Page:Confederate Cause and Conduct.djvu/46

 26 Lincoln was President. Yet we do not learn from Mr. Fiske that any of these heresies or mistaken purposes had currency in Massachusetts or in the Union. He would teach all men that Mr. Lincoln claims immortality as the apostle of freedom. He is the co-worker with the orator of their absurd Peace Jubilee, who lately proclaimed that the flag of Washington was the flag of independence; the flag of Lincoln the flag of liberty.

"Demands of slave-holders" "Concessions to slave-holders." These and the like are the expressions our author uses to paint a picture of an aggressive South and a conciliatory North. Through and through this author's work runs the same evidence of preconception as to the causes of war, and predetermined purpose as to the effect his book is to produce; the same consciousness of the necessity laid upon him and his co-laborers; the same proof of his consequent inability to write a true history of the sectional strife; the same proof that his book is unfit to be placed in the hands of Southern children.

A curious observation is to be made. Just where we ourselves would say that slavery was the cause, or at least, the occasion of the outbreak of the war, Mr. Fiske does not see the connection. He would have us take even his own statement on that point with a very marked limitation. "Slavery was the cause," but only in so far as the action of the South made it so, and by no means in consequence of any act done by the North or Northern men. That is the doctrine that we must teach our children. Even the John Brown raid is outside of the group of causes. That was beyond question an overt act of Northern men. Therefore, the incident is to be minimized in history and effect. Those of you who remember the situation and possibly marched to Harper's Ferry on that occasion, will be surprised to note that Mr. Fiske says "he (Brown) intended to make an asylum in the mountains for the negroes, and that the North took little notice of his raid." There is no occasion for answering such a statement. We know that Brown and those who sent him here, aiding him to buy his pikes, etc., purposed war,