Abraham Lincoln, Volume II

by Jr. John T. Morse

I thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do in saving the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, like other people, act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us, if we will do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise of freedom. And the promise, being made, must be kept.

The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the great Northwest for it; nor yet wholly to them. Three hundred miles up they met New England, Empire, Keystone, and Jersey, hewing their way right and left. The sunny South, too, in more colors than one, also lent a helping hand. On the spot their part of the history was jotted down in black and white. The job was a great national one, and let none be slighted who bore an honorable part in it. And while those who have cleared the great river may well be proud, even that is not

all. It is hard to say that anything has been more bravely or well done than at Antietam, Murfreesboro', Gettysburg, and on many fields of less note. Nor must Uncle Sam's web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present, not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been and made their tracks. Thanks to all. For the great Republic,—for the principle it lives by and keeps alive,—for man's vast future,—thanks to all.

Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay, and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost. And there will be some black men who can remember that with silent tongue, and clinched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while I fear there will be some white men unable to forget that with malignant heart and deceitful speech they have striven to hinder it.

Still, let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.

This was a fair statement of past facts and of the present condition; and thus the plain tokens of the time showed that the menace of disaffection had been met and sufficiently conquered. The President had let the nation see the strength of his will and the immutability of his purpose. He had faced bullying Republican politicians, a Democratic reaction, Copperheadism, and mob violence, and by none of these had he been in the least degree shaken or diverted from his course. On the contrary, from so many and so various struggles he had come out the victor, a real ruler of the country. He had shown that whenever and by whomsoever, and in whatever part of the land he was pushed to use power, he would use it. Temporarily the great republic was under a "strong government," and Mr. Lincoln was the strength. Though somewhat cloaked by forms, there was for a while in the United States a condition of "one-man power," and the people instinctively recognized it, though they would on no account admit it in plain words. In fact every malcontent knew that there was no more use in attempting to resist the American President than in attempting to resist a French emperor or a Russian czar; there was even less use, for while the President managed on one plausible ground or another to have and to exercise all the power that he needed, he was sustained by the good-will and confidence of a majority of the people, which lay as a solid substratum beneath all the disturbance on the surface.

It was well that this was so, for a war conducted by a cabinet or a congress could have ended only in disaster. This peculiar character of the situation may not be readily admitted; it is often convenient to deny and ignore facts in order to assert popular theories; and that there was a real master in the United States is a proposition which many will consider it highly improper to make and very patriotic to contradict. None the less, however, it is true, and by the autumn of 1863 every intelligent man in the country felt that it was true. Moreover, it was because this was true, and because that master was immovably persistent in the purpose to conquer the South, that the conquest of the South could now be discerned as substantially a certainty in the future.

Some other points should also be briefly made here. The war is to be divided into two stages. The first two years were educational; subsequently the fruits of that education were attained. The men who had studied war as a profession, but had had no practical experience, found much to learn in warfare as a reality after the struggle began. But before the summer of 1863 there were in the service many generals, than whom none better could be desired. "Public men" were somewhat slow in discovering that their capacity to do pretty much everything did not include the management of campaigns. But by the summer of 1863 these "public" persons made less noise in the land than they had made in the days of McClellan;