ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 169 



new elements of division. It was not unnatural that 

 men earnestly devoted to the saving of their country, 

 and profoundly convinced that slavery was its only real 

 enemy, should demand a decided policy round which all 

 patriots might rally, and this might have been the 

 wisest course for an absolute ruler. But in the then 

 unsettled state of the public mind, with a large party 

 decrying even resistance to the slaveholders' rebellion as 

 not only unwise, but even 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 influential 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 behooved 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 sophistr-y 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 

 between liberty and lawlessness in the minds of ignorant 

 8 



