Page:The Ifs of History (1907).pdf/157

 sessed a little more energy, and a few more shillings, and had gone to Mississippi instead of to Indiana and afterwards to Illinois? What if he had become a plantation and slave owner, and had thus subjected his boy Abraham to the overmastering influence of a southern environment? So far as I can recall, Mississippi never produced an anti-slavery man.

In this event, there would have been for the national cause, for the saving of the Union, for the emancipation of the slaves, no Abraham Lincoln. On the other hand, the tremendous power and patience of Lincoln's nature, the majesty and greatness of his character, the resources of his intellect, would in all likelihood have been added to the sum of the statesmanship which was enlisted on the Southern side.

It is even conceivable that Lincoln, rather than Davis, would have been the president of the Southern Confederacy. Only a combination of the