The Mission of the War: An Address Delivered in New York, New York, on 13 January 1864
THE MISSION OF THE WAR: AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED IN NEW YORK, NEW YORK,
ON 13 JANUARY 1864
New York Daily Tribune, 14 January 1864. Other texts in New York Herald, 14 January
1864; New York Times, 14 January 1864; Philip S. Foner, ed., The Life and Writings of
Frederick Douglass, 5 vols. (New York, 1950-75), 3: 386-403, misdated 13 February
1864 (hereafter cited Life and Writings).
In the winter of 1863-64 Douglass was busy on the lecture circuit delivering a
speech entitled “The Mission of the War” in Rochester, Philadelphia, Boston,
and other northern cities. On the evening of 13 January 1864, he delivered the
speech at New York City’s Cooper Institute as part of a lecture series spon-
sored by the Woman’s Loyal League, a group seeking a constitutional amend-
ment abolishing slavery. The large hall was “densely packed at an early hour”
with a predominantly white female audience of “marked intelligence and
respectability.” Joining Douglass on the platform were “several of the lights
of the Woman’s Loyal League, interspersed with a few males,” notably Peter
Cooper, Theodore Tilton, Richard Warren, and a number of ministers. Oliver
Johnson, the editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, presided, replac-
ing the eminent poet and editor William Cullen Bryant, who had been called
to the deathbed of a relative. The audience greeted Douglass “with the
warmest enthusiasm” and listened attentively for the nearly two hours that he
spoke, interrupting his address with frequent cheers, applause, and laughter,
and at one point “springing to their feet, swinging their hats, and shouting,
‘Hear, hear.’ ” At the end of his address, Douglass received one hundred
dollars for his services, but he returned half of that amount as a donation to the
League. See Appendix A, text 1, for a précis of an alternate text. New York
Daily Tribune, 13 January 1864; New York , 13 January 1864; New
York World, 14, 15 January 1864; NASS, 16 January 1864; Syracuse (NY)
Journal, 19 January 1864; New York Independent, 21 January 1864;
Rochester Union and Advertiser, 29 January 1864; Lib., 5 February 1864;
Wendy F. Hamand, “The Woman’s National Loyal League: Feminist Aboli-
tionists and the Civil War,” Civil War History, 35: 39-59 (March 1989).
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: By the mission of the war I mean nothing occult,
arbitrary or difficult to be understood, but simply those great moral
changes in the fundamental condition of the people, demanded by the
situation of the country, plainly involved in the nature of the war, and which
if the war is conducted in accordance with its true character, it is naturally
and logically fitted to accomplish.
Speaking in the name of Providence, some men tell us that Slavery is
already dead, that it expired with the first shot at Sumter.1The Confederate shelling of Fort Sumter, in the Charleston, South Carolina, harbor began at 4:30 A.M. on 12 April 1861. This may be so,
but I do not share the confidence with which it is asserted. In a grand Crisis
like this, we should all prefer to look facts sternly in the face, and to accept
their verdict whether it bless or blast us. I look for no miraculous destruc-
tion of Slavery. The war looms before me simply as a great national
opportunity, which may be improved to national salvation, or neglected to
national ruin. I hope much from the bravery of our soldiers, but in vain is
the might of armies if our rulers fail to profit by experience, and refuse to
listen to the suggestions of wisdom and justice. The most hopeful fact of
the hour is that we are now in a salutary school—the school of affliction. If
sharp and signal retribution, long protracted, wide-sweeping and over-
whelming, can teach a great nation respect for the long-despised claims of
justice, surely we shall be taught now and for all time to come. But if, on
the other hand, this potent teacher, whose lessons are written in characters
of blood, and thundered to us from a hundred battle-fields shall fail, we
shall go down, as we shall deserve to go down, as a warning to all other
nations which shall come after us. It is not pleasant to contemplate the hour
as one of doubt and danger. We naturally prefer the bright side, but when
there is a dark side it is folly to shut our eyes to it or deny its existence.
I know that the acorn involves the oak, but I know also that the
commonest accident may destroy its potential character and defeat its
natural destiny. One wave brings its treasure from the briny deep, but
another often sweeps it back to its primal depths. The saying that revolu-
tions never go backward must be taken with limitations.2Douglass alludes to a passage from William H. Seward's “Irrepressible Conflict” speech delivered in Rochester, New York, on 25 October 1858. William H. Seward, The Irrepressible Conflicts A Speech by William H. Seward, Delivered at Rochester, Monday, Oct. 25, 1858 (New York, 1858), 7. The revolution of
1848 was one of the grandest that ever dazzled a gazing world. It over-
turned the French throne, sent Louis Philippe into exile, shook every throne
in Europe, and inaugurated a glorious Republic. Looking on from a dis-
tance, the friends of democratic liberty saw in the convulsion the death of
kingcraft in Europe and throughout the world. Great was their disappoint-
ment. Almost in the twinkling of an eye, the latent forces of despotism
rallied. The Republic disappeared. Her noblest defenders were sent into
exile, and the hopes of democratic liberty were blasted in the moment of
their bloom. Politics and perfidy proved too strong for the principles of
liberty and justice in that contest. I wish I could say that no such liabilities
darken the horizon around us. But the same elements are plainly involved
here as there. Though the portents are that we shall flourish, it is too much
to say that we cannot fail and fall. Our destiny is not to be taken out of our
own hands. It is cowardly to shuffle our responsibilities upon the shoulders
of Providence. I do not intend to argue but to state facts.
We are now wading deep into the third year of conflict with a fierce and
sanguinary rebellion, one which, at the beginning of it, we were hopefully
assured by one of our most sagacious and trusted political prophets, would
be ended in less than ninety days: a rebellion which, in its worst features,
stands alone among rebellions a solitary and ghastly horror, without a
parallel in the history of any nation, ancient or modern: a rebellion inspired
by no love of liberty and by no hatred of oppression, as most other re-
bellions have been, and therefore utterly indefensible upon any moral or
social grounds: a rebellion which openly and shamelessly sets at defiance
the world’s judgment of right and wrong, appeals from light to darkness,
from intelligence to ignorance, from the ever-increasing prospects and
blessings of a high and glorious civilization to the cold and withering blasts
of a naked barbarism: a rebellion which even at this unfinished stage of it,
counts the number of its slain not by thousands nor tens of thousands, but
by hundreds of thousands. A rebellion which in the destruction of human
life and property has rivalled the earthquake, the whirlwind and the
pestilence that walketh in darkness, and wasteth at noonday. It has planted
agony at a million hearthstones, thronged our streets with the weeds of
mourning, filled our land with mere stumps of men, ridged our soil with
200,000 rudely-formed graves, and mantled it all over with the shadow of
death. A rebellion which, while it has arrested the wheels of peaceful
industry and checked the flow of commerce, has piled up a debt, heavier
than a mountain of gold to weigh down the necks of our children’s children.
