ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 131 



engulfed by a huge kraken of Abolitionism, rising from un 

 known depths and grasping it with slimy tentacles, is to look 

 at the natural history of the matter with the eyes of Pon- 

 toppidan. To believe that the leaders in the Southern 

 treason feared any danger from Abolitionism, would be to 

 deny them ordinary intelligence, though there can be little 

 doubt that they made use of it to stir the passions and excite 

 the fears of their deluded accomplices. They rebelled, not 

 because they thought slavery weak, but because they believed 

 it strong enough, not to overthrow the government, but to 

 get possession of it ; for it becomes daily clearer that they 

 used rebellion only as a means of revolution ; and if they got 

 revolution, though not in the shape they looked for, is the 

 American people to save them from its consequences at the 

 cost of its own existence ? The election of Mr. Lincoln, 

 which it was clearly in their power to prevent had they 

 wished, was the occasion merely, and not the cause, of their 

 revolt. Abolitionism, till within a year or two, was the de 

 spised heresy of a few earnest persons, without political 

 weight enough to carry the election of a parish constable ; 

 and their cardinal principle was disunion, because they were 

 convinced that within the Union the position of slavery was 

 impregnable. In spite of the proverb, great effects do not 

 follow from small causes that is, disproportionately small 

 but from adequate causes acting under certain required 

 conditions. To contrast the size of the oak with that of the 

 parent acorn, as if the poor seed had paid all costs from its 

 slender strong-box, may serve for a child s wonder ; but the 

 real miracle lies in that divine league which bound all the 

 forces of nature to the service of the tiny germ in fulfilling 

 its destiny. Everything has been at work for the past ten 

 years in the cause of antislavery, but Garrison and Phillips 

 have been far less successful propagandists than the slave 

 holders themselves, with the constantly-growing arrogance 

 of their pretensions and encroachments. They have forced 

 the question upon the attention of every voter in the Free 

 States, by defiantly putting freedom and democracy on the 

 defensive. But, even after the Kansas outrages, there was 

 no wide-spread desire on the part of the North to commit 

 aggressions, though there was a growing determination to 

 resist them. The popular unanimity in favour of the war 

 three years ago was but in small measure the result of anti- 

 slavery sentiment, far less of any zeal for abolition. But 



