130 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



men always are, and now too much disturbed by the dis 

 order of the times to consider that the order of events had 

 any legitimate bearing on the argument. Though Mr. 

 Lincoln was too sagacious to give the Northern allies of the 

 Rebels the occasion they desired and even strove to provoke, 

 yet from the beginning of the war the most persistent efforts 

 have been made to confuse the public mind as to its origin 

 and motives, and to drag the people of the loyal States down 

 from the national position they had instinctively taken to the 

 old level of party squabbles and antipathies. The wholly 

 unprovoked rebellion of an oligarchy proclaiming negro 

 slavery the corner-stone of free institutions, and in the first 

 flush of over-hasty confidence venturing to parade the logical 

 sequence of their leading dogma, that slavery is right in 

 principle, and has nothing to do with difference of com 

 plexion, has been represented as a legitimate and gallant 

 attempt to maintain the true principles of democracy. The 

 rightful endeavour of an established government, the least 

 onerous that ever existed, to defend itself against a trea 

 cherous attack on its very existence, has been cunningly 

 made to seem the wicked effort of a fanatical clique to force 

 its doctrines on an oppressed population. 



Even so long ago as when Mr. Lincoln, not yet convinced 

 of the danger and magnitude of the crisis, was endeavouring 

 to persuade himself of Union majorities at the South, and to 

 carry on a war that was half peace in the hope of a peace 

 that would have been all war, while he was still enforcing 

 the Fugitive Slave Law, under some theory that Secession, 

 however it might absolve States from their obligations, could 

 not escheat them of their claims under the Constitution, and 

 that slaveholders in rebellion had alone among mortals the 

 privilege of having their cake and eating it at the same time 

 the enemies of free government were striving to per 

 suade the people that the war was an Abolition crusade. To 

 rebel without reason was proclaimed as one of the rights of 

 man, while it was carefully kept out of sight that to suppress 

 rebellion is the first duty of government. All the evils that 

 have come upon the country have been attributed to the 

 Abolitionists, though it is hard to see how any party can 

 become permanently powerful except in one of two ways, 

 either by the greater truth of its principles, or the extra 

 vagance of the party opposed to it. To fancy the ship of 

 state, riding safe at her constitutional moorings, suddenly 