There is no end to the mischiefs wrought. It has brought ruin at home,
contempt abroad, cooled our friends, heated our enemies, and endangered
our existence as a nation.
Now, for what is all this desolation, ruin, shame, suffering, and sor-
row? Can anybody want the answer? Can anybody be ignorant of the
answer? It has been given a thousand times from this and other platforms.
We all know it is Slavery. Less than a half a million of Southern slave-
holders—holding in bondage four million slaves3The US. census of 1860 enumerated the population of slaves at 3,953,760. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C., 1975), Part 1, ser. A59-70.—finding themselves
outvoted in the effort to get possession of the United States Government, in
order to serve the interests of Slavery, have madly resorted to the sword—
have undertaken to accomplish by bullets what they failed to accomplish
by ballots. That is the answer.
It is worthy of remark that Secession was an afterthought with the
Rebels. Their aim was higher; Secession was only their second choice.
Wise was going to fight for Slavery in the Union.4In a speech at Norfolk, Virginia, during the 1860 presidential campaign, Henry A. Wise, governor of Virginia, declared that, in the event of Lincoln’s election, “I will not nullify, I will not secede, but I will under sovereign State authority fight in the Union another revolutionary conflict for civil liberty, and a Union which will defend it.” Wise urged the Southern states not to secede but to seize all federal military arms and supplies within their borders and use it to prevent the inauguration of Republican Abraham Lincoln as president. When this was criticized as unfeasible, Wise then advocated secession. Barton H. Wise, The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia, 1806-1876 (New York, 1899), 264-68; Henry T. Shanks, The Secession Movement in Virginia, 1847-1861 (Richmond, Va., 1934), 125. It was not separation,
but subversion. It was not Richmond, but Washington. It was not the
Confederate rag, but the glorious Star-Spangled Banner.
Whence came the guilty ambition equal to this atrocious crime? A
peculiar education was necessary to this bold wickedness. Here all is plain
again. Slavery—the peculiar institution—is aptly fitted to produce just
such patriots, who first plunder and then seek to destroy their country. A
system which rewards labor with stripes and chains!—which robs the slave
of his manhood, and the master of all just consideration for the rights of his
fellow-man—has prepared the characters—male and female—that figure
in this Rebellion—and for all its cold-blooded and hellish atrocities. In all
the most horrid details of torture, starvation and murder, in the treatment of
our prisoners, I beheld the features of the monster in whose presence I was
born, and that is Slavery. From no source less foul and wicked could such a
Rebellion come. I need not dwell here. The country knows the story by
heart. But I am one of those who think this Rebellion—inaugurated and
carried on for a cause so unspeakably guilty and distinguished by barbar-
ities which would extort a cry of shame from the painted savage—is quite
enough for the whole lifetime of any one nation—though that lifetime
should cover the space of a thousand years. We ought not to want a
repetition of it—nor can we wisely risk a possible repetition of it. Looking
at the matter from no higher ground than patriotism—setting aside the high
considerations of justice, liberty, progress, and civilization—the Ameri-
can people should resolve that this shall be the last slaveholding Rebellion
that shall ever curse this continent. Let the War cost much or cost little—let
it be long or short—the work now begun should suffer no pause, no
abatement, until it is done and done forever.
I know that many are appalled and disappointed by the apparently
interminable character of this war. I am neither appalled nor disappointed.
Without pretending to any higher wisdom than other men, I know well
enough and often said it—Once let the North and South confront each
other on the battle-field, and Slavery and Freedom be the inspiring motives
of the respective sections, the contest will be fierce, long and sanguinary.
Gov. Seymour charges us with prolonging the war,5Born in Pompey Hill, New York, Horatio Seymour (1810-86) received his education at the Utica Academy, Oxford Academy, and Geneva Academy (Hobart College) in New York and at Alden Partridge's military academy in Middletown, Connecticut. Although admitted to the bar in 1832, Seymour never opened a law practice. Instead, he embarked on a political career,. holding the offices of military secretary to New York’s Governor William L. Marcy (1833-39), Democratic state assemblyman (1841, 1844-45), mayor of Utica, New York (1842), and governor of the state (1852, 1862-64). During Seymour’s second term as governor New York City experienced several days of draft riots. Though he was firmly committed to the Union cause, Seymour believed the inherent inequities of Lincoln’s conscription policy were, at least in part, responsible for the disruption in the city. His swift and firm handling of the crisis brought bipartisan praise. Narrowly losing his bid for reelection in 1864, Seymour reluctantly accepted his party's presidential nomination in 1868 but was defeated by Ulysses S. Grant. He thereafter shunned public office. Douglass here alludes to Seymour's warnings, repeated in many campaign speeches in the fall of 1863, that Republican war goals—especially emancipation—threatened to prolong the war and bankrupt the federal government. New York , 10 September, 29 October, 1 November 1863; Stewart Mitchell, Horatio Seymour of New York (Cambridge, Mass., 1938); Alexander J. Wall, A Sketch of the Life of Horatio Seymour, 1810-1866; . . . (New York, 1929); Robert Sobel and John Raimo, eds., Biographical Directory of the Governors of the United States, 1789-1978, 4 vols. (Westport, Conn, 1978), 3: 1082; Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 6 vols. (New York, 1888-89), 5: 475-78; National Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1898), 3: 48-50; Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928-36), 17: 6-9. and I say the longer the
better if it must be so—in order to put an end to the hell black cause out of
which the Rebellion has risen.
Say not that I am indifferent to the horrors and hardships of the war. I
am not indifferent. In common with the American people generally, I feel
the prolongation of the war a heavy calamity—private as well [as] public.
There are vacant spaces at my hearthstone which I shall rejoice to see filled
again by the boys who once occupied them—but which cannot be thus
filled while the war lasts—for they have enlisted—“during the war.”6Douglass's sons, Charles and Lewis.
