Davis would never agree to reunion, either with or without
slavery. Since, therefore, Union could not be had until after the South
had been whipped, it would be just as well to demand abolition also; for
the rebels would not then be in a position to refuse it, and we should
practically buy both in one transaction. To him it seemed an appalling
blunder to pay the price of this great war simply in order to cure this
especial outbreak of the great national malady, and still to leave
existing in the body politic that which had induced this dissension and
would inevitably afterward induce others like unto it. The excision of
the cause was the only intelligent action. Yet when pushed to the point
of declaring what he would do in the supposed case of an opportunity to
restore the Union, with slavery, he said: "My enemies pretend I am now
carrying on the war for the sole purpose of abolition. So long as I am
President, it shall be carried on for the sole purpose of restoring the
Union." The duty of his official oath compelled him to say this, but he
often and plainly acknowledged that he had no fear of ever being brought
face to face with the painful necessity of saving both the Union and
slavery.
It is worth noticing that the persons who charged upon the President
that he would never assent to a peace which was not founded upon the
abolition of slavery as one of its conditions or stipulations, never
distinctly stated by what right he could insist upon such a condition or
stipulation, or by what process he could establish it or introduce it
into a settlement.
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