reasons had hitherto forbidden us to employ. At the same time it
has given us the power to remedy a great wrong to four millions of
the human race, in which we had hitherto been obliged to acquiesce.
We are threatened with national annihilation, and defied to use the
only means of national preservation. The question is distinctly
proposed to us, Shall Slavery die, or the great Republic? It is
most astounding to me that there can be two opinions in the free
States as to the answer.

If we do fall, we deserve our fate. At the beginning of the
contest, constitutional scruples might be respectable. But now we
are fighting to subjugate the South; that is, Slavery. We are
fighting for nothing else that I know of. We are fighting for the
Union. Who wishes to destroy the Union? The slaveholder, nobody
else. Are we to spend twelve hundred millions, and raise six
hundred thousand soldiers, in order to protect slavery? It really
does seem to me too simple for argument. I am anxiously waiting for
the coming Columbus who will set this egg of ours on end by smashing
in the slavery end. We shall be rolling about in every direction
until that is done. I don't know that it is to be done by
proclamation. Rather perhaps by facts. . . . Well, I console
myself with thinking that the people--the American people, at least
--is about as wise collectively as less numerous collections of
individuals, and that the people has really declared emancipation,
and is only puzzling how to carry it into effect. After all, it
seems to be a law of Providence, that progress should be by a spiral
movement; so that when it seems most tortuous, we may perhaps be
going ahead. I am firm in the faith that slavery is now wriggling
itself to death. With slavery in its pristine vigor, I should think
the restored Union neither possible nor desirable. Don't understand