But even from the length of this struggle, we who mourn over it may
well enough draw some consolation when we reflect upon the vastness and
grandeur of its mission. The world has witnessed many wars—and history
records and perpetuates their memory, but the world has not seen a nobler
and grander war than that which the loyal people of this country are now
waging against the slaveholding Rebels. The blow we strike is not merely
to free a country or continent—but the whole world from Slavery—for
when Slavery falls here—it will fall everywhere. We have no business to
mourn over our mission. We are writing the statutes of eternal justice and
liberty in the blood of the worst of tyrants as a warning to all after-comers.
We should rejoice that there was moral life and health enough in us to stand
in our appointed place, and do this great service for mankind.
It is true that the war seems long. But this very slow progress is an
essential element of its effectiveness. Like the slow convalescence of some
patients the fault is less chargeable to the medicine than to the deep-seated
character of the disease. We were in a very low condition before the remedy
was applied. The whole head was sick and the whole heart faint. Dr.
Buchanan7James Buchanan. and his Democratic friends had given us up, and were preparing
to celebrate the nation’s funeral. We had been drugged nearly to death by
Pro-Slavery compromises. A radical change was needed in our whole
system. Nothing is better calculated to effect the desired change than the
slow, steady and certain progress of the war.
I know that this view of the case is not very consoling to the peace
Democracy.8Peace Democrats. I was not sent and am not come to console this breach of our
political church. They regard this grand moral revolution in the mind and
heart of the nation as the most distressing attribute of the war, and howl
over it like certain characters of whom we read—who thought themselves
tormented before their time.
Upon the whole, I like their mode of characterizing the war. They
charge that it is no longer conducted upon constitutional principles. The
same was said by Breckinridge and Vallandigham.9John C. Breckinridge and Clement L. Vallandigham. They charge that it is
not waged to establish the Union as it was. The same idea has occurred to
Jefferson Davis. They charge that this is a war for the subjugation of the
South. In a word, that it is an Abolition war.
For one, I am not careful to deny this charge. But it is instructive to
observe how this charge is brought and how it is met. Both warn us of
danger. Why is this war fiercely denounced as an Abolition war? I answer,
because the nation has long and bitterly hated Abolition, and the enemies
of the war confidently rely upon this hatred to serve the ends of treason.
Why do the loyal people deny the charge? I answer, because they know that
Abolition, though now a vast power, is still odious. Both the charge and the
denial tell how the people hate and despise the only measure that can save
the country.
An Abolition war! Well, let us thank the Democracy for teaching us
this word. The charge in a comprehensive sense is most true, and it is not a
pity that it is true, but it would be a vast pity if it were not true. Would that it
were more true than it is. When our Government and people shall bravely
avow this to be an Abolition war, then the country will be safe. Then our
work will be fairly mapped out. Then the uplifted arm of the nation will
swing unfettered to its work, and the spirit and power of the Rebellion will
be broken. Had Slavery been abolished in the Border States at the very
beginning of this war, as it ought to have been—had it been abolished in
Missouri, as it would have been but for Presidential interference—there
would now be no Rebellion in the Southern States—for instead of having
to watch these Border States, as they have done, our armies would have
marched in overpowering numbers directly upon the Rebels and over-
whelmed them. I now hold that a sacred regard for truth, as well as sound
policy, makes it our duty to own and avow before Heaven and earth that this
war is, and of right ought to be, an Abolition war.
The abolition of Slavery is the comprehensive and logical object of the
war, for it includes everything else which the struggle involves. It is a war
for the union, a war for the Constitution, I admit; but it is logically such a
war only in the sense that the greater includes the lesser. Slavery has proved
itself the strong man of our national house. In every Rebel State it proved
itself stronger than the Union, stronger than the Constitution, and stronger
than Republican Institutions. It overrode majorities, made no account of
the ballot-box, and had everything its own way. It is plain that this strong
man must be bound and cast out of our house before Union, Constitution
and Republican institutions can become possible. An Abolition war, there-
fore, includes Union, Constitution, Republican Institutions, and all else
that goes to make up the greatness and glory of our common country. On
the other hand, exclude Abolition, and you exclude all else for which you
are fighting.
The position of the Democratic party in relation to the war ought to
surprise nobody. It is consistent with the history of the party for thirty years
past. Slavery, and only Slavery, has been its recognized master during all
that time. It early won for itself the title of being the natural ally of the
South and of Slavery. It has always been for peace or against peace, for war
and against war, precisely as dictated by Slavery. Ask why it was for the
Florida War,10The Second Seminole War (1835-42). and it answers, Slavery. Ask why it was for the Mexican
War, and it answers, Slavery. Ask why it was for the annexation of Texas,
and it answers, Slavery. Ask why it was opposed to the habeas corpus when
a negro was the applicant, and it answers, Slavery. Ask why it is now in
favor of the habeas corpus, when Rebels and traitors are the applicants for
its benefits, and it answers, Slavery. Ask why it was for mobbing down
freedom of speech a few years ago, when that freedom was claimed by the
Abolitionists, and it answers, Slavery. Ask why it now asserts freedom of
speech, when sympathizers with traitors claim that freedom, and again
Slavery is the answer. Ask why it denied the right of a State to protect itself
against possible abuses of the Fugitive-Slave bill, and you have the same
old answer. Ask why it now asserts the sovereignty of the States separately,
as against the States united, and again Slavery is the answer. Ask why it
was opposed to giving persons claimed as fugitive slaves a jury trial before
returning them to slavery; ask why it is now in favor of giving jury trial to
traitors before sending them to the forts for safe keeping; ask why it was for
war at the beginning of the Rebellion; ask why it has attempted to embar-
rass and hinder the loyal Government at every step of its progress, and you
have but one answer, Slavery.
The fact is, the party in question, I say nothing of individual men who
were once members of it, has had but one vital and animating principle for
thirty years, and that has been the same old horrible and hell-born principle
of negro Slavery.
It has now assumed a saintly character. Its members would receive the
benediction due to peace-makers.11Matt. 5: 9. At one time they would stop bloodshed
at the South by inaugurating bloody revolution at the North. The livery of
peace is a beautiful livery, but in this case it is a stolen livery and sits badly
on the wearer. These new apostles of peace call themselves Peace Demo-
crats, and boast that they belong to the only party which can restore the
country to peace. I neither dispute their title nor the pretensions founded
upon it. The best that can be said of the peace-making ability of this class of
men is their bitterest condemnation. It consists in their known treachery to
the loyal Government. They have but to cross the Rebel lines to be hailed
by the traitors as countrymen, clansmen, kinsmen, and brothers beloved in
a common conspiracy. But, fellow-citizens, I have far less solicitude about
the position and the influence of this party than I have about that of the great
loyal party of the country. We have much less to fear from the bold and
shameless wickedness of the one than from the timid and short—sighted
policy of the other.
