The resolutions that passed the General Assembly were still rather conservative for the time and place. The protest of Lincoln is therefore the more significant, as indicating its origin from some deep mental or moral sentiment. Every letter in the protest is weighed. No product of Lincoln is more native to his genius. It is as restrained as a judicial decision. Avoiding unneeded antagonism, it is framed with admirable diplomacy. Radical in thought, still so moderate in expression, it saved his power for further good, not placing him beyond fellowship with his associates. Yet with all its subdued character, with infinite wisdom it made the assault at the weakest point, declaring that slavery was founded, not only on injustice, but _bad policy_. In the last phrase lurked the sting that was to awaken the self-interest of the North, the same kind of selfishness that solidified the South in defending the institution. Lincoln was among the first to grasp and lay stress on the warp of the issue. He once declared that honest statesmanship was the employment of individual meanness for the public good. When self-interest became enlisted with conscience against the evil, its days were numbered. While Abolitionism was noisily tugging at one of the pillars that supported human bondage, Lincoln serenely forged an argument linking its moral and industrial weakness, an argument that finally shook its very foundation, until the peculiar institution that dominated the destiny of the nation for more than half a century tumbled to destruction. While other men were forced to change their opinions through the malignancy of slavery to keep abreast of public sentiment, Lincoln remained steadfast in his opinions and his policy. At the outset, he foresaw that no institution could last long that rested on injustice and bad policy. Only a change of external conditions separated the man who entered a solemn protest against the iniquity of slavery in a hostile community and the leader who gave life to the momentous act of the nineteenth century. The period preceding the murder of Lovejoy was an era of unrest. The mob spirit ranged over the land. Thus in commenting upon the murder of the mulatto McIntosh, Lovejoy says: "In Charlestown it burns a Convent over the head of defenseless women; in Baltimore it desecrates the Sabbath, and works all that day in demolishing a private citizen's house; in Vicksburg it hangs up gamblers, three or four in a row; and in St. Louis it forces a man--a hardened wretch certainly, and one that deserves to die, but not _thus_ to die--it forces him from beneath the aegis of our constitution and laws, hurries him to the stake and burns him alive!"[C] [C] Lovejoy, 172.