Deliberate Speech Quotes
This is a wonderful quotation which illustrates the polarization which had taken place in America as a result of the slavery issue. Lincoln’s address—which history and most people have adjudged to be such a moderate attempt to find common ground, and which offended many of his constituents because he was compromising and temporizing on the slavery issue—was seen as the radical attacks of a “fanatic”. There is probably no policy that Lincoln or any other President could have followed that would be even marginally acceptable to the slave owners and their economies and the abolitionists and their economies. In the final analysis, slavery was the kind of issue that is not susceptible to compromise. No nation can exist half slave and half free. The Civil War was inevitable unless the South would give up slavery or the North would accept it.