I know we have recently gained a great political victory; but it remains
to be seen whether we shall wisely avail ourselves of its manifest advan-
tages.12In the 1862 elections the Democrats gained thirty-five congressional seats and recaptured two governorships and two state legislatures from the Republicans. In 1863 Republicans made a comeback and triumphed in the gubernatorial races in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin, California, and all the New England states. Joel H. Silbey, A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860-1868 (New York, 1977), 143-47. There is danger that, like some of our Generals in the field, who,
after soundly whipping the foe, generously allow him time to retreat in
order, reorganize his forces, and intrench himself in a new and stronger
position, where it will require more power and skill to dislodge him than
was required to vanquish him in the first instance. The game is now in our
hands. We can put an end to this disloyal party by putting an end to Slavery.
While the Democratic party is in existence as an organization, we are in
danger of a slaveholding peace, and of Rebel rule. There is but one way to
avert this calamity, and that is, destroy Slavery and enfranchise the black
man while we have the power. While there is a vestige of Slavery remain-
ing, it will unite the South with itself, and carry with it the Democracy of
the North. The South united and the North divided, we shall be hereafter as
heretofore, firmly held under the heels of Slavery.
Here is a part of the platform of principles upon which it seems to me
every loyal man should take his stand at this hour:
That this war, which we are compelled to wage against
slaveholding Rebels and traitors, at untold cost of blood and treasure, shall
be, and of right ought to be, an Abolition War.
That we, the loyal people of the North and of the whole
country, while determined to make this a short and final war, will offer no
peace, accept no peace, consent to no peace, which shall not be to all
intents and purposes an Abolition peace.
That we regard the whole colored population of the country, in
the loyal as well as in the disloyal States, as our —valuable in
peace as laborers, valuable in war as soldiers—entitled to all the rights,
protection, and opportunities for achieving distinction enjoyed by any
other class of our countrymen.
Believing that the white race has nothing to fear from fair
competition with the black race, and that the freedom and elevation of one
race are not to be purchased or in any manner rightfully subserved by the
disfranchisement of another, we shall favor immediate and unconditional
emancipation in all the States, invest the black man everywhere with the
right to vote and to be voted for, and remove all discriminations against his
rights on account of his color, whether as a citizen or as a soldier.
Ladies and gentlemen, there was a time when I hoped that events
unaided by discussions would couple this Rebellion and Slavery in a com-
mon grave. But as I have before intimated, the facts do still fall short of our
hopes. The question as to what shall be done with Slavery—and more
especially what shall be done with the negro—threaten to remain open
questions for some time yet.
It is true we have the Proclamation of January, 1863. It was a vast and
glorious step in the right direction. But unhappily, excellent as that paper
is—and much as it has accomplished temporarily—it settles nothing. It is
still open to decision by courts, canons and Congresses. I have applauded
that paper and do now applaud it, as a wise measure—while I detest the
motive and principle upon which it is based. By it the holding and flogging
of negroes is the exclusive luxury of loyal men.
Our chief danger lies in the absence of all moral feeling in the utter-
ances of our rulers. In his letter to Mr. Greeley the President told the
country virtually that the abolition or non-abolition of Slavery was a matter
of indifference to him. He would save the Union with Slavery or without
Slavery.13On 20 August 1862, Horace Greeley published a public letter to President Lincoln in his New York Daily Tribune under the headline “THE PRAYER OF TWENTY MILLIONS" that complained of the administration's inaction against slavery. Lincoln replied in a letter of 22 August 1862, which Greeley printed three days later. Douglass paraphrases that portion of Lincoln’s letter in which the president acknowledged: “I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. . . . My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union." New York Daily Tribune, 20, 25 August 1862; Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1953-55), 5: 388-89. In his last Message he shows the same moral indifference, by
saying as he does say that he had hoped that the Rebellion could be put
down without the abolition of Slavery.14Douglass probably alludes to Lincoln’s annual message to Congress of 8 December 1863 in which the president declared: “According to our political system, as a matter of civil administration, the general government had no lawful power to effect emancipation in any State, and for a long time it had been hoped that the rebellion could be suppressed without resorting to it as a military measure." Basler, Collected Works of Lincoln, 7: 49.
When the late Stephen A. Douglas uttered the sentiment that he did not
care whether Slavery were voted up or voted down in the Territories, we
thought him lost to all genuine feeling on the subject, and no man more
than Mr. Lincoln denounced that sentiment as unworthy of the lips of any
American statesman.15On 9 December 1857, Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois took the Senate floor to attack President James Buchanan’s endorsement of the procedure by which the proslavery Lecompton Constitution had been drafted and submitted to Kansas voters. During his speech, the champion of popular sovereignty declared: “If Kansas wants a slave-State constitution she has a right to it; if she wants a free-State constitution she has a right to it. It is none of my business which way the slavery clause is decided. I care not whether it is voted down or voted up." Abraham Lincoln criticized Douglas's remark on several occasions, most notably in the “House Divided" speech delivered in Springfield, Illinois, on 16 June 1858. Congressional Globe, 35th Cong, 1st sess., 18; Basler, Collected Works of Lincoln, 2: 449, 463-64. But to-day, after nearly three years of a Slavehold-
ing Rebellion, we find Mr. Lincoln uttering substantially the same heart-
less sentiments. Douglas wanted Popular Sovereignty; Mr. Lincoln wants
the Union. Now did a warm heart and a high moral feeling control the
utterances of the President, he would welcome, with joy unspeakable and
full of glory, the opportunity afforded by the Rebellion to free the country
from the matchless crime and infamy. But policy, policy, everlasting pol-
icy, has robbed our statesmanship of all soul-moving utterances.
The great misfortune is and has been during all the progress of this war,
that the Government and loyal people have not understood and accepted its
true mission. Hence we have been floundering in the depths of dead issues.
Endeavoring to impose old and worn-out conditions upon new relations—
putting new wine into old bottles, new cloth into old garments, and thus
making the rent worse than before.16Douglass adapts Matt. 9: 17, Mark 2: 22, and Luke 5: 37, 38.
