ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 173 



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 favor of the war three years ago was but in small 

 measure the result of antislavery sentiment, far less of 

 any zeal for abolition. But every month of the war, 

 every movement of the allies of slavery in the Free 

 States, has been making Abolitionists by the thousand. 

 The masses of any people, however intelligent, are very 

 little moved by abstract principles of humanity and 

 justice, until those principles are interpreted for them 

 by the stinging commentary of some infringement upon 

 their own rights, and then their instincts and passions, 

 once aroused, do indeed derive an incalculable reinforce- 

 ment of impulse and intensity from those higher ideas, 

 those sublime traditions, which have no motive political 

 force till they are allied with a sense of immediate per- 

 sonal wrong or imminent peril. Then at last the stars 

 in their courses begin to fight against Sisera. Had any 

 one doubted before that the rights of human nature are 

 unitary, that oppression is of one hue the world over, 

 no matter what the color of the oppressed, — had any 

 one failed to see what the real essence of the contest 

 was, — the efforts of the advocates of slavery among 

 ourselves to throw discredit upon the fundamental 

 axioms of the Declaration of Independence and the 

 radical doctrines of Christianity, could not fail to sharp- 

 en his eyes. 



While every day was bringing the people nearer to the 

 conclusion which all thinking men saw to be inevitable 

 from the beginning, it was wise in Mr. Lincoln to leave 

 the shaping of his policy to events. In this country, 



