equality of races. This was an error._ It was a
sandy foundation; and the idea of a government built upon
it,--when the 'storm came and the wind blew, it _fell_.'

"_Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas.
Its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great
truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that
slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and
normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the
history of the world, based upon this great physical,
philosophical, and moral truth._ This truth has been slow in the
process of its development, like all other truths in the various
departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who
hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was not
generally admitted, even within their day."[73]

Now, then, what was the real issue between the Confederate States and
the United States? Why, it was extension of slavery by the former, and
the restriction of slavery by the latter. To put the issue as it was
understood by Northern men--in poetic language, it was "_The Union as
it is_." While the South, at length, through its leaders, acknowledged
that slavery was their issue, the North, standing upon the last
analysis of the Free-Soil idea of resistance to the further
inoculation of free territory with the virus of slavery, refused to
recognize slavery as an issue. But what did the battle cry of the
loyal North, "_The Union as it is_," mean? A Union half free and half
slave; a dual government, if not in fact, certainly in the brains and
hearts of the people; two civilizations at eternal and inevitable war
with each other; a Union with the canker-worm of slavery in it,
impairing its strength every year and threatening its life; a Union in
which two hostile ideas of political economy were at work, and where
unpaid slave labor was inimical to the interests of the free
workingmen. And it should not be forgotten that the Republican party
acknowledged the right of Southerns to hunt slaves in the free States,
and to return such slaves, under the fugitive-slave law, to their
masters. Mr. Lincoln was not an Abolitionist, as many people think.
His position on the question was clearly stated in the answers he gave
to a number of questions put to him by Judge Douglass in the latter
part of the summer of 1858. Mr. Lincoln said:

"Havi