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WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR ? 
 
 A LETTEE TO 
 
 HOEACE GREELEY 
 
 . 
 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 Carleton, Publisher, 413 Broadway, 
 
 MDCCCLXII. 
 

 Un«U 
 
 
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 WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR? 
 
 A LETTEE TO HOEACE GEEELEY. 
 
 Horace Greeley : 
 
 Sir — Able editor as you are, you seem to be some- 
 what in the dark. What do you think we are fighting 
 for ? Why have we 500,000 men under arms ? Why 
 do we spend money at the rate of a million of dollars a 
 day? Why, when we see our friends, our sons, our 
 brothers come back sick and wounded, when we know 
 that some of them shall never return, do we yet, at a 
 word, the scratch of a pen, send fifty thousand more, 
 being some of us part of that fifty thousand ? — for we 
 send ourselves. Why, when we as a people are spend- 
 ing a million of dollars daily in this war, do we as indi- 
 viduals give tens, hundreds, thousands to ensure as far 
 as possible the health and comfort of our soldiers? 
 Why, when our brothers are borne out of the ranks 
 maimed and suffering do our sisters throng to the hospi- 
 tals until the doors have to be closed against their eager 
 feet? 
 
 To put down the rebellion. 
 
 But why must the rebellion be put down further than 
 it is now ? Though Mr. Mason has kept his word and 
 not revisited Boston except as an ambassador, Mr. 
 
Toombs lias concluded to postpone indefinitely calling 
 the roll of his slaves in the shadow of Bunker Hill 
 monument ; and, although General Pierre Toutant, alias 
 Beauregard, has shown his usual disregard of his word 
 in not watering his horse in Hell because he failed to do 
 it in the Tennessee river, still we must allow something 
 to his constitutional failing (which, by the way, seems 
 to be his only Constitutional weakness), and we may 
 rest assured that General Halleck will give him an 
 early opportunity of telling the truth for once since the 
 outbreak of the rebellion, and retiring with his charger 
 to the summer quarters he had in mind. As to Washing- 
 ton, Ex-Senator Davis will probably take that and Heaven 
 by storm together ; and so we may sleep in quiet. But 
 in sad and sober earnest, what absolute need is there of a 
 further prosecution of this war ? For the need must be 
 surpassing which justifies, not to say hallows, such a 
 sacrifice of blood and treasure as we are making. 
 
 Our only and our ample justification is the paramount 
 necessity to this nation, and to the cause of human pro- 
 gress throughout the world, that this Government and 
 the principles of this Government should be maintained, 
 that the Republic shall not be destroyed. We live 
 and act under the abiding consciousness that in this 
 land, and by our race, rational liberty was first estab- 
 lished, that here first was every citizen safely placed 
 upon a political equality with every other citizen. We 
 firmly believe that our fathers, building perhaps (wise 
 as they were) " better than they knew," solved the 
 great political problem of strength without centraliza- 
 tion, by ensuring national sovereignty and local inde- 
 pendence, and making them compatible. We know 
 that the welfare of ourselves and our posterity, and we 
 have a conviction that the hopes of mankind, are bound 
 up in the perpetuation and the prosperity of this Bepub- 
 
/J-& 
 
 lie, which the finally unseated politicians of the South 
 would rend asunder in their jealous rage. Therefore 
 we fight. "We fight for the Kepublic, for the preserva- 
 tive principle of permanent union against the disintegra- 
 tive doctrine of confederacy ; to secure the blessings of 
 our powerful, beneficent, cheap, lightly-felt government 
 " to ourselves and our posterity." We fight to crush 
 forever the infamous assumption that those who are 
 defeated in an election may then rightfully rebel. The 
 nation has said in effect to the leading politicians of the 
 Slave States, There shall be no more slave territory. 
 They have replied, We will not submit ; and we have 
 rejoined, It is both lawful and right that you should 
 submit, and you. shall submit, or we will know the 
 reason why. For this we fight. We fight, too, that there 
 may be an end forever of the talk of State sovereignty, 
 of State opposition, or, more absurd, of State neutral- 
 ity, to the national will constitutionally declared : — 
 that a citizen of the United States may be safe under the 
 protection, if not of local law, then of national law in 
 every part of the country ; in South Carolina as well as 
 in Massachusetts, in Mississippi as well as in Ohio : — 
 that the monstrous talk of an " invasion " of one State 
 by the residents of another may be never heard of more ; 
 and that a town which resists the passage through it of 
 citizens of the United States, armed or unarmed, by the 
 orders of the President of the United States, shall, if 
 needs must, be laid flat, as flat as the palm of a man's 
 hand, so that an army of grasshoppers may march over 
 it. And finally, we fight for freedom of speech and of 
 the press, that every custom, law, or institution of this 
 country, local or national, may be the subject of free 
 discussion in every part of it, and remain open to the 
 influence of the moral powers that are at work, through 
 Christ's grace, in this world. If there be any institution 
 1* 
 
in the land which cannot bear this freedom and this discus- 
 sion, it must go out of the land, and that as soon as may 
 be. For this we fight, and suffer, and sacrifice ; and did 
 we not fight, and suffer, and sacrifice for this unto the 
 bitter end, we should be moral bastards, renegades. 
 
