Abraham Lincoln, speaking at Peoria, Ill., October 16th, 1854, said:
"When Southern people tell us that they are no more responsible for
the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it
is said that the institution exists and that it is very difficult to
get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and
appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing
what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were
given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing
institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and
send them to Liberia—their native land. But a moment's reflection
would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I think there is)
there may be in this in the long run, its sudden execution is
impossible. If they were all landed there in a day they would all
perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and
surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times
ten days. What then? Free them all and keep them among us as
underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I
think I would not hold one in slavery at any rate; yet the point is
not clear enough to me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them
and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings
will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those
of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling
accords with justice and sound judgment is not the sole question, if
indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling whether well or
ill founded cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot then make them
equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation
might be adopted; but for their tardiness in this I will not
undertake to judge our brethren of the South."[265]
"If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as
to the existing institution!" Such was the frank avowal of Mr.
Lincoln.
Nearly a half century later, Charles Francis Adams, the grandson of
the "Old Man Eloquent," and himself a veteran of the Union Army,
wrote:
"The existence of an uneradicable and insurmountable race difference
is indisputable. The white man and the black man cannot flourish
together, the latter being considerable in number, under the same
system of government.... The negro squats at our hearthstone. We can
neither assimilate nor expel him."[266]
We need not yield completely to Mr. Lincoln's perplexity, nor to Mr.
Adams's despair in acknowledging the gravity of the situation which
confronted the people of Virginia and the almost insuperable
difficulties which attended its right solution.
-----
Footnote 255:
_Adams's Diary_, August 11, 1835. Quoted in _Life of William Lloyd
Garrison_, by his children, Vol. I, p. 487.
Footnote 256:
_William Lloyd Garrison_, by his children, Vol. I, p. 495.
Footnote 257:
_Memoir of Margaret Mercer_, Morris, p. 126.
Footnote 258:
_A South Side View of Slavery_, Adams, p. 108.
Footnote 259:
_Idem_, p. 108.
Footnote 260:
_Idem_, p. 110.
Footnote 261:
_The Origin of the Late War_, Lunt, p. 104.
Footnote 262:
_Idem_, p. 329.
Footnote 263:
_The Civil War and the Constitution_, Burgess, Vol. I, p. 35.
Footnote 264:
_The Civil War and the Constitution_, Burgess, Vol. I, pp. 42-44.
Footnote 265:
_Lincoln-Douglass Debates_, p. 74. See also _Abraham Lincoln,
Letters, Speeches and State Papers_, N. & H., Vol. I, p. 187.
Footnote 266:
_Century Magazine_, March, 1906, p. 106.