had been governed by this same quality. With his non-censorious mind,
which accepted so much of life as he found it, which was forever
stripping principles of their accretions, what could be more inevitable
than his warming to the one great man at Washington who like him held
that such a point of view was the only rational one. Seward's ironic
peacefulness in the midst of the storm gained in luster because all
about him raged a tempest of ferocity, mitigated, at least so far as the
distracted President could see, only by self-interest or pacifism.

As Lincoln came into office, he could see and hear many signs of a
rising fierceness of sectional hatred. His secretary records with
disgust a proposal to conquer the Gulf States, expel their white
population, and reduce the region to a gigantic state preserve, where
negroes should grow cotton under national supervision.(1) "We of the
North," said Senator Baker of Oregon, "are a majority of the Union, and
we will govern our Union in our own way."(2) At the other extreme was
the hysterical pacifism of the Abolitionists. Part of Lincoln's abiding
quarrel with the Abolitionists was their lack of national feeling. Their
peculiar form of introspection had injected into politics the idea of
personal sin. Their personal responsibility for slavery--they being
part of a country that tolerated it--was their basal inspiration.
Consequently, the most distinctive Abolitionists welcomed this
opportunity to cast off their responsibility. If war had been proposed
as a crusade to abolish slavery, their attitude might have been
different But in March, 1860, no one but the few ultra-extremists, whom
scarcely anybody heeded, dreamed of such a war. A war to restore the
Union was the only sort that was considered seriously. Such a war, the
Abolitionists bitterly condemned. They seized upon pacifism as their
defense. Said Whittier of the Seceding States: