t be
held to exceed his constitutional authority as indeed they did, saying
he would have been false to his trust if for fear of such illegality he
had let the whole Constitution perish, and asking that, if necessary,
Congress should ratify them. He appealed to Congress now to do its
part, and especially he appealed for such prompt and adequate provision
of money and men as would enable the war to be speedily brought to a
close. Congress, with but a few dissentient voices, chiefly from the
border States, approved all that he had done, and voted the supplies
that he had asked. Then, by a resolution of both Houses, it defined
the object of the war; the war was not for any purpose of conquest or
subjugation, or of "overthrowing or interfering with the rights or
established institutions" of the Southern States; it was solely "to
preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the
several States unimpaired."

In this resolution may be found the clue to the supreme political
problem with which, side by side with the conduct of the war, Lincoln
was called upon to grapple unceasingly for the rest of his life. That
problem lay in the inevitable change, as the war dragged on, of the
political object involved in it. The North as yet was not making war
upon the institutions of Southern States, in other words upon slavery,
and it would have been wrong to do so. It was simply asserting the
supremacy of law by putting down what every man in the North regarded
as rebellion. That rebellion, it seemed likely, would completely
subside after a decisive defeat or two of the Southern forces. The law
and the Union would then have been restored as before. A great victory
would in fact have been won over slavery, for the policy of restricting
its further spread would have prevailed, but the constitutional right
of each Southern State to retain slavery within its borders was not to
be denied by those who were fighting, as they claimed, for the
Constitution.

Such at first was the position taken up by an unanimous Congress. It
was obviously in accord with those political principles of Lincoln
which have been examined in a former chapter. More than that, it was
the position which, as he thought, his official duty as President
imposed on him. It is exceedingly difficult for any Englishman to
follow his course as the political situation developed. He was neither
a dictator, nor an English Prime Minister. He was first