gument raised
the question, "whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers,
and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them,
and drive them to it without their consent?" thus leading to the
conclusion that "all laborers are either hired laborers or what we
call slaves," and that "whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed
in that condition for life." From all these theories Mr. Lincoln
radically dissented, and maintained that "labor is the superior of
capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." "No men
living," said he, "are more worthy to be trusted than those who
toil up from poverty--none less inclined to take or touch aught
which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering
a political power which they already possess, and which, if
surrendered, will surely be used to close the door of advancement,
and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them till all of
liberty shall be lost." If Mr. Lincoln had directly attempted at
that early stage of the contest to persuade the laboring men of
the North that it was best for them to aid in abolishing Slavery,
he would have seriously abridged the popularity of his administration.
He pursued the wiser course of showing that the spirit of the
Southern insurrection was hostile to all free labor, and that in
its triumph not merely the independence of the laborer but his
right of self-defense, as conferred by suffrage, would be imperiled
if not destroyed. Until the discussion reached the higher plane
on which Mr. Lincoln placed it, the free laborer in the North was
disposed to regard a general emancipation of the slaves as tending
to reduce his own wages, and as subjecting him to the disadvantage
of an odious contest for precedence of race. The masses in the
North had united with the Republican party in excluding Slavery
from the Territories because the larger the area in which free
labor was demanded the better and more certain was the remuneration.
But against a general emancipation Mr. Lincoln was quick to see
that white laborers might be readily prejudiced by superficial
reasoning, and hence he adduced the broader argument which appealed
at once to their humanity, to their sense of manly independence,
and to their instinct of self-preservation against the mastery and
the oppression of capital.

The agitation of the Slavery question, while unavoidable, was
nevertheless attended with serious embarrassments to the Union
caus