design, which did not find
expression in an overt act, could give no right of action to the South.
Mr. Lincoln had been most explicit in declaring that the opposition to
slavery was not to go beyond efforts to prevent its _extension_, which
efforts would be wholly within the Constitution and the law. He repeated
these things in his inaugural.

But while these incontrovertible allegations gave the Republicans a
logical advantage of which they properly made the most, the South
claimed a right to make other collateral and equally undeniable facts
the ground of action. The only public matter in connection with which
Mr. Lincoln had won any reputation was that of slavery. No one could
deny that he had been elected because the Republican party had been
pleased with his expression of opinion on this subject. Now his most
pointed and frequently reiterated expression of that opinion was that
slavery was a "moral, social, and political evil;" and this language was
a fair equivalent of the statement of the Republican platform of 1856,
classing Slavery and Mormonism together, as "twin relics of barbarism."
That the North was willing, or would long be willing, to remain in
amicable social and political bonds with a moral, social, and political
evil, and a relic of barbarism, was intrinsically improbable, and was
made more improbable by the symptoms of the times.[127] Indeed, Mr.
Seward had said, in famous words, that his section would not play this
unworthy part; he had proclaimed already the existence of an
"irrepressible conflict;" and therefore the South had the word of the
Republican leader that, in spite of the Republican respect for the law,
an anti-slavery crusade was already in existence. The Southern chiefs
distinctly recognized and accepted this situation.[128] There was an
avowed Northern condemnation of their institution; there was an
acknowledged "conflict." Such being the case, it was the opinion of the
chief men at the South that the position taken by the North, of strict
performance of clear constitutional duties concerning an odious
institution, would not suffice for the safe perpetuation of that
institution.[129] This, their judgment, appeared to be in a certain way
also the judgment of Mr. Lincoln; for he also conceived that to put
slavery where the "fathers" had left it was to put it "in the way of
ultimate extinction;" and he had, in the most famous utterance of his
life, given his forecast of the future to the