But how different is the summary abolition forced upon Virginia and the South! Here, the general legislation of the State was steadily multiplying, elevating and blessing the black race, which in the North was so rapidly dying out under its pretended liberty. And private beneficence of Virginians, without any legal compulsion, had actually given the boon of freedom to at least one hundred thousand blacks; which is more than all the citizens of the New England States, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania together, ever did, under the force of all their laws.[77] In this wise and beneficent career Virginia has been violently interrupted, against her recognized and guaranteed rights, by instant and violent abolition. The motive of the North, as a whole, has manifestly been, not love for the negro, but hatred of the white man, and lust of domination. This abolition is purely the result of a supposed military necessity, because the North believed that otherwise she could not overthrow the South in an unjust war. But for this single fact, the Africans would still be in bondage, so far as the Yankee was concerned. The proof is, that the Chicago platform of the Black Republican party in 1860, expressly repudiated the purpose ever to meddle with slavery in the States. Mr. Lincoln, the chosen man of the North, solemnly asserted the same thing in his letter to A. H. Stephens of Georgia, in his publick inaugural, and in his messages. The Congress, after the beginning of the war, solemnly declared to the world by a joint resolution, that the purpose of the war was only to restore the Union, and not to restrict or change State institutions. Mr. Lincoln constantly declared to the Abolitionists, that if the perpetuation of slavery tended to restore the Union, it should be perpetuated. His standing invitation to the States in arms against him was: "If you wish to keep your slaves, come back into the Union." Can the North be believed in her own declarations? Then, the charge made is true--that abolition in the South was prompted by ambition and hatred, not by philanthropy. [Footnote 77: The negroes freed by Virginians, with their increase in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Liberia, etc., are 100,000 at least. The maximum number of slaves freed by the above States was, New Hampshire 629, Massachusetts 6,000, Rhode Island 4,370, Connecticut 6,000, New York 20,000, New Jersey 12,422, Pennsylvania 10,000. Total, 59,421. Such was the largest number of original freedmen made by those States of their own slaves. When we remember that the census has proved that in the Northern States their natural increase has almost ceased for several decades, and in some there has been an actual diminution, it appears very plain that they and their progeny do not now number 100,000. Meantime, the votes of the New England States assisted to add more than 600,000 to the number of slaves in Carolina!]