audacity. But in 1860 that stern experience still slept in the future.
He had no suspicion as yet that he might find it difficult to carry out
his own promise to stand with the Abolitionists in excluding slavery
from the Territories, and to stand against them in enforcing the
Fugitive Slave Law. He did not yet see why any one should doubt the
validity of this promise; why any one should be afraid to go along
with him, afraid that the temper of one element would infect the whole
coalition.

But this fear that Lincoln did not allow for, possessed already a great
many minds. Thousands of Southerners, of the sort whom Lincoln credited
with good intentions about slavery, feared the Abolitionists Not because
the Abolitionists wanted to destroy slavery, but because they wanted
to do so fiercely, cruelly. Like Lincoln, these Southerners who were
liberals in thought and moderates in action, did not know what to do
about slavery. Like Lincoln, they had but one fixed idea with regard to
it,--slavery must not be terminated violently. Lincoln, despite his
near horizon, sensed them correctly as not being at one with the great
plutocrats who wished to exploit slavery. But when the Abolitionist
poured out the same fury of vituperation on every sort of slave-holder;
when he promised his soul that it should yet have the joy of exulting in
the ruin of all such, the moderate Southerners became as flint. When the
Abolitionists proclaimed their affiliation with the new party, the
first step was taken toward a general Southern coalition to stop the
Republican advance.

There was another positive element blended into the negative coalition.
In 1857, the Republicans overruling the traditions of those members who
had once been Democrats, set their faces toward protection. To most
of the Northerners the fatefulness of the step was not obvious. Twenty