The majority of the North would no doubt have voted for the Crittenden Compromise. All the Douglas men and the Bell and Everett men would have done so, and many of the Republicans seemed frightened at what they had done in voting for Lincoln. The majority were ready for almost anything to save the Union and avoid war. A "peace congress," at Washington, under the lead of ex-President Tyler, in which twenty-one states were represented, proposed terms similar to the Crittenden Compromise. Congress, by a two-thirds vote, adopted a thirteenth amendment, - very unlike the one adopted four years later, guaranteeing that the Constitution should never permit the national authority to interfere with slavery in the states. Wendell Phillips said the Southern states had a right to set up an independent government if they wanted to. Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, the most influential of the Republican papers, said, "Let the erring sisters go in peace," and "if the cotton states choose to form an independent nation, they have a clear moral right to do so."

445. The North demands the Enforcement of the Constitution and the Laws. Many good men believed that the men who made the Union never intended it to be preserved by force. But the people of the North soon came to believe that further compromise was useless; that the South intended either to rule or ruin the government; that Lincoln, having been fairly elected, should be inaugurated, and the question squarely met whether or not the national law should be obeyed, and whether the voice of the majority, expressed through the regular forms of the Constitution, should be submitted to or defied. Under Lincoln's leadership the people soon recovered from their panic of doubt and fear, and arose to defend the life of the nation.

1860 (Dec. 20).

1861 (Feb. 4).

FACTS AND DATES

Secession of South Carolina.

Formation of the Southern Confederacy.

1861-1865. Lincoln's First Administration.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE CIVIL WAR

THE FIRST YEAR IN THE EAST

446. Lincoln becomes President. On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln became President of the United States. He came into office at one of the most trying times in the history of the country, in the face of disunion and Civil War. Not since Washington led the armies of the Revolution had any one man been so important to the country as Lincoln was in 1861. The choice of Lincoln, though he was not well known at the time, turned out to be a most fortunate one. He is now ranked with Washington among the greatest of our Presidents.

447. Lincoln was opposed to Slavery but was not an Abolitionist. On the subject of slavery Lincoln was not an Abolitionist. Yet he was opposed to slavery and wished to see the time soon come when all men in America would be free. He said to John Hanks, when on a flatboat trip to New Orleans in 1831, where they had been witnesses of a slave market, "If ever I get a chance to hit slavery, I'll hit it hard." He got a chance and, as we know, he gave slavery its deathblow in 1863. Lincoln believed in equal rights for all. In 1858, he said in answer to Douglas, who accused him of desiring to make the negro the social equal of the white man, "In his right to the bread which he has earned by the sweat of his brow, the black man is my equal, the equal of Judge Douglas or of any other man." We see from this that Lincoln loved justice. He wanted fair play and a "square deal" for all men, high or low, rich or poor, white or black.

Lincoln believed that if slavery could be kept from expanding it was doomed to die. The Southern defenders of slavery

believed this too. On that subject Lincoln would not compromise. No further extension of slavery, - that was Lincoln the principle on which his party had been created stood and on which he had been elected. Lincoln would against not yield it. If the South would destroy the Union sion of by war rather than see it live on that principle, Lincoln would accept war rather than see it perish.

the exten

slavery.

He did not

interfere

But Lincoln did not propose to overturn the institution of slavery in the Southern states or take away the slave property of the Southern people. He felt that Southern slavery was their business, not his. He was even wish to willing for the Fugitive Slave Law to stand and be in the enforced, and because of that many good men were Southern disposed to blame him, and he was called by Wendell Phillips "the slave hound of Illinois." He said in his inaugural address: "I have no purpose to interfere with slavery in the states where it exists. I have no lawful right to do so and

I have no inclination to do so."

states.

448. The South misunderstood the North and seceded in Defense of Slavery. - Lincoln had said this repeatedly before, but the South did not believe him or did not understand him. They distrusted him and his party, and supposed the Northern majority would try to make the Southern people free their slaves. They were determined not to submit to the rule of the Republican party. They knew that party was against slavery in spirit and purpose, and they were convinced that the slave interests were not safe within the Union. They determined to secede and make a new Union of slave states only, for the purpose of making their slave property more secure.

449. The North fought to save the Union, not to destroy Slavery. But the great majority of the Northern people had no intention of interfering with slave property in the South. They were determined only to restrict the area of slavery. If the South had not seceded and attacked the national authority, if it had been satisfied to keep slavery where it was, there would have been no war. It is also probable that slavery would not

have been abolished for many years to come. But when the South appealed to disunion and fired on the flag, the whole North was aroused as well as a majority of the border slave states, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. The issue was no longer slavery and its extension. On that issue the people of the North were divided, but on saving the Union

WILLIAM H. SEWARD. Statesman; born at Florida, New

York, May 16, 1801, died at Auburn, New York, Oct. 10, 1872; lawyer; in State Senate, 1830-1834; governor of New York, 1838-1842; elected to the United States Senate as an Antislavery Whig, serving from 1849 to 1861; helped to organize the Republican party; Secretary of State under Lincoln and Johnson, 1861-1869.

they were united. They were de

termined that the Union should be preserved, and that there should not be two republics within the United States.

We have seen that slavery was the cause of the war. But it must not be understood that to abolish or to defend slavery was the object of the war. The North did not go to war and invade the South to abolish slavery. It was to save the life of the nation and to preserve the Union. They believed the Union should be perpetual, that it was not merely a compact or a league of states, but that it was one nation not to be destroyed at the will of any state, and that it should never be broken up, but should be "an indivisible union of indestructible states"; that secession was rebellion, and that the Constitution and the laws should be enforced throughout the land. In the beginning of the war Congress officially declared that the purpose of the war was not to interfere with slavery, but to preserve the Constitution and the Union and to enforce the laws; and in the midst of the war, Lincoln said that if he could save the Union by freeing all the slaves he would do that, if he could save the Union by leaving them all in bondage he would do that, and if he could save the Union by freeing

some of the slaves and leaving others in bondage he would do that; his chief object was to save the Union. While it is true that the Northern soldiers enlisted in a war for the Union, and not in a war for abolition of slavery, it soon became known that the success of the Northern armies meant liberty for the slaves as well as union for the states.

450. The South fought for Independence and Self-government and against "Coercion." - On the other hand, in justice to the South, it must be remembered that while the interests of slaveholders involved the South in war, the Southern soldiers were not fighting to defend slavery. Two thirds of them never owned a slave, and if it had been officially announced that the maintenance of slavery was the object of the war the Southern armies would soon have been disbanded.

The Southern people were brave, and they were true to their convictions. They sincerely believed that their states had a right to secede and that their first allegiance was due to their state; that they were fighting for home rule, for local selfgovernment, for separate national independence. They thought the North had no right to invade their states to force them into submission. "Coercion was odious to many Southern men who cared little for slavery. They would not have a Union pinned together by bayonets. Rather than be "submissionists" and see a sovereign state brought under the yoke by military power, they would join together and fight for independence and the right of a state to determine its own course. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas did not secede until after the war began, and they went with the South, as they said, not to defend slavery, but because they would not have the national government coerce a state."

66

451. War begins by the Attack on Fort Sumter. The Civil War began with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861. After Lincoln decided to send provisions and reënforcements to Major Anderson there, General Beauregard, the Confederate commander, was ordered to reduce the fort. "Having defended the fort for thirty-four hours," says