"Douglas doesn't care whether slavery is voted up or down; but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care; and with God's help I shall not fail. I may not see the end, but it will come, and I shall be vindicated; and these men will find that they have not read their Bible aright."
We are told that, after a pause, he resumed: "Does it not appear strange that men can ignore the moral aspects of this contest? A revelation could not make it plainer to me that slavery or the Government, must be destroyed. The future would be something awful, as I look at it, but for this rock on which I stand." He alluded to the Testament which he held in his hand, and which his mother—"to whom he owed all that he was, or hoped to be"—had first taught him to read.
There is nothing in history more pathetic than the scene when, on the 11th of February, 1861, Abraham Lincoln bade a last farewell to his home of a quarter of a century.
To his friends and neighbors he said, while grasping them by the hand, "I go to assume a task more difficult than that which has devolved upon any other man since the days of Washington. He never would have succeeded except for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all times relied. I feel that I cannot succeed without the same divine blessing which sustained him, and on the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support." The profound religious feeling which pervades this farewell speech characterized him to the close of his life.
All along the route Lincoln preached the gospel of confidence, conciliation, and peace. Notwithstanding the ominous signs of the times, he had such an abiding faith in the people as to believe that the guarantees of all their rights under the Constitution, of non-intervention with the institution of slavery where it existed, and the assurance of a most friendly spirit on the part of the new President would calm the heated passion of the men of the South, would reclaim States already in secession, and would retain the rest of the cotton States under the banner of the Union. What a striking evidence of the lingering hope and of the tender heart of the President is afforded by his first inaugural address!
"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.
"The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors; you can have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one,—'to preserve, protect, and defend it.'
"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection.
"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth-stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
Abraham Lincoln took the helm of government in more dangerous times and under more difficult and embarrassing circumstances than any of the fifteen presidents who preceded him. The ship of Union was built and launched and first commanded by Washington.