 But you, sir, honest, able, and truly a lover of your 
 country and your kind, a man whose life has been 
 worth more to others than to himself, you, and a few 
 whom you have led with you, or who were ready to fol- 
 low any voice that spoke your words, seem to think that 
 we are, or should be, fighting for something else. Some 
 allowance should indeed be made for you in considera- 
 tion of the binding force of the Tribune creed, the car- 
 dinal points of which may be conveniently stated as, 
 1st, that every man should pay his own postage ; 2d, 
 that all the fruits of the earth not converted into men 
 or other animals should be returned to the earth as 
 manure ; 3d, that every human being should vote. Im- 
 portant points, for the establishment of which a man 
 may honorably labor. But as the world is constituted 
 it happens that there are matters of more pressing mo- 
 ment, which must be first attended to, and among them 
 is the maintenance of the constitutional government of 
 this Republic, for which we are in arms this day. But 
 you, alive to the importance of the third point of the 
 Tribunistic creed, and not seeing that suffrage and citi- 
 zenship are not natural rights, but privileges, and must 
 needs be so, — you seem to be on tenter-hooks of appre- 
 hension lest that government should be sustained Con- 
 stitutionally, or in any way, without insuring freedom 
 to all slaves, and, at least, the prospect of a vote to all 
 negroes. You vote heartily for the war measure, but 
 you saddle it with your everlasting negro as a rider. 
 
/s% 
 
 Sir, the people of this country have heard enough of 
 this talk, and will no longer bear it. Because disap- 
 pointed slaveholding politicians have done one wrong, 
 we are not to try to make it right by doing another. 
 By the organic compact, in virtue of which we became 
 a nation, by the very charter of our political existence, 
 the people of every State have a right to manage their 
 local government as they please, so long as they make 
 no law conflicting with " the supreme law of the land." 
 If the people of Massachusetts or New York chose to 
 say that every man may have six wives — of which 
 there is about as much chance as that the Pope will in- 
 flict a similar privilege upon all his priests — the people 
 of the other States must needs acquiesce, or rather not 
 acquiesce, which would be impertinence, but simply 
 mind their own business ! They might remonstrate ; 
 but beyond this the only alternative would be submission 
 or revolution. ISTow, as to the relations of this nation 
 with the negro, they must be put upon the footing of jus- 
 tice as soon as may be, consistently with justice in regard 
 to immeasurably higher interests. The blight and the blot 
 of slavery must be prevented from spreading by all con- 
 stitutional means (and they are sufficient); and those 
 who would propagate slavery must submit, whether 
 they like- it or not. But as to slavery where it is, ad- 
 mitting all the wrong that it inflicts, and the ruin that 
 it brings upon those who inflict the wrong, that must 
 stand until it is done away by those who are responsi- 
 ble for it. The removal of the curse of slavery from 
 this land is a blessing to be hoped for, to be worked for, 
 and to be looked for, as surely as the establishment of 
 truth and right ; the sooner, too, for this wicked, mad, 
 rebellion, which seeks to spread and to perpetuate it. 
 But it must come in by the lawful exercise of the con- 
 stitutional rights of every citizen of the United States. 
 
8 
 
 The plighted faith of this nation is of greater moment 
 than the immediate freedom of a wilderness of negroes, 
 
 We who are sustaining the Government of the United 
 States demand that they who are attacking it, should 
 abide by the Constitution, and seek redress for their 
 wrongs, if they have any, under the Constitution. Who 
 needs to be told that a compact, if insisted upon at all, 
 must be maintained in all its parts ? We must ourselves 
 obey the law to which we seek to compel obedience. Let 
 us either abide by the Constitution, or, like men, set it 
 openly at naught. Let not rebels be honester than loyal 
 men. If what the insurgents have said and done has ab- 
 solved us of our allegiance to the Constitution, let us avow 
 it, and act accordingly. But the people are not quite 
 ready for this conclusion or this course. To insist that 
 South Carolina or Massachusetts shall preserve their alle- 
 giance, to a constitution from which something has been 
 taken, or to which something has been added, without 
 consulting her, is to justify her refusal, that is her rebel- 
 lion, before God and man. 
 
 All this you regard not. Your eye is so firmly fixed 
 upon the far off negro's freedom, that you cannot see 
 the immediate peril of your country. You seem to be- 
 lieve that the way to the near lies through the remote. 
 You would put down the rebellion by proclaiming free- 
 dom to the slaves. You have even called General Hun- 
 ter's proclamation of liberty to those in South Carolina 
 and Georgia, assuming to declare their freedom forever 
 by his mere temporary martial law, " a blow between 
 the eyes." It was a blow into the empty air ; feebleness 
 fulminated into the infinity of space. It is the laughing 
 stock of the world now, and will be that of posterity. 
 Proclaim freedom to slaves for the purpose of putting 
 down the rebellion ! Why, where the national army 
 cannot go such a proclamation is not worth the paper 
 
/^7 
 
 9 
 
 ■on which it is written ; it might as well be promulgated 
 by Mr. Barnum from the top of his museum ; and where 
 the army does go, rebellion never existed or is put down 
 already. The effect of such attempts at emancipation 
 can only be to confirm rebellious contumacy, to fulfil 
 rebellious prophecy, and to justify rebellion in all im- 
 partial eyes, even among those who hate slavery. 
 
