CORRESPONDENCE
origin in the conquest and dispos–
session of early inhabitants (such
as the American Indian) . In all
societies, a comparative minority
enjoy some fullness of life at the
expense of some meagerness and
restriction of life for a comparative
majority. The evil that comes in a
plural world, from different states
tolerating each others' different
kinds and degrees of injustice seems
to me less than the evil that comes
from .tates assuming a right to
make war, at any moment, on each
other for the sake of making each
other over in the aggressive state's
image. I do think, in fact, that it
would have been morally wrong
for Lincoln to declare war on the
Confederacy for the express and
sole purpose of abolishing slavery;
he was forced into war by the
Confederacy, to defend the Union.
The war was
about
slavery, Lincoln
detested slavery, but its recognition
THE IOWA CENTER FOR
MODERN LETTERS
presents
the first in a series of
yearly conferences
Iowa Memorial Union,
University of Iowa
Oct. 28-30, 1965
on the subject
"The Poet as Critic"
Speakers include Richard Ellmann,
Rene Wellek, Elizabeth Sewell,
Murray Krieger, Ralph Freedman
and Donald Hall
For information write to
William D. Coder,
Director of Conferences
The University of lowe,
Iowa City, Iowa, 52240
487
as a just war paradoxically depend- ·
ed on the legal pretext which the
Confederacy had offered him on a
plate.
Carlyle's
USfi
of the word "virtue"
and mine were paradoxical and
ironic (I do not suppose a delicate
sense of literary nuance can quite
consist with Professor Hook's role
as the professionally highly moral
Cold Warrior) . But there
is
a
sense in which strength and staying
power are the roots of moral virtue;
and a bad man or a bad system
does persist, not through vices,
which are always weakening, but
through remaining virtues. The
Confederates held on so long in
the Civil War not because they
were lazy and cruel but because
they were loyal and courageous.
These are sad, familiar facts about
human nature and human history;
being sadly aware of them does
not make one an immoralist.
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