litics 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:

They break the links of Union: shall we light
The fires of hell to weld anew the chain,
On that red anvil where each blow is pain?

The fury and the fear offended Lincoln in equal measure. After long
years opposing the political temper of the extremists, he was not the
man now to change front. To one who believed himself marked out for a
tragic end, the cowardice at the heart of the pacifism of his time was
revolting. It was fortunate for his own peace of mind that he could here
count on the Secretary of State. No argument based on fear of pain would
meet in Seward with anything but derision. "They tell us," he had once
said, and the words expressed his constant attitude, "that we are to
encounter opposition. Why, bless my soul, did anybody ever expect to
reach a fortune, or fame, or happiness on earth or a crown in heaven,
without encountering resistance and opposition? What are we made men for
but to encounter and overcome opposition arrayed against us in the line
of our duty?"(3)

But if the ferocity and the cowardice were offensive and disheartening,
there was something else that was beneath contempt. Never was
self-interest more shockingly displayed. It was revealed in many
ways, but impinged upon the new President in only one. A horde of
office-seekers besieged him in the White House. The parallel to this
amazing picture can hardly be found in history. It was taken for granted
that the new party would make a clean sweep of the whole civil list,
that every government employee down to the humblest messenger boy too
young to have political ideas was to bear the label of the victorious
party. Every Congressman who had made promises to his constituents,
every politician of every grade who thought he had the party in his
debt, every a