e shouting out his orders with tremendous unction. He was
the constable of the egg-buying episode.

CHAPTER V

THE POLITICAL SITUATION

In several of his addresses before his election to the Presidency, Mr.
Lincoln gave utterance to the following language: "A house divided
against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot
permanently remain half slave and half free. I do not expect the house
to fall, but I do expect it to cease to be divided. It will become all
one thing or all the other thing."

The same opinion had been enunciated several years before by John
Quincy Adams on the floor of Congress, when, with his accustomed
pungency, he declared, "The Union will fall before slavery or slavery
will fall before the Union."

But before either Adams or Lincoln spoke on the subject--away back in
1838--the same idea they expressed had a more elaborate and forcible
presentation in the following words:

"The conflict is becoming--has become--not alone of freedom for
the blacks, but of freedom for the whites. It has now become
absolutely necessary that slavery shall cease in order that
freedom may be preserved in any portion of our land. The
antagonistic principles of liberty and slavery have been roused
into action, and one or the other must be victorious. There will
be no cessation of the strife until slavery shall be exterminated
or liberty destroyed."

The author of the words last above quoted was James Gillespie Birney,
who was the first Abolitionist, or "Liberty party," candidate for the
Presidency, and of whose career a brief sketch is elsewhere given.

That the slaveholders reached the same conclusion that Birney and
Adams and Lincoln announced, viz., that the country was to be all one
thing or all the other thing, is as manifest as any fact in our
history. It is equally certain that they had firmly resolved to
capture the entire commonwealth for their "institution," and had laid
their plans to that end. They were unwilling to live in a divided
house, particularly with an occupant who was stronger in population
and wealth than they were.

They saw the danger in such association. Northern sentiment toward
slavery was complacent enough, even servilely so, but it might change.
The South thought it had too much at stake to take the chances when
the opportunity for absolute safety and permanent rule was within its
reach. It resolved to make the whole country, not only pro-slave