Seated on a high horse, he was riding up and
down the line 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.
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