defeated in an attempt to carry out its most effective threat. It would
have lost its prestige. Its menaces would have been hollow sound, and
ceased to make any one afraid. It could no longer have hoped to expand,
to maintain an equilibrium in any branch of Congress, and to control the
government. The victorious free States would have largely overbalanced
it. It would no longer have been able to withstand the onset of a
hostile age. It could no longer have ruled,--and slavery had to rule in
order to live. It would have lingered for a while, but it would surely
have been "in the course of ultimate extinction." A prolonged war
precipitated the destruction of slavery; a short war might only have
prolonged its death struggle. Lincoln saw this clearly; but he saw also
that, in a protracted death struggle, it might still have kept disloyal
sentiments alive, bred distracting commotions, and caused great mischief
to the country. He therefore hoped that slavery would not survive the
war.

But the question how he could rightfully employ his power to bring on its
speedy destruction was to him not a question of mere sentiment. He
himself set forth his reasoning upon it, at a later period, in one of his
inimitable letters. "I am naturally antislavery," said he. "If slavery
is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember the time when I did
not so think and feel. And yet I have never understood that the
Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act upon that
judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the
best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the
United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor
was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath
in using that power. I understood, too, that, in ordinary civil
administration, this oath even forbade me practically to indulge my
private abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I did