ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 129 



unlawful ; with a majority, perhaps, even of the would-be 

 loyal so long accustomed to regard the Constitution as a 

 deed of gift conveying to the South their own judgment as to 

 policy and instinct as to right, that they were in doubt at 

 first whether their loyalty were due to the country or to 

 slavery ; and with a respectable body of honest and influen 

 tial men who still believed in the possibility of conciliation, 

 Mr. Lincoln judged wisely, that, in laying down a policy in 

 deference to one party, he should be giving to the other the 

 very fulcrum for which their disloyalty had been waiting. 



It behoved a clear-headed man in his position not to yield 

 so far to an honest indignation against the brokers of treason 

 in the North as to lose sight of the materials for misleading 

 which were their stock in trade, and to forget that it is not 

 the falsehood of sophistry which is to be feared, but the 

 grain of truth mingled with it to make it specious, that it is 

 not the knavery of the leaders so much as the honesty of the 

 followers they may seduce, that gives them power for evil. 

 It was especially his duty to do nothing which might help 

 the people to forget the true cause of the war in fruitless 

 disputes about its inevitable consequences. 



The doctrine of State rights can be so handled by an 

 adroit demagogue as easily to confound the distinction be 

 tween liberty and lawlessness in the minds of ignorant 

 persons, accustomed always to be influenced by the sound of 

 certain words, rather than to reflect upon the principles 

 which give them meaning. For, though Secession involves 

 the manifest absurdity of denying to a State the right of 

 making war against any foreign Power while permitting it 

 against the United States ; though it supposes a compact of 

 mutual concessions and guaranties among States without 

 any arbiter in case of dissension ; though it contradicts 

 common- sense in assuming that the men who framed our 

 government did not know what they meant when they substi 

 tuted Union for Confederation ; though it falsifies history, 

 which shows that the main opposition to the adoption of the 

 Constitution was based on the argument that it did not 

 allow that independence in the several States which alone 

 would justify them in seceding ; yet, as slavery was univer 

 sally admitted to be a reserved right, an inference could be 

 drawn from any direct attack upon it (though only in self- 

 defence) to a natural right of resistance, logical enough to 

 ^satisfy minds untrained to detect fallacy, as the majority of 



