It was a cruel
proposition. True, the President did move from his first position,
which, as we have seen, was far from that occupied by the
Abolitionists, but from first to last he was more of a follower than
leader in the procession.
And here the author wishes to add, in justice to himself, that if, by
reason of anything he has said in this chapter, or elsewhere in this
work, in criticism of Mr. Lincoln's dealings with the slavery issue,
he should be accused of unfriendliness toward the great martyr
President, he enters a full and strong denial. He holds that, in view
of all the difficulties besetting him, Mr. Lincoln did well, although
he might have done better. Much allowance, must be made to one
situated as he was. He undoubtedly deserves the most of the encomiums
that have been lavished upon him. At the same time, the conclusion is
inevitable that his fame as a statesman will ultimately depend less
upon his treatment of the slavery issue than upon any other part of
his public administration. The fact will always appear that it was
the policy of Salmon P. Chase, Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens,
Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, and other advocates of the radical
cure, with whom the President was in constant opposition, that
prevailed in the end, and with a decisiveness that proves it to have
been feasible and sound from the beginning.
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