Had we been wise, we should have recognized the war at the outset as
at once the signal and the necessity for a new order of social and political
relations among the whole people. We could, like the ancients, discern the
face of the sky, but not the signs of the times. Hence we have been talking
of the importance of carrying on the war within the limits of a Constitution
broken down by the very people in whose behalf the Constitution is plead-
ed! Hence we have from the first been deluding ourselves with the misera-
ble dream, that the old Union can be revived in the States where it has been
abolished.
Now, we of the North have seen many strange things, and may see
many more; but that old Union, whose canonized bones we saw hearsed in
death and inurned under the frowning battlements of Sumter, we shall
never see again while the world standeth. The issue before us is a living
issue. We are not fighting for the dead past, but for the living present and
the glorious future. We are not fighting for the old Union, nor for anything
like it, but for that which is ten thousand times more important; and that
thing, crisply rendered, is National unity. Both sections have tried Union.
It has failed.
The lesson for the statesman at this hour is to discover and apply some
principle of Government which shall produce unity of sentiment, unity of
idea, unity of object. Union without unity is, as we have seen, body
without soul, marriage without love, a barrel without hoops, which falls at
the first touch.
The statesmen of the South understood this matter earlier and better
than the statesmen of the North. The dissolution of the Union on the old
bases of compromise, was plainly foreseen and predicted 30 years ago. Mr.
Calhoun and not Mr. Seward,17John C. Calhoun and William H. Seward. is the original author of the doctrine of the
irrepressible conflict. The South is logical and consistent. Under the teach-
ings of their great leader they admit into their form of Government no
disturbing force. They have based their Confederacy squarely on their
corner-stone. Their two great, and all commanding ideas are first, that
Slavery is right, and second, that the slaveholders are a superior order or
class. Around these two ideas their manners, morals, politics, religion, and
laws revolve. Slavery being right, all that is inconsistent with its entire
security is necessarily wrong, and of course ought to be put down. There is
no flaw in their logic.
They first endeavored to make the Federal Government stand upon
their accursed corner-stone; and we but barely escaped, as you well know,
that calamity. Fugitive Slave laws, Slavery Extension laws, and Dred Scott
decisions were among the steps to get the nation squarely upon the comer-
stone now chosen by the Confederate States. The loyal North is less log-
ical, less consistent, and less definite in regard to the necessity of principles
of National Unity. Yet, unconsciously to ourselves, and against our own
protestations, we are in reality, like the South, fighting for national unity—
a unity of which the great principles of liberty and equality, and not Slavery
and class superiority, are the corner-stone.
Long before this rude and terrible war came to tell us of a broken
Constitution and a dead Union, the better portion of the loyal people had
outlived and outgrown what they had been taught to believe were the
requirements of the old Union. We had come to detest the principle by
which Slavery had a strong representation in Congress. We had come to
abhor the idea of being called upon to suppress slave insurrections. We had
come to be ashamed of slave-hunting, and being made the watch-dogs of
slaveholders, who were too proud to scent out and hunt down their slaves
for themselves. We had so far outlived the old Union four years ago that we
thought the little finger of the hero of Harper’s Ferry18John Brown. of more value to the
world struggling for liberty than all the first families of old Virginia put
together.
What business, then, have we to be pouring out our treasure and
shedding our best blood like water for that old worn-out, dead and buried
Union, which had already become a calamity and a curse? The fact is, we
are not fighting for any such thing, and we ought to come out under our own
true colors, and let the South and the whole world know that we don’t want
and will not have anything analogous to the old Union.
What we now want is a country—a free country—a country nowhere
saddened by the footprints of a single slave—and nowhere cursed by the
presence of a slaveholder. We want a country, and we are fighting for a
country, which shall not brand the Declaration of Independence as a lie. We
want a country whose fundamental institutions we can proudly defend
before the highest intelligence and civilization of the age. Hitherto we have
opposed European scorn of our Slavery with a blush of shame as our best
defense. We now want a country in which the obligations of patriotism
shall not conflict with fidelity to justice and Liberty. We want a country,
and are fighting for a country, which shall be free from sectional political
parties—free from sectional religious denominations—free from sectional
benevolent associations—free from every kind and description of sect,
party, and combination of a sectional character. We want a country where
men may assemble from any part of it, without prejudice to their interests
or peril to their persons. We are in fact, and from absolute necessity,
transplanting the whole South with the higher civilization of the North. The
New-England schoolhouse is bound to take the place of the Southern
whipping-post. Not because we love the negro, but the nation; not because
we prefer to do this, because we must or give up the contest, and give up the
country. We want a country, and are fighting for a country, where social
intercourse and commercial relations shall neither be embarrassed nor
embittered by the imperious exactions of an insolent slaveholding Oligar-
chy, which required Northern merchants to sell their souls as a condition
precedent to selling their goods. We want a country, and are fighting for a
country, through the length and breadth of which the literature and learning
of any section of it may float to its extremities unimpaired, and thus
become the common property of all the people—a country in which no
man shall be fined for reading a book, or imprisoned for selling a book—a
country where no man can be imprisoned or flogged or sold for learning to
read, or teaching a fellow mortal how to read. We want a country, and are
fighting for a country, in any part of which to be called an American
citizen, shall mean as much as it did to be called a Roman citizen in the
palmiest days of the Roman Empire.
We have heard much in other days of manifest destiny. I don’t go all the
lengths to which such theories are pressed, but I do believe that it is the
manifest destiny of this war to unify and reorganize the institutions of this
country—and that herein is the secret of the strength, the fortitude, the
persistent energy, in a word the sacred significance of this war. Strike out
the high ends and aims thus indicated, and the war would appear to the
impartial eye of an on-looking world little better than a gigantic enterprise
for shedding human blood.
A most interesting and gratifying confirmation of this theory of its
mission is furnished in the varying fortunes of the struggle itself. Just in
proportion to the progress made in taking upon itself the character I have
ascribed to it, has the war prospered and the Rebellion lost ground.
