To shape reply to this is but to shape more sharply still the naked substance of the debate--the crying issue of the war. The core of that insistent strife concerned the essential nature of man. Was slavery legitimate? Might a white man enslave a black? Could a strong man enslave the weak? Dare some men forswear toil? May any men who toil be pillaged of the food their hands have earned? Are some men entitled to a luxury and ease they never earned, while to other men the luxury and ease they have fairly won may be denied? Are some men so inferior that they can have no right to life, and liberty, and happiness, however much they strive and long for such a simple, common boon? Are other men so super-excellent that life, and liberty, and happiness are theirs by right, though never earned or even struggled for at all? This was the central issue of that war; and this the central theme of this inaugural. Are common people to be forever kept beneath, and traded on, and eyed with scorn; while favored men are to be forever set on high, and filled with wealth, and fed with flattery? This was the quivering question that was brought on Lincoln's lips to its sharpest edge. Well he knew its momentousness and its antiquity. In its very formulation, as Lincoln gave it shape, there loomed the formulation of its reply, perhaps still to be bitterly defied, perhaps to be still long deferred; but inevitable at last, and sure finally to find agreement everywhere. This final answer Lincoln's vision saw. In that clear vision he discerned the certain meaning of the battles of the war. In the great debate they were the solemn, measured arguments. Amid those awful arguments this inaugural took its place, the oracle of a moral prophet, explaining how the war arose, by whose high hand the war was being led, and in what high issue the war must attain its end. As the arguments of this address advance, one grows to feel that Lincoln's thought is forging a reply, in which emerges a moral law whose authority no man may ever dare rebuke.