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a) 
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542 The Fall of the Confederacy. 
If Mr. Lincoln had made a show of coercion, Tennessee 
and Kentucky would have been wholly with the South. 
A few months of delay would have made war nearly im- 
possible. Commercial intercourse between the sections 
would have continued, and there would have been more 
and more disposition to let the South secede on certain 
conditions—the principal one being an identical foreign 
policy, and a common foreign representation for the two 
federations. Every day the extreme Abolitionists were 
getting louder in their advocacy of secessicn. It is easy 
to censure the fanaticism of the Abolitionists, but it is im- 
possible to deny their zeal and oneness of purpose. In 
March, 1861, the dread was upon them that the crisis 
would pass away, and that slavery would wax stronger 
than ever in the Union. The Abolitionists yearned for 
the emancipation of the negroes, and they expected that 
emancipation would be the result of secession. The sepa- 
ration of the South from the North would be the death- 
blow of the Fugitive slave law, and rightly or wrongly, 
that law was regarded as the bulwark of the Southern 
institution. In March, 1861, emancipation was more a 
desire than an expectation. On one point, however, the 
Abolitionists were determined. Come what would, negro 
slavery should no longer exist in the Union. The Aboli- 
tionists were staunch Unionists, but they deemed it far 
better to let the South go than that the Union should 
continue to protect and uphold an institution which they 
believed to be infamous and accursed. The Abolitionists 
shrunk from an immediate re-union, for that would have 
involved the continuance of slavery in the Union. There- 
fore, especially after the delivery of Mr. Lincoln’s In- 
augural, the Abolitionists were inclined to support 
secession as a much less evil than the perpetuation of 
slavery in the Union, which then appeared to be the 
alternative. The Abolitionists ardently loved the Union, 
yet often, in their long struggle against slavery, they had 
threatened to break up the Federation. It is not encroach- 
ing on the domain of speculation to assert that if the Con- 
federate Government had maintained a pacific attitude for 
a few weeks longer, the chance of the South coming back 
with the institution of slavery intact would have made the 
Abolitionists zealous supporters of secession ; and be it re- 
membered the abolition element was the life and soul of 
the Republican party. We do not deny that in March, 
1861, the terms of separation that were thought of 
