southerners marched off under the banner of “States Rights”—­a doctrine they have always championed.  They cared nothing for the Union then; they care less for the Union now.  The State to them is sovereign; the nation a magnificent combination of nothingness.  The State has in its keeping all option over life, individual rights, and property.  The spirit of Hayne and Calhoun is still the star that lights the pathway of the Southern man in his duty to the government.  He recognizes no sovereignty more potential than that of his State.