Justice and humanity are often overpowered—but they are persistent
and eternal forces—and fearful to contend against. Let but our rulers place
the Government fully within these trade winds of Omnipotence, and the
hand of death is upon the Confederate Rebels. A war waged as ours seemed
to be at first, merely for power and empire, repels sympathy though sup-
ported by legitimacy. If Ireland should strike for independence to-morrow,
the sympathy of this country would be with her, and I doubt if American
statesmen would be more discreet in the expression of their opinions of the
merits of the contest, than British statesmen have been concerning the
merits of ours. When we were merely fighting for the old Union the world
looked coldly upon our Government. But now the world begins to see
something more than legitimacy—something more than national pride. It
sees national wisdom aiming at national unity; and national justice break-
ing the chains of a long enslaved people. It is this new complexion of our
cause which warms our hearts and strengthens our hands at home, disarms
our enemies and increases our friends abroad. It is this more than all else
which has carried consternation into the blood-stained halls of the South. It
has sealed the fiery and scornful lips of the Roebucks19The son of a British civil servant, John Arthur Roebuck (1802-79) was born in Madras, India, and raised and educated in Canada. In 1824 he moved to England to practice law. First elected to Parliament in 1832, he supported radical political reforms and championed Canadian rights against the interests of the Crown. In 1855 Roebuck's successful motion to create a committee to inquire into the conduct of the Crimean War brought down the govemment of Lord Aberdeen. In June 1863 Roebuck badly mismanaged a parliamentary move to have Britain join France and other European powers in recognizing the Confederacy. Roebuck failed in his bid for reelection in 1868 partly because of his support of the Confederate cause and partly because of his opposition to the trade union movement. Robert Eadon Leader, ed., Life and Letters of John Arthur Roebuck, P.C., Q.C., M .P., with Chapters of Autobiography (London, 1897); Ephraim D. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, 2 vols. (New York, 1925), 2: 164-78; D. P. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 1861-1865 (New York, 1974), 309- 16; Dictionary of National Biography, 21 vols. (London, 1921-22), 17: 95- 97; ACAB, 5: 304. and Lindsays20Born in Ayr, Scotland, William Schaw Lindsay (1816-77) went to sea in 1831 and worked his way up from cabinboy to ship's captain to owner of a fleet of merchant vessels. In 1854 he won election to Parliament as a vigorous spokesman for free-trade principles. During the American Civil War Lindsay favored British recognition of the Confederacy and was a leader of the Southern Independence Association. After private discussions with Napoleon III in April 1862, he acted as unofficial courier from the French to the British govemment to sound out the idea of joint recognition. When that move failed, Lindsay introduced an unsuccessful parliamentary motion in July 1862 proposing British mediation of the American conflict. The following year he cooperated with John A. Roebuck in a second attempt at persuading the British govemment to join with France in recognizing the Confederacy. As late as the summer of 1864 Lindsay was leading futile parliamentary maneuvers on behalf of the Southem cause. Adams, Britain and the Civil War, 1: 279, 289-96, 301-07, 2: 18-23, 166-75, 205- 15; Crook, North, South, and Powers, 189-90, 213-15, 309-16; Lynn M. Case and Warren F. Spencer, The United States and France: Civil War Diplomacy (Philadelphia, 1970), 269-75, 398-426; DNB, 11: 1195-96. of
England, and caused even the eloquent Mr. Gladstone to restrain the ex-
pression of his admiration for Jeff. Davis and his Rebel nation.21William Ewan Gladstone (1809-98), four-time prime minister of Great Britain (1868-74, 1880-85, 1886, 1892-94), was chancellor of the exchequer in the cabinet of Lord Palmerston at the time of the American Civil War. Although he was an opponent of slavery, Gladstone favored British recognition of the Confederacy on the ground that the prolonged bloodshed had made a reunion of the North and South impossible. In a speech at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, on 7 October 1862, Gladstone attracted international attention by declaring, “There is no doubt that Jefferson Davis, and other leaders of the South have made an Army. They are making, it appears, a Navy. And they have made-what is more than either—they have made a Nation." Philip Magnus, Gladstone: A Biography (London, 1954); Adams, Britain and the Civil War, 2: 179-82; DNB, supplement, 22: 705-54. It has
placed the broad arrow of British suspicion on the prows of the Rebel rams
in the Mersey, and performed a like service for those in France.22In desperate need of modern warships, the Confederacy entered into secret agreements with a number of British and French shipbuilding firms. To avoid violations of neutrality laws, all contracts were made with private citizens rather than with the Confederate government. and armaments were not installed until after the sales had been completed and the vessels had left the shipyards. In 1862 the cruisers and were permitted out of Britain under those conditions and soon afterward commenced careers as commerce raiders. The protests of the Lincoln administration, as well as fears that the precedent being established could someday be used against Britain itself, caused the Palmerston government to change its policy. In 1863 the British seized another vessel about to depart, citing only the “suspicion of intention" to cruise on belligerent service. The courts overturned that seizure, but the next year the British government “detained” two warships or “rams,” designed to challenge the Union naval blockade, that were nearing completion at the Laird Brothers' shipyard on the Mersey River estuary at Liverpool. The government defended the action as necessary to give them time to discover who the ships' true owners were and what their ultimate mission would be. Eventually, the Royal Navy purchased the rams, and the remaining ships under construction for the South were sold to other owners. Meanwhile, Confederate efforts to obtain warships from French builders began in earnest in 1862; by July 1863 six vessels were under construction. At that time, American diplomats, armed with highly incriminating documents purchased from spies in the French firms, protested these violations of neutrality to the government of Napoleon III. French authorities withdrew authorization for arming the vessels but allowed their construction to continue. Not until May 1864 did the government forbid the ships to be further equipped or to make trial runs until the foreign minister was satisfied that they actually had been sold to nonbelligerent powers. Crook, North, South, and Powers, 258-62, 292, 322-30; Case and Spencer, United States and France, 427-80; Adams, Britain and the Civil War, 2: 116-51. It has
driven Mason, the shameless man-hunter, from London,23After an unsuccessful two-year effort to obtain diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy by Great Britain, Special Commissioner James Murray Mason notified the British Foreign Ministry of his withdrawal on 21 September 1863. Although Mason's recall had been dispatched in August, the public generally perceived his departure as a protest of the British government's announcement on 15 September that it would seize the warships under construction for the Confederacy at the Laird Brothers' shipyard in Liverpool. Adams, Britain and the Civil War, 2: 179-82; Crook, North, South, and Powers, 330. where he never
should have been allowed to stay for an hour, except as a bloodhound is
tolerated in Regent Park for exhibition.24Originally a hunting preserve of the Tudor monarchs, the more than four hundred enclosed acres of London's Regent's Park were home to numerous wild birds and small mammals. After 1826 a section of the park housed the collection of the Zoological Society of London, and from 1838 to 1932 the Royal Botanical Society of London maintained an extensive flower garden there. A. D. Webster, The Regent's Park and Primrose Hill: History and Antiquities (London, 1911); Guy Williams, The Royal Parks of London (London, 1978), 198-220.
