ABSTRACT
Slavery in the Balance. Southern intellectuals employed every argument to justify secession. They held that Lincoln’s election to the Presidency was a sectional victory. Lincoln’s program for re stricting the territorial enlargement of slavery meant to them the abrogation of the Federal “compact.” A few insisted that they were defending freedom-some even free trade-rather than slavery, as their forefathers had done during the Revolution. A few released their slaves in order to enter into the struggle uncompromised. The majority of southerners, however, accepted the view that it was slavery itself which was being justified and defended, and in its be half put resourceful commanders and courageous troops in the field to resist Federal authority. (See Reading No. 27.)
Lincoln, on taking office, had appealed to southern loyalty, and offered to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law, if doing so would prevent secession. Such moderate statements enraged northern radicals. They did not, however, face the problem with which Lincoln coped. It was his task to hold together a divided North, ranging from Free Soil and abolitionist Massachusetts to Ohio and Indiana, which har bored proslavery and antislavery elements in confused abundance. Lincoln’s main political goal throughout his administration was to keep the Border States from seceding, since with them lay the future of the Union. Northern armies needed to defeat the Confederacy. The South needed only to attain a stalemate in order to win inde pendence. With the Border States gone, a stalemate could not have been avoided. A stabilized and recognized Confederacy would have contained its slaves with border guards and a trained constabulary, and riveted slavery on Negroes in the South for the foreseeable fu ture.
