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William H. Hendron, (Lincoln's Law partner in Ill) - 1860
Liberty and slavery, civilization and barbarism, are absolute antagonisms. One or the other must perish on this continent. If we make a thousand compromises this civilization or that higher and grander one just springing up will spring at the throat of it's foe, and choke the life out of it, or die in the attempt. Compromise - Compromise? why I am sick of it. Fools may compromise and reason that all is peace; but those who have read human history those who know human nature that compromises aggravate in the end all our difficulties. The pathway of the sweep of man is paved with the fragments of blasted agreements, which were made to impede the progress of the right, or to bolster up despotism; and will not men learn a lesson from all this? There is no dodging the question. Let the natural struggle, heaven high and hell deep go on…. I am thoroughly convinced that the two civilizations cannot co-exist on the same soil and be co-equal in the Federal brotherhood. To expect otherwise would be to expect absolute heaven to sleep with and tolerate "hell".
New Orleans Bee, LA. December 1860 -
(The chief obstacle to reconciliation) is the absolute impossibility of revolutionizing Northern Opinion in the relation to slavery. Without a change of heart radical and through, all guarantees which might be offered are not worth the paper on which they are inscribed. As long as slavery is looked upon by the North with abhorrence; as long as the South is regarded as a mere slave breeding and slave driving community as long as false and pernicious theories are cherished respecting the inherent equality and rights of every human being, there can be no satisfactory political union between the two sections. If one half of the people believe the other half to be deeply dyed in inequity; to be daily and hourly in the perpetuation of the most atrocious moral offense, and in some sort constrained to lecture them, and to abuse them, and to employ all possible means to break up their institutions and to take from them what the Northern half considers property unrighteously held or not property at all, how can two such antagonistic nationalities dwell together in fraternal concord under the same government. The feelings, customs, mode of thought, and education of the two sections are discrepant and often antagonistic. The North and the South are heterogeneous and are better off apart.