We have had from the first warm friends in England. We owe a debt of
respect and gratitude to William Edward Forster, John Bright, Richard
Cobden, and other British statesmen, in that they outran us in comprehend—
ing the high character of our struggle. They saw that this must be a war for
human nature, and walked by faith to its defense while all was darkness
about us—while we were yet conducting it in profound reverence for
Slavery.
I know we are not to be praised for this changed character of the war.
We did our very best to prevent it. We had but one object at the beginning,
and that was, as I have said, the restoration of the old Union; and for the
first two years the war was kept to that object strictly, and you know full
well and bitterly with what results. I will not stop here to blame and
denounce the past; but I will say that most of the blunders and disasters of
the earlier part of the war might have been avoided had our armies and
Generals not repelled the only true friends the Union cause had in the Rebel
States. The Army of the Potomac took up an anti-negro position from the
first, and has not entirely renounced it yet. The colored people told me a
few days ago in Washington that they were the victims of the most brutal
treatment by these Northern soldiers when they first came there.25Douglass delivered lectures in Washington, DC. , on 7 and 8 December 1863 on behalf of the Contraband Relief Society. While on that visit, he inspected freedmen's refugee camps in nearby Virginia. Philadelphia Inquirer, 12 December 1863; ChR, 26 December 1863. But let
that pass. Few men, however great their wisdom, are permitted to see the
end from the beginning. Events are mightier than our rulers, and these
Divine forces, with overpowering logic, have fixed upon this war, against
the wishes of our Government, the comprehensive character and mission I
have ascribed to it. The collecting of revenue in the Rebel ports, the
repossession of a few forts and arsenals and other public property stolen by
the Rebels, have almost disappeared from the recollection of the people.
The war has been a growing war in every sense of the word. It began weak,
and has risen strong. It began low, and has risen high. It began narrow, and
has become broad. It began with few, and now, behold, the country is full
of armed men, ready, with courage and fortitude, to make the wisest and
best idea of American statesmanship the law of the land.
Let, then, the war proceed in its strong, high, and broad course till the
Rebellion is put down and our country is saved beyond the necessity of
being saved again!
I have already hinted at our danger. Let me be a little more direct and
pronounced.
The Democratic party, though defeated in the elections last Fall, is still
a power. It is the ready organized nucleus of a powerful Pro-Slavery and
Pro-Rebel reaction. Though it has lost in numbers, it retains all the ele-
ments of its former power and malevolence.
That party has five very strong points in its favor, and its public men
and journals know well how to take advantage of them.
There is the absence of any deep moral feeling among the loyal
people against Slavery itself—their feeling against it being on account of
its rebellion against the Government, and not because it is a stupendous
crime against human nature.
The vast expense of the war and the heavy taxes in money as
well as men which the war requires for its prosecution. Loyalty has a strong
back, but taxation has often broken it.
The earnest desire for peace which is shared by all classes
except Government contractors who are making money out of the war; a
feeling which may be kindled to a flame by any serious reverses to our
arms. It is silent in victory but vehement and dangerous in defeat.
And superior to all others, is the national prejudice and
hatred toward the colored people of the country, a feeling which has done
more to encourage the hopes of the Rebels than all other powers beside.
An Abolitionist is an object of popular dislike. The guilty
Rebel who with broad blades and bloody hands seeks the life of the nation,
is at this hour more acceptable to the northern Democracy than an Aboli-
tionist guilty of no crime. Whatever may be a man’s abilities, virtue, or
service, the fact that he is an Abolitionist makes him an object of popular
hate.
Upon these five strings the Democracy still have hopes of playing
themselves into power, and not without reason. While our Government has
the meanness to ask Northern colored men to give up the comfort of home,
good wages, and personal security, to join the army, endure untold hard-
ships, peril health, limbs and life itself, in its defense, and then degrades
them in the eyes of other soldiers, by offering them the paltry sum of $7 per
month, and refuses to reward their valor with even the hope of promo-
tion—the Democratic party may well enough presume upon the strength of
popular prejudice for support.
While our Republican Government at Washington makes color and not
character the criterion of promotion in the army, and degrades colored
commissioned officers at New Orleans below the rank to which even the
Rebel Government had elevated them, I think we are in danger of a com-
promise with Slavery.
Our hopeful Republican friends tell me this is impossible—that the
day of compromise with Slavery is past. This may do for some men, but it
will not do for me.
The Northern people have always been remarkably confident of their
own virtue. They are hopeful to the last. Twenty years ago we hoped that
Texas could not be annexed; but if that could not be prevented we hoped
that she would come in as a Free State. Thirteen years ago we were quite
sure that no such abomination as the Fugitive Slave Bill could get itself on
our National statute book; but when it got there we were equally sure that it
never could be enforced. Four years ago we were sure that the Slave States
would not rebel, but if they did we were sure it would be a very short
rebellion. I know that times have changed very rapidly, and that we have
changed with them. Nevertheless, I know also that we are the same old
American people, and that what we have done once we may possibly do
again. The leaven of compromise is among us—I repeat, while we have a
Democratic party at the North trimming its sails to catch the Southern
breeze in the next Presidential election, we are in danger of compromise.
Tell me not of amnesties and oaths of allegiance. They are valueless in the
presence of twenty hundred millions invested in human flesh. Let but the
little finger of Slavery get back into this Union, and in one year you shall
see its whole body again upon our backs.
While a respectable colored man or woman can be kicked out of the
commonest street car in New York—where any white ruffian may ride
unquestioned—we are in danger of a compromise with Slavery. While the
North is full of such papers as The New York World, Express, and Herald,
firing the nation’s heart with hatred to negroes and Abolitionists, we are in
danger of a slaveholding peace. While the major part of all Anti-Slavery
profession is based upon devotion to the Union rather than hostility to
Slavery, there is danger of a slaveholding peace. Until we shall see the
election of November next, and know that it has resulted in the election of a
sound Anti-Slavery man as President, we shall be in danger of a slavehold-
ing compromise. Indeed, so long as Slavery has any life left in it, anywhere
in the country, we are in danger of such a compromise.
Then there is the danger arising from the impatience of the people on
account of the prolongation of the war. I know the American people. They
are an impulsive people, impatient of delay, clamorous for change—and
often look for results out of all proportion to the means employed in
attaining them.
You and I know that the mission of this war is National regeneration.
