Lincoln's views and feelings concerning slavery had not changed. Those
who conversed with him intimately upon the subject at that period know
that he did not expect slavery long to survive the triumph of the Union,
even if it were not immediately destroyed by the war. In this he was
right. Had the Union armies achieved a decisive victory in an early
period of the conflict, and had the seceded States been received back
with slavery, the "slave power" would then have been a defeated power,
defeated in an attempt to carry out its most effective threat. It would
have lost its prestige. Its menaces would have been hollow sound, and
ceased to make any one afraid. It could no longer have hoped to expand,
to maintain an equilibrium in any branch of Congress, and to control the
government. The victorious free States would have largely overbalanced
it. It would no longer have been able to withstand the onset of a
hostile age. It could no longer have ruled,--and slavery had to rule in
order to live. It would have lingered for a while, but it would surely
have been "in the course of ultimate extinction.
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