Lincoln had only a partial grasp of this reality. “You think slavery is right and ought to be extended,” Lincoln wrote in a December letter to Alexander “Little Ellick” Stephens, the Georgia congressman, “while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.” But it was here in this clash of moral perception that hatred simmered and violence became imaginable. More than simply a “substantial difference,” it was a chasm that even the most generous package of concessions could never bridge.
