120 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



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

 cing 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 persuade 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 extravagance of the party 

 opposed to it. To fancy the ship of state, riding safe at 

 her constitutional moorings, suddenly engulfed by a huge 

 kraken of Abolitionism, rising from unknown depths and 

 grasping it with slimy tentacles, is to look at the natural 

 history of the matter with the eyes of Pontoppidan. 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 

 despised heresy of a few earnest persons, without political 

 weight enough to carry the election of a parish constable ; 



