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Show GERM OF IMMORTAL ADDRESS Proof That Lincoln Long Had In Kind Right Idea of What the War Meant. Hay referred to Browning's suggestion sug-gestion that the North should subjugate sub-jugate the South, exterminate the whites, set up a black republic, and protect the negroes "while they raised our cotton." "Some ot our Northerners seem bewildered be-wildered and dazzled by the excitement excite-ment of the hour," Lincoln replied. "Doolittle seems inclined to think thai this war is to result in the entire abolition of slavery. Old Colonel Hamilton, Ham-ilton, a venerable and most respectable respect-able gentleman, impress upon me most earnestly the propriety of enlisting en-listing the slaves in our army." (I told him his daily mail was thickly interspersed with such suggestions.) "For my own part," he said, "I consider con-sider the central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity that is upon us of proving that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government govern-ment the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose. If we fail, we will go far to r.rove the incapability of the peoplo to govern themselves. There may be one consideration used In stay of such final judgment, but that is not for us to use in advance: That is that there exists in our case an instance of a vast and far-reaching disturbing element which the history of no other free nation will probably ever present. That, however, is not for us to say at present. Taking the government as we found it, we will see if the majority ma-jority can preserve it." This statement, spoken offhand to his secretary, reveals the foundation of Lincoln's judgment on the Civil war; there was at stake something more precious than the preservation of the Union, something more urgent than the abolition of slavery and that was democracy. Two years and a half later, In his address at Gettysburg, he Put into one imperishable sentence the thought of which this was tho garm. From the Diary of John Hay, edited by William Roscoe Thayer fol Harper's Magazine. |
