In view of Lincoln’s frequent reliance upon the argument from definition, it becomes a matter of interest to inquire whether he appears to have realized that many of his problems were problems of definition. One can of course employ a type of argument without being aware of much more than its _ad hoc_ success, but we should expect a reflective mind like Lincoln’s to ponder at times the abstract nature of his method. Furthermore, the extraordinary accuracy with which he used words is evidence pointing in the same direction. Sensitivity on the score of definitions is tantamount to sensitivity on the score of names, and we find the following in the First Message to Congress: It might seem, at first thought, to be of little difference whether the present movement at the South be called “secession” or “rebellion.” The movers, however, well understand the difference. At the beginning they knew they could never raise their reason to any respectable magnitude by any name which implies violation of law.[102] Lincoln must at times have viewed his whole career as a battle against the “miners and sappers” of those names which expressed the national ideals. His chief charge against Douglas and the equivocal upholders of “squatter sovereignty” was that they were trying to circumvent definitions, and during the war period he had to meet the same sort of attempts. Lincoln’s most explicit statement by far on the problem appears in a short talk made at one of the “Sanitary Fairs” it was his practice to attend. Speaking this time at Baltimore in the spring of 1864, he gave one of those timeless little lessons which have made such an impression on men’s minds. The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases, with himself, and with the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names—liberty and tyranny. The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act, as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty.[103]