on has always a right to
preserve by force, if it can, its own integrity, certainly it cannot be
stated as a further truth that no portion of a nation can ever be
justified in endeavoring to obtain an independent national existence; no
citizen of this country can admit this, but must say that such an
endeavor is justifiable or not justifiable according as its cause and
basis are right or wrong. Far down, then, at the very bottom lay the
question whether the Southerners had a sufficient cause upon which to
base a revolution. Now this question was hardly conclusively answered by
the perfectly true statement that the North had not interfered with
Southern rights. Southerners might admit this, and still believe that
their welfare could be best subserved by a government wholly their own.
So the very bottom question of all still remained: Was the South
endeavoring to establish a government of its own for a justifiable
reason and a right purpose? Now the avowed purpose was to establish on
an enduring foundation a permanent slave empire; and the declared reason
was, that slavery was not safe within the Union. Underneath the question
of the Union therefore lay, logically, the question of slavery.

Lincoln and the other Republican leaders said that, if slavery extension
was prevented, then slavery was in the way of extinction. If the
assertion was true, it pretty clearly followed that the South could
retain slavery only by independence and a complete imperial control
within the limits of its own homogeneous nationality; for undeniably the
preponderant Northern mass was becoming firmly resolved that slavery
should not be extended, however it might be tolerated within its present
limits. So still, by anti-slavery statement itself, the ultimate
question was: whether or not the preservation of slavery was a right and
sufficient cause or purpose for establishing an independent nationality.
Lincoln, therefore, went direct to the logical heart of the contention,
when he said that the real dispute was whether slavery was a right thing
or a wrong thing. If slavery was a right thing, a Union conducted upon a
policy which was believed to doom it to "ultimate extinction" was not a
right thing. But if slavery was a wrong thing, a revolution undertaken
with the purpose of making it perpetual was also a wrong thing.
Therefore, from beginning to end, Lincoln talked about slavery. By so
doing he did what he could to give to the war a character far