Читать книгу The Essential Works of Robert G. Ingersoll - Robert Green Ingersoll - Страница 160

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He proposed that $400 be paid for slaves, including men, women and children. This was a large price, and yet he showed how much cheaper it was to purchase than to carry on the war.

At that time, at the price mentioned, there were about $750,000 worth of slaves in Delaware. The cost of carrying on the war was at least two millions of dollars a day, and for one-third of one day's expenses, all the slaves in Delaware could be purchased. He also showed that all the slaves in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri could be bought, at the same price, for less than the expense of carrying on the war for eighty-seven days.

This was the wisest thing that could have been proposed, and yet such was the madness of the South, such the indignation of the North, that the advice was unheeded.

Again, in July, 1862, he urged on the Representatives of the border States a scheme of gradual compensated emancipation; but the Representatives were too deaf to hear, too blind to see.

Lincoln always hated slavery, and yet he felt the obligations and duties of his position. In his first message he assured the South that the laws, including the most odious of all—the law for the return of fugitive slaves—would be enforced. The South would not hear. Afterward he proposed to purchase the slaves of the border States, but the proposition was hardly discussed—hardly heard. Events came thick and fast; theories gave way to facts, and everything was left to force.

The extreme Democrat of the North was fearful that slavery might be destroyed, that the Constitution might be broken, and that Lincoln, after all, could not be trusted; and at the same time the radical Republican feared that Lincoln loved the Union more than he did liberty.

The fact is, that he tried to discharge the obligations of his great office, knowing from the first that slavery must perish. The course pursued by Lincoln was so gentle, so kind and persistent, so wise and logical, that millions of Northern Democrats sprang to the defence, not only of the Union, but of his administration. Lincoln refused to be led or hurried by Fremont or Hunter, by Greeley or Sumner. From first to last he was the real leader, and he kept step with events.