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Editor's Note: Dr. David Lindsey is Chairman of the History Department at California State College at Los Angeles, 5151 State College Drive, Los Angeles, CA, 90032. His degrees are from Cornell, Penn State, and the University of Chicago. In 1962-63 he was Fullbright Professor of American Civilization at the University of Athens. Among his five books is Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis: The House Divided (1960).

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A cold mist enveloped Washington as two Congressmen emerged from the door onto the Capitol's East Portico. Slowly they descended the steps as the sharp march wind whipped at their long black coats. At the bottom they paused, hands clasped in a friendly farewell. They chatted for a time rehashing the excitement of the session just ended.

A curious looking pair, as they stood saying goodbye - one a frail wisp of a man, weighing barely one hundred pounds, whose bright, dark eyes gazed intently upward from his pale wide face, while towering above him stood a lanky, dark, slightly stooped figure whose large hands bespoke a quiet, muscular strength.

During the past two years these men had served together in the House of Representatives - Alexander Stephens from Crawfordville, Georgia, and Abraham Lincoln from Springfield, Illinois. Fellow Whigs in politics, they shared the same side of the aisle; in fact, lincoln occupied the seat directly behind Stephens. And they had grown fond of each other, often swapping quips and stories. Both saw eye to eye on most current political issues. Both, in opposition, badgered the Polk administration steadily. Both worshipped Whig elder statesman Henry clay. And both stood sturdily for preserving the Union in the face of its threatened rupture.

The years was 1849 when the two friends parted. Lincoln returned to the obscurity of his Springfield law practice (after only one term in Congress); Stephens continued prominently on the national stage as a Georgia congressman for ten more years.

More than a decade later, the Whig Party was a shattered bygone, and the Union was cracking apart. With one state already out of the union in december 1860 and Georgia about to follow suit [Internet editor's note: George seceded on January 19, 1860, the fifth state to do so], Abraham Lincoln, then President-elect of the United States wrote reassuringly to his Georgia friend:

Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears.

The South would be in no more danger in this respect ... I suppose, however, that this does not meet the case. You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It is certainly the only substantial difference between us.

Abraham Lincoln remains in many respects a mystery. But there are three things clear about the mystery. Lincoln was a moralist. Lincoln was a realist. Lincoln was an idealist. These three Lincolns often overlapped, sometimes complemented each other, and on occasion collided head on. Let us examine the three Lincolns for what they may have to say to us today. We are all aware that the critical domestic question facing us today [1966] is the Negro revolution. What does Lincoln say to us on this question?

In pointing to "the only substantial difference" between North & South in 1860. Lincoln focused directly on the chief moral issue that divided his generation of Americans. The black cancer of slavery had infected American society since the founding of the Republic. In declaring his views on slavery, Lincoln placed himself in what he considered the main stream of American political-social thinking. The Founding fathers recognized slavery as a moral evil, and, as Lincoln was fond of saying, they had "placed it in the course of ultimate extinction" by refusing to countenance its spread beyond areas where it already existed.

On moral grounds Lincoln denounced slavery "because of the monstrous injustice of it." "I hate it," he said at Peoria, "because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world - enables the enemies of our free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites." To hold the Negro in "bondage is cruelly wrong" and "the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged." Slavery, he contended, "is founded in the selfishness of man's nature - opposition to it, is [in] his love of justice. These principals are an internal antagonism ...." Although laws and compromises were repealable, "you still cannot repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart, that slavery extension is wrong."

Believing slavery a moral wrong, Lincoln worked doggedly and uncompromisingly during the 1850s to prevent its spread. Even in the dark days of the secession crisis of 1860-61, when a compromise plan was offered that might have saved the Union, Lincoln as President-elect, refused to approve the Crittenden Compromise because it permitted a further extension of slavery westward.

While Lincoln was a moralist, he was at the same time a pragmatic realist. No wave of a magic wand, he knew, could banish all moral wrongs from the hard world of reality. Recognizing imperfections inherent in men and human society, he insisted upon respect for law that gave stability and permanence to human institutions: "Let reverence for the laws ... be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling books and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice." Indeed, "Let every American, let every lover of liberty ... swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others."

As realist and as attorney, Lincoln willingly abided by what already existed in law, even though it incorporated some aspect of moral wrong. Hence in the 1850s he acknowledged the obligations imposed by the Constitution in respect to enforcing the fugitive slave law, much as he disliked it, and announced he would not interfere with slavery in states where it existed because no legal, constitutional way permitted such outside interference. But to compound the moral wrong of slavery by allowing its extension was abhorrent and unthinkable. Such extension neither Constitution nor legal reality required. Quite the reverse - to Lincoln, reality and justice and morality within the law demanded that slavery be contained and restricted.

As idealist combined with realist, Lincoln realized the paradoxical conflict between our two fundamental political documents - The Declaration of Independence (with its stress on human rights and equality) and the U.S. Constitution (with its emphasis on property rights and legal formality). In a sense, the Declaration symbolized American aspirations and ideals, while the original Constitution congealed a rigid structure of legal restraints to preserve order in society. Often American practice (discrimination, restrictive segregation) has been at considerable variance from American profession of ideals (liberty, equality, justice), as the 19th century demonstrated and as contemporary America further reveals.

Time and again Lincoln insisted that America's unique mission was to demonstrate to the world that human liberty and popular self-government were no idle dream but could by hard human effort be made an effective reality. As he stated so lyrically and succinctly at Gettysburg, the Civil War (that cost 600,000 young Americans their lives) was fought to preserve a nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" and to establish beyond dispute that "government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth."

On the critical question of liberty and human rights, Lincoln made his views crystal clear: "He who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves." And again he expressed his "devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only," declaring that hw was "for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar."

On the issue of the Negro in American society (the crucial issue of Lincoln's generation, just as it is the disturbing dilemma that our own generation today seeks to resolve decently in light of our devotion to the ideal of "liberty and justice for all"), Lincoln held that "the Declaration of Independence includes ALL men, black as well as white." Further, Lincoln in debate with Douglas contended: "When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government - that is despotism. If a Negro is a man, then my ancient faith teaches me that "all men are created equal." Later, after claiming freedom for Negro slaves, he urged the adoption of "some practical system by which the two races could gradually live themselves out of their old relation to each other, and both come out the better prepared for the new." Education and job opportunities, Lincoln believed, would lubricate the transition to making the long-held American ideals of human rights, equality and justice an actual as well as moral reality.

A century has passed since Lincoln's death. And we are still some distance from the actual practicing of Lincoln's moral idealism. But despite Selma, Jackson and Watts, each year sees some gains made. A short time ago the Governor of Lincoln's native state signed into law Kentucky's first civil rights act calling it " a moral commitment kept after 100 years of hope deferred." Surely Abraham Lincoln would approve this diminishing of "the only substantial difference."