already existed, but he did not want the Negro to live in freedom side by side with the white in the new territories for which he was fighting. He could not conceive of the two races enjoying the same political and social privileges. His democracy was a white man's democracy. It did not contain Negroes, as it did not contain slaves or labourers "fixed in that condition for life," or landlords or large capitalists. It was the democracy of the small white farmer.

He was remarkably unchanging in his point of view. From his first public utterance on the subject of slavery as a young man of twenty-eight, to his Emancipation Proclamation and his innumerable other statements concerning slavery and the Negro, he held a consistent and fixed policy. He was firmly convinced against the extension of slavery-slavery was a wrong to the slave-but of more vital importance-it was a wrong to the white man. "If Judge Douglas does not like the negro," he said, "let him not bring him out into the new lands-let that remain for the white."

Farther than this white man's conviction against the economic, and being somewhat of a practical materialist, therefore moral, value of slavery he would not go.

In his first public utterance in 1837 he protested against certain pro-slavery resolutions which were passed by the Illinois Legislature. Slavery, he declared, was founded on both injustice and bad policy, but he carefully added, he considered the promulgation of abolition doctrines to tend rather to increase than to abate its evils. This negative anti-slavery statement is the key-note of his conviction. For a

young statesman at the beginning of his career to fear the promulgation of the abolition of an evil which he considers both an injustice and a bad policy showed a yielding to the aggressive slave - holder. The national exigency demanded a much more positive programme, if the calamity of an internecine war was to be averted. Even Washington had a broader outlook upon the country's problem, and his statement that his first wish was to see some plan adopted "by which slavery in this country may be averted," showed a care for the future.

A decade later we find Lincoln bringing in a resolution to Congress, suggesting gradual and compensated emancipation in the district of Columbia, which was only meant as an expression of the Federal Government on the subject, and could have no immediate bearing. But even this mild policy, the effect of which could only be felt in the nation's attitude towards new territories, he considered too hostile to the slave-owners, and a few months later he brought in a resolution in order "to conciliate divergent interests," which provided for the extension of the Fugitive Slave Law over the same district.

When he emerged from that curious lapse in his life which lasted from his return from Congress in 1843 to the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise— a time, as Herndon who knew him best said, when the "iron entered the soul" he still held the same intellectual position on these great questions. The years of crisis did change the nature of his being, which was peculiarly attuned to what the American politician calls harmony more often

It was

another name for surrender of principle. true, Lincoln never retreated from the position that slavery was not to be extended, but it is a grave question whether the farmer of the West would ever have permitted him to do so. We must deal with his conceptions before he became President, and with his policies that failed, for in those the true Lincoln appeared.

A strong and active Abolition movement was going on, based on moral and intellectual grounds, which Lincoln saw close at hand, but which he never joined. Herndon, his law partner for twenty intimate years, was an ardent Abolitionist, in close touch with the leaders of New England. Lincoln knew of these men and their work. He may have sympathized with them, but the movement never called him. While Herndon joined the Free-Soil Party and the New Liberty Party, Lincoln remained an old line Whig, a Clay man, and canvassed the country for Taylor. It was Herndon who signed his name to the call for the Bloomington Convention of the Republican Party in 1856, much to the horror of Mrs Lincoln's relatives and his own former law partners.

He came before the country in a series of joint debates with Douglas at the climax of his career. It was here that the question of slavery and the problem of the Negro in America was discussed from every angle, and it is easy enough to find Lincoln's exact position on these questions. He had to define them very clearly before audiences that were critical and ready to vote against a man who could not hold within himself the balance of all the contradictory sentiments on these questions.

In the very first debate, in Ottawa, Illinois, he

said definitely: "I agree with Judge Douglas. He (the Negro) is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in colour, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man."

This much-quoted statement, generally given to show the innate principles of freedom and justice which animated Lincoln, carries with it a fundamental contradiction, which he himself recognized. If social and political equality were forbidden the Negro, and the whites must remain socially and politically superior and dominant, as he believed, then even after emancipation another condition would arise scarcely better than slavery itself. In 1854, in one of the Douglas debates, Lincoln asked what should be done with the slaves. "Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold slavery at any rate, yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon."

Knowing this, he surrendered still further to the anti-Negro arguments of " white domination," and in his debate in Charleston, Illinois, defined what he meant by equality:

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favour of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races—that I am not, nor ever have been, in favour of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this

that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favour of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

Over and over again he maintained that he did not want to interfere with the institution of slavery where it existed. He had "no legal right to do it and no inclination to." He yielded to the institution of slavery, he said, as had the framers of the constitution, with the hope that some day it would be ultimately extinct.

These statements might have been given for reasons of political expediency, were he not so insistent on adding that, with the extinction of slavery, he did not want the condition of a free white and a free black living together on the same land. "What I would most desire," he said, "would be the separation of the white and black races."

He saw no way of bestowing citizenship upon the Negro. "So far as I know, the Judge (Douglas) has never asked me the question before. He shall have no occasion to ever ask it again, for I tell him very frankly that I am not in favour of negro citizenship."

While referring to the Dred Scott decision, he said: "My opinion is that the different states have the power to make a negro a citizen under the Constitution of the United States, if they choose. The Dred Scott decision decides that they have not that power. If the State of Illinois had that power I should be opposed to the exercise of it. That is all I have to say about it,'