 Yet one more remonstrance against one other error, 
 and that a grievous one. You continually affront all of 
 your fellow citizens, except the few who are so perversely 
 constituted as to feel with you, by moaning over the 
 folly of not accepting the services of "the only loyal 
 men," "the real Unionists" of the South, and by your 
 extravagant laudations of " the faithful among the faith- 
 less." Forgetting that we are not engaged in war with 
 a foreign foe to whom we seek to do all the harm we 
 can by every means in our power, you ceaselessly de- 
 mand that the negro slave should be taken into the 
 service of the Republic against its own citizens. Is this 
 folly, or is it craft which seeks to accomplish its purpose 
 by accustoming the people's mind to the idea involved 
 in this phraseology ? If the latter, it will fail. It is an 
 offence; an insult; breeding discontent, discord, and 
 disaffection. Loyal! How can he be loyal who owes 
 no allegiance ? Faithful ! How can he be faithful to 
 whom is committed no trust ? Negroes, bond or free, 
 have no share in our Union, and you know it. Cease, 
 then, a use of language both offensive and ridiculous. 
 
 But you would give the negro this position which he 
 has not, and your perversion of his desire for freedom 
 into loyalty to a Constitution not made for him, and 
 faith to a cause to which he is not bound, is your enter- 
 ing wedge. Cease this effort, too, unless you would sec 
 
10 
 
 your wedge rive society in sunder in the Free States, as 
 well as in the Slave — among the loyal as well as the 
 disloyal. "Why ? Simply because we will not endure 
 to be mixed up in an equality of any sort with negroes. 
 We have civil war now ; but the attempt to do this 
 will bring on a worse than civil war, helium plusquam 
 civile. Call this prejudice, if you will. It is, at least, 
 not blind prejudice. The negro is, in a certain degree, 
 offensive to us in any position — as an equal, in any sense, 
 insufferable. Accept this fact; take it as an axiom 
 before you speculate any more upon the subject. It 
 has always been so with our race ; and, until human 
 nature changes, it must always be so. Do' you ask 
 why ? (for there are some men who will ask the why of 
 an instinct or a sentiment.) Why do men loathe a toad ? 
 There is no more harmless creature under the sun : a 
 dove is not more timid, a butterfly not more incapable 
 of doing injury. And yet to have one touch your lips! 
 What man, not callous or cowardly, would not sooner 
 charge a rebel battery ? Feelings like this are beyond 
 reason, if not above it. Our aversion to the negro in 
 any position which makes equality of intercourse even 
 possible, is of this kind. It is as old as our race ; and, 
 it is safe to say, will be as enduring. Who that attends 
 to his dramatic duties, and reads his Shakspeare, forgets 
 that our great poet makes even the Moor " a sooty 
 thing " that Desdemona first " feared to look at," 
 though the individual was that most attractive charac- 
 ter to woman-kind, a brave soldier and a successful 
 general. But in the inferior nature and repulsive traits 
 of the negro we find no justification for oppressing him. 
 On the contrary, cause why we should treat him with 
 kindness, and the more because of the wrong which he 
 has suffered at the hands of his superiors. Yet remem- 
 ber well that we fight not for him, but for our own 
 
ATX 
 
 11 
 
 priceless heritage. We mean to absolve this nation of 
 all responsibility for his enslavement, and by all lawful 
 and constitutional means to purge the whole land of 
 the wrong and the curse of chattel bondage. And — 
 yet greater and higher purpose — we mean to lift the 
 degraded millions of our own race in the Slave States 
 into the dignity of that manhood and that American 
 citizenship which is their birthright. As to the negro, 
 he is with us, but not of us. He is an inhabitant of 
 the land, but not one of its people. In American citi- 
 zenship he has neither part nor lot. We are not fight- 
 ing his battles ; and shall we be so lost to self-respect as 
 to ask him to fight ours % If after we have made him 
 free, he chooses to remain here, protected by our laws, 
 and treated with Christian kindness, he must yet re- 
 main a grotesque blemish upon society, and servile, 
 though not a slave. Offend us no more by grinding us 
 up together with him in your word-mill. Talk no more 
 in the same breath of his loyalty and ours, of his faith 
 and ours. The liberties for which our fathers fought 
 were theirs and ours, not his. The Constitution to 
 which we are loyal was made, not for him, but for us. 
 The flag to which we are faithful is the sign of our na- 
 tionality, not of his. Confound no more his dumb hope 
 of deliverance from stripes and labor with our patriot- 
 ism ; his self-seeking with our self-sacrifice. Cease to 
 do this, unless you would bring a sword also into the 
 North. Cast down your black idol, and, on week days, 
 worship your country. Do this, and " all things else 
 shall be added unto you," even his freedom; which God 
 grant. 
 
 Live the Eepublic ! 
 
 Populus. 
 
 Nbw York, May 31s*, 1S62. 
 

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