ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 119 



common-sense in assuming that the men who framed our 

 government did not know what they meant when they 

 substituted 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 universally 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 men always are, and now too much 

 disturbed by the disorder of the times to consider that the 

 order of events had any legitimate bearing on the argu 

 ment. 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 rebel 

 lion 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, &quot; that slavery is right in principle, and has 

 nothing to do with difference of complexion,&quot; 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 treacherous 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 peaoo 



