382 SECESSION. 



offered to give them any guarantee they pleased — a 

 constitutional amendment if they desired it — that 

 slavery as it stood should not be interfered with. He 

 offered to bring in a more stringent law, by which 

 their fugitive slaves should be restored. But on the 

 matter of extension he was firm. The Southerners 

 demanded that a line should again be drawn to the 

 Pacific ; that all south • of that line should be made 

 slave soil, and that slavery should be more clearly re- 

 cognised by the central government, and more firmly 

 guaranteed. These terms were not more extravagant 

 than those which their fathers had obtained. But 

 times had changed : the sentiment of nationality was 

 now more fully formed ; Uncle Tom had been written ; 

 the American people were heartily ashamed of slavery ; 

 they refused to give it another lease. The ultimatum 

 was declined ; the South seceded, and the North flew 

 to arms, not to emancipate the negro, but to preserve 

 the existence of the nation. They would not indeed 

 submit to slavery extension ; they preferred disunion 

 to such a disgrace. But they had no intention when 

 they went to war of destroying slavery in the states 

 where it existed ; they even took pains to prove to 

 the South that the war was not an anti-slavery crusade. 

 The negroes were treated by the Northern generals 

 not as men, but as contraband of war : even Butler in 

 New Orleans did not emancipate the slaves ; a general 

 who issued a proclamation of that nature was repri- 

 manded by the government, although he only followed 

 the example of British generals in the Revolutionary 

 war. But as the contest became more severe and 

 more prolonged, and all hopes of reconciliation were 

 at an end, slavery became identified with the South 

 in the Northern mind, and was itself regarded as a 



