But whatever the medium of their transmigration from matter to
mind, they became the law of his democracy, sacred as if they had been
brought to him on tables of stone by a prophet with shining face. It was
in that school, I believe, that he learned his nationalism, his devotion
to the Constitution--to which in maturer years he gave this famed
expression: "I would save the Union, I would save it in the shortest way
under the Constitution.... My paramount object in this struggle is to save
the Union. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do
it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and
if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also
do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I
believe it helps to save the Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because
I do not believe it would help to save the Union." [Footnote: Letter to
Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862.]
And when he had freed the negro by a proclamation that violated the letter
of the Constitution, it was still that boy of the woods speaking in the
man--the boy who had learned his lesson beyond all possibility of
forgetting or misunderstanding--"I felt that measures otherwise
unconstitutional might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the
preservation of the Constitution through the preservation of the nation.
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