Mr. Theodore Roosevelt in his addresses to the veterans of the Civil War
has been heard to assert that the crisis teaches us a much-needed lesson
as to the supreme value of moral energy. It would have been much
pleasanter and cheaper to let the South secede, but the people of the
North preferred to pay the cost of justifiable coercion in blood and
treasure than to submit to the danger and humiliation of peaceable
rebellion. Doubtless the foregoing is sometimes a wholesome lesson on
which to insist, but it is by no means the only lesson suggested by the
event. The Abolitionists had not shirked their duty as they understood
it. They had given their property and their lives to the anti-slavery
agitation. But they were as willing as the worst Copperheads to permit
the secession of the South, because of the erroneous and limited
character of their political ideas. While the crisis had undoubtedly
been, in a large measure, brought about by moral lethargy, and it could
only be properly faced by a great expenditure of moral energy, it had
also been brought about quite as much by political unintelligence; and
the salvation of the Union depended primarily and emphatically upon a
better understanding on the part of Northern public opinion of the
issues involved.
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