The good lady who acted as nurse for the little sufferers relates that their father came in, at times, to watch by them, and that on one occasion he walked up and down the room, saying sadly: "This is the hardest trial of my life! Why is it? Why is it?"

It was not merely a selfish expression of petulant sorrow. Just so he was accustomed to walk up and down, in his great Executive work-room, alone, at night, after the news had come of some great battle, whether a victory or defeat. It was late, indeed, when the sound of his slow, heavy, griefladen footsteps ceased, on the nights after Ball's Bluff, Chancellorsville, and Fredericksburg, and in each case the agonized question upon his lips must have been the same.

To all such questions, when honestly asked, there is an answer, although it may not always be heard at once. A part of it seems to have been sent to Mr. Lincoln through this very lady. Numbers of kind, good people who knew it did their best to send it to him. Dr. J. G. Holland records of her that, after the worst had come and the stroke had fallen, when she told Mr. Lincoln, in conversation, her own story of trial; that she was a widow, all alone, her husband and two children being in heaven; she added that she saw the hand of God in it all, and had never loved Him before her affliction as she had since.

Mr. Lincoln inquired of her: "How is that brought about?" She replied: "Simply by trusting in God and feeling that He does all things well."

He asked: "Did you submit fully under the first loss?"

Little she may have guessed what memories of suffering were lurking behind the few words of that simple question. She did not know what shattering of the very reason and clouding of the brain of the man before her had resulted from his inability to "submit fully under the first loss." That had been long ago, and she was thinking only of the present. She answered:

"Not wholly; but as blow came upon blow, and all was taken, I could and did submit, and was very happy."

He responded: "I am glad to hear you say that. Your experience will help me to bear my afflictions." He had determined to imitate her and to fully submit, now blow upon blow had come.

On the morning of the funeral of Willie, he said of the prayers offered for him by the good people all over the land: "I am glad to hear that. I want them to pray for me. I need their prayers."

That to theirs he added his own is also a matter of record: and yet there have been, and perhaps now are, men and women so grossly ignorant of human nature as to suppose that such an effect, so produced upon such a man, and followed by an increasing instead of diminishing attrition of toil and trial, was or could be other than eternally indelible.

A few weeks later, before the grass grew well upon the grave of little Willie, occurred the terrific fighting and slaughter of Shiloh and Corinth, in which victory was wrested from the jaws of defeat at the cost of the sons of thousands of darkened households. It was an occasion for thankfulness, and Mr. Lincoln issued a proclamation of thanksgiving for that and other victories, asking the people to "render thanks to our Heavenly Father for these inestimable blessings."

The thanks were sincere, for the gleams of light from the West were greatly needed in those days of national darkness and depression; but the lesson of the President's personal trial followed in the plain words which directed those who offered thanks also to "implore spiritual consolation in behalf of all those who have been brought into affliction by the casualties and calamities of civil war."

Not then, perhaps not now, could Southern fathers and mothers accept the idea that he could not possibly have excluded them, in his mental vision of the sufferers who were in need of "spiritual consolation," but they were no more ex

cluded from his thought than they were from the express terms of the proclamation.

There was little occasion for Mr. Lincoln to express himself upon doctrinal points. His early life and subsequent associations had put it out of his power to examine, approve, and accept any one formulated creed of any one church or sect, even if he had set himself at the task of selection; but his reverence for God and His revealed law continued to increase.

When a delegation of well-meaning gentlemen called upon him to urge, in effect, that no more battles should be fought on Sunday, as so many already had been fought, he could reply, half humorously, that the Rebel commanders would need to be taken into consultation before anything definite could be done in that direction. Nevertheless, on the 16th of November, 1862, he sent out to the soldiers a circular letter which gave his views upon the Sunday question very distinctly. He urged upon them that, "The importance for man and beast of the prescribed weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christian soldiers and sailors, a becoming deference to the best sentiment of a Christian people, and a due regard for the Divine Will, demand that Sunday labor in the army and navy be reduced to the measure of strict necessity." He added, even more strenuously: "The discipline and character of the national forces should not suffer, nor the cause they defend be imperiled, by the profanation of the day or the name of the Most High."

The only escape from the obvious meaning of these and many other similar utterances, as expressions of the operations and condition of Mr. Lincoln's mind at this time, is to roundly charge him with hypocrisy.

This, too, has been done; but the absurdity of the allegation comes out in strong relief when the words he spoke are examined in connection with dates and facts, and particularly when collated with the sad event in his own family.

It is now forever too late to call in question either the fact or

the depth of his religious convictions. It is too late to deny that he again and again made public as well as private profession of his simple faith. Especially is it of no manner of importance for the best of witnesses to testify, "he used to talk, sometimes, kind o' half-way infidel, when I knew him, back in Illinois." The testimony may cheerfully be accepted as honestly given, but it does not bear at all upon the case before the

court.

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE TRENT AFFAIR.

Two Frontier Posts-Western Successes-A Slice at a Time-Trouble with England-Shortsighted Patriotism-A Message to the English PeopleCaptain Wilkes Promoted-Border State Unionism.

AT the outset of the Rebellion the District of Columbia was as much within the intended boundaries of the Confederacy as was any similar area on the northern line of the State of Tennessee. Maryland was even more nearly ready for secession than Kentucky; and the difficulty of retaining either State in the Union was about the same, and required the operation of competent armed forces as well as prudent statesmanship. Washington city was therefore, in the beginning, a position occupied by the Union troops well within the enemy's lines. Afterwards it became an all-important frontier post.

That the city was occupied or held at all was due to Mr. Lincoln's success in carrying on the war for months before the people generally knew there was one going forward.

A serious aggravation and complication of the difficulties of the situation resulted from this history and locality of the political capital. The minds of men, at home and abroad, became absorbed in watching the fluctuations of the struggle for the capture, at one time, of the city of Washington and, at another, of the almost correspondingly situated city of Richmond. The interest in these campaigns, their advances and retreats, their many and bloody battles, became so deep that equally important contests in other parts of the great field failed to receive the popular attention they merited. Had the importance of successes in the West been better understood by