territory a new and hostile empire based on slavery; when they flew at
the throat of the nation and plunged it into the bloodiest war of the
nineteenth century the tables were turned, and the belief gradually came
to the mind of the President that if the Rebellion was not soon subdued
by force of arms, if the war must be fought out to the bitter end, then
to reach that end the salvation of the nation itself might require the
destruction of slavery wherever it existed; that if the war was to
continue on one side for Disunion, for no other purpose than to preserve
slavery, it must continue on the other side for the Union, to destroy
slavery.

As he said, "Events control me; I cannot control events," and as the
dreadful war progressed and became more deadly and dangerous, the
unalterable conviction was forced upon him that, in order that the
frightful sacrifice of life and treasure on both sides might not be all
in vain, it had become his duty as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, as a
necessary war measure, to strike a blow at the Rebellion which, all
others failing, would inevitably lead to its annihilation, by
annihilating the very thing for which it was contending. His own words
are the best:

"I understood that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my
ability imposed upon me the duty of preserving by every indispensable
means that government--that nation--of which that Constitution was the
organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the
Constitution? By general law, life and limb must be protected, yet often
a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given
to save a limb. I felt that measures otherwise unconstitutional might
become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the
Constitution through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I