THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
on the Fourth of July, 1845, on “The True Grandeur of Nations,” which introduced him to public life, had been a panegyric on universal peace. In it he had proclaimed as his fundamental doctrine that “in our age, there can be no peace that is not honorable, there can be no war that is not dishonorable.” Thus in order to support the government in the Civil War he had to compromise with his own conscience, and he did this on the ground that it was a war for the abolition of that slavery, which, to him, was the sum of all iniquities. Only by extinguishing an evil worse than war itself could this war be justified by him. Thus he was impatient at everything that seemed to obscure that supreme object or to impede or delay its attainment. This impatience caused him to undervalue the reasons Mr. Lincoln gave him for what Sumner called the “dilatoriness” of the government in proclaiming an anti-slavery policy and in making a direct attack upon the hateful institution. He was grievously disappointed when Lincoln thought it necessary, in order to conciliate the feelings of the War Democrats and of the Border State Unionists, as well as to keep the military commanders within the bounds of discipline, to disavow the partial emancipation orders of Generals Frémont and Hunter, and he gave voice to that disappointment in unsparing criticism. But he did not lose confidence in the man who had said that “if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong”; and with unceasing persistency he plied the President with appeals in favor of decisive measures and of speedy action. Lincoln warded off his urgency by telling him: “Mr. Sumner, you are only six weeks ahead of me.” Sumner would argue that the emancipation of the slaves was a simple necessity to the end of putting down the rebellion. Lincoln would reply that he saw the necessity coming, but, in order to keep our forces united, he wanted those, whose aid he needed to see that necessity, too.
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