We know and consider that a nation is not born in a day. We know that large
bodies move slowly—and often seem to move thus—when, could we
perceive their actual velocity, we should be astonished at its greatness. A
great battle lost or won is easily described, understood and appreciated, but
the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observa-
tion, to appreciate it. There are vast numbers of voters, who make no
account of the moral growth of the nation, and who only look at the war as a
calamity to be endured only so long as they have no power to arrest it. Now,
this is just the sort of people whose vote may turn the scale against us in the
last event.
Thoughts of this kind tell me that there never was a time when Anti-Slavery
work was more needed than now. The day that shall see the Rebels
at our feet, their weapons flung away, will be the day of trial. We have need
to prepare for that trial. We have long been saved a Pro-Slavery peace by the
stubborn, unbending persistence of the Rebels. Let them bend as they will
bend—there will come the test of our sternest virtues.
l have now given, very briefly, some of the grounds of danger. A word
as to the grounds of hope. The best that can be offered is, that we have made
progress—vast and striking progress—within the last two years.
President Lincoln introduced his administration to the country as one
which would faithfully catch, hold, and return runaway slaves to their
masters.26In his inaugural address on 4 March 1861 Lincoln asserted that he took his oath of office “with no mental reservations." Although, after reviewing the provisions of the Constitution’s fugitive slave clause and the law of 1850, he chose not “to specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be enforced," he did “suggest, that it will be much safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to, and abide by, all those acts which stand unrepealed, than to violate any of them, trusting to find impunity in having them held to be unconstitutional." Basler, Collected Works of Lincoln, 4: 263- 64. He avowed his determination to protect and defend the slave-
holder’s right to plunder the black laborer of his hard earnings. Europe was
assured by Mr. Seward that no slave should gain his freedom by this war.27On 10 April 1861, Secretary of State William H. Seward instructed Charles Francis Adams, minister to Great Britain, “not to draw into debate before the British government any opposing moral principles which may be supposed to lie at the foundation of the controversy." On 22 April, after Lincoln’s call to arms, Seward informed William Lewis Dayton, minister to France, that whatever the outcome of the conflict, the "condition of slavery in the several States will remain just the same." Norman B. Ferris, Desperate Diplomacy: William H. Seward's Foreign Policy, 1861 (Knoxville, Tenn., 1976), 183.
Both the President and the Secretary of State have made progress since
then.
Our Generals, at the beginning of the war, were horribly Pro-Slavery.
They took to slave-catching and slave-killing like ducks to water. They are
now very generally and very earnestly in favor of putting an end to Slavery.
Some of them, like Hunter28Born in Washington, D.C., West Point graduate David Hunter (1802-86) spent most of his life in the military. Commissioned a colonel in the cavalry in May 1861, Hunter suffered a serious injury the following month during the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major action of the Civil War. After his recuperation he successively commanded the Department of the West (November 1861), the Department of Kansas (1861-62), the Department of the South (1862-63), and the Department of West Virginia (1864). While commanding the Department of the South, Hunter won the praise of abolitionists by issuing a proclamation freeing the slaves within his purview. Lincoln, who feared possible repercussions in the border states, annulled Hunter‘s orders, however, stating that the general had exceeded his authority. Hunter did succeed in creating the first official black regiment, the First South Carolina, an action that was ultimately supported by Congress. In 1865 he served as president of the commission that tried the conspirators involved in the assassination of President Lincoln. For his meritorious conduct during the war Hunter was promoted to major general and retired from active duty in 1866. He spent the remainder of his life in Washington, D.C. An incomplete, undated manuscript in which Douglass eulogizes Hunter is in Speech File, reel 19, frames 401-03, FD Papers, DLC; ACAB, 3: 321; DAB, 2: 400-01. and Butler,29Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts. because they hate Slavery on its
own account, and others, because Slavery is in arms against the Gov-
ernment.
The Rebellion has been a rapid educator. Congress was the first to
respond to the instinctive judgment of the people, and fixed the broad
brand of its reprobation upon slave-hunting in shoulder-straps. Then came
very temperate talk about confiscation, which soon came to be pretty
radical talk. Then came propositions for Border-State, gradual, compen-
sated, colonized Emancipation. Then came the threat of a proclamation,
and then came the proclamation. Meanwhile the negro had passed along
from a loyal spade and pickax to a Springfield rifle.
Hayti and Liberia are recognized, Slavery is humbled in Maryland,
threatened in Tennessee, stunned nearly to death in Western Virginia,
doomed in Missouri, trembling in Kentucky, and gradually melting away
before our arms in the rebellious States.30What Douglass describes is the actual rather than the legal demise of slavery in the border states. The enlistment of blacks in the Union army, multiplication of the opportunities for flight, and the widespread erosion of discipline during the war years hastened the end of slavery in those regions. West Virginia incorporated a clause providing for gradual emancipation in its first constitution in 1863. After considerable debate, Maryland adopted a constitution in 1864 that abolished slavery. Tennessee ended slavery by amending its constitution in February 1865, and a Missouri state convention adopted an emancipation ordinance on 11 January 1865. Kentucky and Delaware rejected such measures, and slavery was not officially abolished in those states until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. James G. Randall, Constitutional Problems under Lincoln (New York, 1926), 385-90; Richard Walsh and William Lloyd Fox, eds., Maryland: A History, 1632-1974 (Baltimore, 1974), 370, 377; Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York, 1988), 1-11, 37- 40.
The hour is one of hope as well as danger. But whatever may come to
pass, one thing is clear: The principles involved in the contest, the neces-
sities of both sections of the country, the obvious requirements of the age,
and every suggestion of enlightened policy demand the utter extirpation of
Slavery from every foot of American soil, and the enfranchisement of the
entire colored population of the country. Elsewhere we may find peace, but
it will be a hollow and deceitful peace. Elsewhere we may find prosperity,
but it will be a transient prosperity. Elsewhere we may find greatness and
renown, but if these are based upon anything less substantial than justice
they will vanish, for righteousness alone can permanently exalt a nation.
I end where I began—no war but an Abolition war; no peace but an
Abolition peace; liberty for all, chains for none; the black man a soldier in
war, a laborer in peace; a voter at the South as well as at the North; America
his permanent home, and all Americans his fellow-countrymen. Such,
fellow-citizens, is my idea of the mission of the war. If accomplished, our
glory as a nation will be complete, our peace will flow like a river, and our
foundations will be the everlasting rocks.