He had
said that the war was for the Union; but they scornfully retorted that
this was to reduce it to "a mere sectional strife for ascendency;" that
"a Union, with slavery spared and reinstated, would not be worth the
cost of saving it." It was true that to save the Union, without also
removing the cause of disunion, might not be worth a very great price;
yet both Union and abolition were in serious danger of being thrown away
forever by these impetuous men who desired to pluck the fruit before it
was ripe, or rather declared it to be ripe because they so wanted to
pluck it.
It is not, here and now, a question of the merits and the usefulness of
these men; undoubtedly their uncompromising ardor could not have been
dispensed with in the great anti-slavery struggle; it was what the steam
is to the engine, and if the motive power had been absent no one can say
how long the United States might have lain dormant as a slave-country.
But the question is of their present attitude and of its influence and
effect in the immediate affairs of the government. Their demand was for
an instant and sweeping proclamation of emancipation; and they were
angry and denunciatory against the President because he would not give
it to them. Of course, by their ceaseless assaults they hampered him and
weakened his hands very seriously. It was as an exercise of the
President's war-power that they demanded the proclamation; and the
difficulty in the way of it was that Mr.
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