Every demagogue howled it. Every newspaper repeated it. As city after city, and State after State took up the cry, the pressure on the man at the helm of Government became resistless. It was a political necessity to fight a battle and fight at once or lose control of the people he had been called to lead.
The Abolitionists only sneered at this cry. They demanded an answer to a single insistent question:
"What are you going to fight about?"
A battle which does not settle the question of Slavery they declared to be a waste of blood and treasure. If the slave was not the issue, why fight? The South would return to the Union which they had always ruled if let alone. Why fight them for nothing?
Gilbert Winter, their spokesman at Washington, again confronted the President with his uncompromising demand:
"An immediate proclamation of emancipation!"
And the President with quiet dignity refused to consider it.
"Why?" again thundered the Senator.
His answer was always the same:
"I am not questioning the right or wrong of Slavery. If Slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. But the Constitution, which I have sworn to uphold in the Border States of Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky, guarantees to their people the right to hold slaves if they choose. We have already eleven Southern States solidly arrayed against us. Add the Border States by such a proclamation, and the contest is settled before a blow is struck. I know the power of State loyalty in the South. I was born there. Many a mother in Richmond wept the days the stars and stripes were lowered from their Capitol. And well they might—for their sires created this Republic. But they brushed their tears away and sent their sons to the front next day to fight that flag in the name of Virginia. So would thousands of mothers in these remaining Slave States if I put them to the test. I'm going to save them for the Union. In God's own time Slavery will be destroyed."