Part 18

When this obvious mistake of the Judges shall be brought to their notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will withdraw the mistaken statement, and reconsider the conclusion based upon it?

And then it is to be remembered that "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live"--the men who made the Constitution--decided this same Constitutional question in our favor, long ago--decided it without division among themselves, when making the decision; without division among themselves about the meaning of it after it was made, and, so far as any evidence is left, without basing it upon any mistaken statement of facts.

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves justified to break up this Government, unless such a court decision as yours is, shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political action? But you will not abide the election of a Republican President! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me--my money--was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.

A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace and in harmony, one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Even though the Southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them, if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must, somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only; cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly--done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated--we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone, do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery." But we do let them alone--have never disturbed them--so that, after all, it is what we say, which dissatisfies them. They will continue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.

I am also aware they have not, as yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of our Free-State Constitutions. Yet those Constitutions declare the wrong of slavery, with more solemn emphasis, than do all other sayings against it; and when all these other sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these Constitutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the demand. It is nothing to the contrary, that they do not demand the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation. Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right, and a social blessing.

Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality--its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension--its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored--contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man--such as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which all true men do care--such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance--such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

INDEX

Andersonville, responsibility for, 190 Andrew, John. A., 105 Antietam, battle of, 115 Appomattox, the surrender at, 177 ff. Atlanta, capture of, 151

Bahamas, trade of the, with the Confederacy, 167 ff. Banks, General N.P., 103 Bazaine, General, in command of French army in Mexico, 156 Belle Isle, the prison of, 189 Bentonville, battle of, 183 Bixby, Mrs., letter to, from Lincoln, 152 "Black Republicans," the, 250 Blair, Prank P., difficulties with, 161 Blount, William, 237 Border States, the, and emancipation, 114 ff. Bragg, Gen. Braxton, 136 ff. Brainerd, Cephas, on the Cooper Union address, 211 Brown, John, raid of, 254 Bryant on Lincoln, 202 Buckner, Gen. S.B., 99 Bull Run, second battle of, 122 Burnside, Gen. Ambrose F., and the Army of the Potomac, 127; and the defence of Knoxville, 137 Butler, Benjamin F., 103, 120

Cabinet, cabals in the, 160 Cedar Creek, the battle of, 150 ff. Chancellorsville, battle of, 129 Charleston, evacuation of, 169 Chase, Salmon P., and the Presidential election of 1864, 154; resignation of, 154; appointed chief justice, 155; efforts of, for the Presidency, 157; difficulties with, in the Cabinet, 161 Chickamauga, battle of, 136 Clay, Cassius M., 223 Congress and slavery in the Territories, 246 ff. Constitution, the 13th amendment to, 163 ff.; defined by Lincoln, 236 ff.; and property in slaves, 260 ff. "Crocker, Master", 113 Curtin, Gov. A.G., 105 Curtis, Gen. S.R., 108

Danville, the prison of, 147, 189 ff.; mortality in, 159 Davis, Jefferson, and Benj. F. Butler, 120; and the Peace Conference of Feb., 1865, 163; capture of, 187; and the other leaders of the South, 189; and the management of the Southern prisons, 190 ff; as a prisoner and martyr, 191 Douglas, Stephen A., and the debate with Lincoln, cited, 235; and the sedition act, 263; and the Dred Scott decision, 246 Dred Scott case, the, 246

Early, Jubal A., raid of on Washington, 142 ff.; and the battle of Winchester, 149; and the battle of Cedar Creek, 150 Elliott, Charles W., 213 Emancipation Proclamation, the, 115 ff. Enfield rifles, use of, by Confederates, 146

Farragut, Admiral D.G., 111 Few, William, 237 Fisher, Fort, capture of, 167 Fitzsimmons, Thomas, 238 Floyd, General John B., 99 Franklin, battle of, 151 ff. Franklin, Benjamin, 245

Georgia, cession of territory by, 239 Gettysburg, campaign of, 132 ff. Goldsborough, surrender of Johnston's army at, 183 Goodell, Dr. Wm., 212 Grant, Gen. U.S., captures Fort Donelson, 99; and the Vicksburg campaign, 134; and the Chattanooga campaign, 136; commander of the armies, 137 ff.; suggested for the Presidency, 157; declines to consider terms of peace, 171; at Appomattox, 177 ff.; at Goldsborough, 184 ff. Greeley, Horace, 105 Greene, Frank V., on Lincoln, 106

Halleck, Gen. H.W., 103 Hallowell, Col. Norwood, 116 Hamilton, Alexander, 245 Hancock, Gen. W.S., 127 Harper's Ferry, 124; John Brown's raid at, 254 Helper, H.R., the "Impending Crisis" of, 258 Hewitt, Abram S., 99 ff. Higginson, Col. T.W., 116 Hood, Gen. John B., 151 ff. Hooker, Gen. Joseph, 107, 127, 130 ff., 137

Intervention of France and England threatened, 122

Jefferson, Thomas, on emancipation, 257 Johnston, Gen. Joseph E., 138, 151, 169, 183 ft.

King, Rufus, 241 Knoxville, siege of, 137

Lee, Gen. Robert E. and the Antietam campaign, 122; and the campaign of Gettysburg, 130 ff.; and the defence of Virginia, 137 ff.; proposes treaty of peace, 171; defeated at Five Forks, 171; at Appomattox, 171 Libby prison, Presidential election in, 158; mortality in, 159; record of, 189 ff. Lincoln, Abraham, and Hewitt, A.S., 100 ff.; writes to "Master Crocker", 113; as commander-in-chief, 103 ff.; and the death penalty for soldiers, 119; campaign methods of McClellan, 125 ff.; letter of, appointing Hooker, 128; to Grant on the fall of Vicksburg, 134; address of, at Gettysburg, 134; letter of, to Mrs. Bixby, 152; re-election of, as President, 157; and the exchange of prisoners, 158 ff.; and the control of the administration, 160; and the Peace Conference of Feb., 1865, 162 ff.; second inaugural of, 169 ff.; last public address of, 178; death of, 181; and the proposed capture of Jefferson Davis, 188; death of, reported to the army at Goldsborough, 190; comparison of, with Washington and Jackson, 195 ff.; Cooper Union address of, 205 ff.; writes to Nott, 225 ff. Lincoln, Robert, on the Cooper Union address, 209 Longstreet, Gen. James, 133, 137 Lookout Mountain, battle of, 137 Louisiana, purchase of, 240 Lowell on Lincoln, 202

Maximilian, Prince, and the invasion of Mexico, 156 McClellan, Gen. George B. 102 ff.; and the Antietam campaign, 122 ff.; ordered to report to New Jersey, 126 Meade, Gen. Geo. G., 127, 131 Mifflin, Thomas, 237 Milliken's Bend, battle of, 118 Minnesota, troops from, 165; university of, 167 Missionary Ridge, battle of, 137 Mississippi, organisation of the Territory of, 240 Missouri, admission of, 241 Missouri Compromise, the, 31, 38 Monocacy Creek, battle of, 143 Morgan, Gen. John, 177 Morris, Gouverneur, 245

Napoleon, Louis, and the invasion of Mexico, 156 Nashville, battle of, 151 ff. Nation, the London, on the character of Lincoln, 198 ff. New Orleans, capture of, 111 ff. Nineteenth Army Corps and Early's raid, 145 North Carolina, cession of territory by, 239 Northwestern Territory, the, of the U.S., 237 Nott, Chas. C., introduction to the Cooper Union address, 215 ff.; letter of, to Lincoln, 224 ff. Noyes, Wm. Curtis, 212