slavery and to discourage its opponents
than anything else that ever happened. Its restoration would
undoubtedly have produced a similar effect. Although he is not to be
credited with any philanthropic motive, Stephen A. Douglas did an
effective work for freedom when he helped to overthrow that measure.
Leading Abolitionists have accorded him that meed of praise.

But there was that proposition which Mr. Lincoln was so fond of
repeating, that the nation could not remain half free and half
slave--"a divided house"--but the remedy he had to propose was not
manumission at any proximate or certain time, but the adoption of a
policy that, to use his own words, would cause "the public mind to
rest in the belief that it [slavery] was in the course of ultimate
extinction." Practically that meant very little or nothing. What the
public mind then needed was not "rest," but properly directed
activity.

But the declarations above quoted were all before Mr. Lincoln had
become President or had probably thought of such a thing. Did the
change of position lead to a change of opinion on his part? We are not
left in uncertainty on this point. His official views were declared in
what might be called a State paper. Soon after his inauguration, his
Secretary of State sent Minister Dayton, at Paris, a dispatch that he
might use with foreign officials, in which, in speaking of the
Rebellion, he said: "The condition of slavery in the several States
will remain just the same whether it succeeds or fails.... It is
hardly necessary to add to this incontrovertible statement the further
fact that the new President has always repudiated all designs,
whenever and wherever imputed to him, of disturbing the system of
slavery as it has existed under the Constitution and laws."

About the same time Mr. Lincoln stated to a party of Southern
Congressmen, who called upon him, that he "recognized the rights of
property that had grown out of it [slavery] and would respect those
rights as fully as he would similar rights in any other property."

No steps were taken by Mr. Lincoln to recall or repudiate the
foregoing announcements. On the contrary, he confirmed them in his
official action. He annulled the freedom proclamations of Fremont and
Hunter. He did not interfere when some of his military officers were
so busy returning fugitive slaves that they had no time to fight the
masters. He approved Hallock's order Number Three excluding fugitives
from the