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delivered from this place, devoted altogether to
saving
the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to
destroy
it without war—seeking to dissol[v]e the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would
make
war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would
accept
war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
    One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the
cause
of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”
    With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

PART II

    P RESIDENTIAL R ECONSTRUCTION, 1865–67

C HARLES S UMNER, “ R IGHT AND D UTY OF C OLORED F ELLOW- C ITIZENS IN THE O RGANIZATION OF G OVERNMENT”
    (May 13, 1865)
    Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner (1811–1874) ranked as one of the most consistent and forceful opponents of slavery and champions of equal rights. During the Civil War, he implored Lincoln to free the South’s slaves immediately, thereby weakening the Confederacy. Sumner, a leading Radical Republican, maintained that by seceding the Southern states had committed treason (“state suicide”), thereby forfeiting their Constitutional rights. In this correspondence between members of Wilmington, North Carolina’s Colored Union Leagues and Sumner, he admonished the freedmen to demand full civil rights, including the vote.

    Wilmington, N. C., April 29, 1865.
    Hon. Charles Sumner,
Washington
.
    D EAR S IR ,—We, the undersigned