whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, 'You
work and toil and earn bread and I'll eat it.'"

He foresaw with unerring vision that the conflict was inevitable and
irrepressible--that one or the other, the right or the wrong, freedom or
slavery, must ultimately prevail and wholly prevail, throughout the
country; and this was the principle that carried the war, once begun, to
a finish.

One sentence of his is immortal:

"Under the operation of the policy of compromise, the slavery agitation
has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion it
will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A
house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government
cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the
Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect
it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the
other; either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of
it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it
is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it
forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well
as new, North as well as South."

During the entire decade from 1850 to 1860 the agitation of the slavery
question was at the boiling point, and events which have become
historical continually indicated the near approach of the overwhelming
storm. No sooner had the Compromise Acts of 1850 resulted in a temporary
peace, which everybody said must be final and perpetual, than new
outbreaks came. The forcible carrying away of fugitive slaves by Federal