Was the war between the States in 1861 a war in behalf of slavery on the one side and freedom on the other? Not at all. After all the noisy and fanatical agitation on the subject, only a small minority of the Northern people had expressed any desire to have the negroes of the South emancipated at that time, and no State nor people of the South had said that slavery should be perpetual. All the parties which in 1860 cast any electoral votes distinctly disavowed any intention to interfere with slavery where it existed. This was the declaration even of the Republican party which was triumphant and was now in power. Mr. Lincoln, the President-elect, repeatedly declared that slavery was not to be disturbed in the States, although he said the country could not remain "half slave and half free." Here, then, the North and the South were thoroughly agreed that slavery within the States should continue undisturbed. As to emancipation, both sections of the country and all parties except the ultra-Abolitionists were pro-slavery. The Abolitionists admitted that under the Federal Constitution there could be no power in the national government to free the slaves. They cursed and burned the Constitution as "a compact with the devil and a league with hell," and defiantly repudiated all laws which carried out its provisions. Under the plea of what they called "higher law," they defied law. They were really anarchists. The Free Soil party, which had assumed the name of Republican for party purposes, secretly encouraged the Abolitionists in their mad crusade and welcomed their votes, but persistently disavowed their aims. All rational men knew that the time had not come to turn loose millions of half-civilized Africans in this country; while many, North and South, deplored the existence of slavery and would not advocate it in the abstract, yet they believed that emancipation was not best for the negro and would be accompanied by tremendous peril to the white people. The truth is that the Abolitionists of the North kept up such a blatant and fanatical agitation against the South that it was out of the question, in the excitement of the times, for conservative men, North or South, to think or speak of such an alternative as the immediate freedom of the negroes. The Republican party, now the dominant party, and its leader, Mr. Lincoln, stood against the immediate freedom of the slaves. But this party had come into power on two ground principles which made its triumph a direct attack on the rights and interests of the Southern States in the Territories.