the delegates and others on a train to the State Convention that nominated Lincoln "as its first, last and only choice" for senator, as follows: Seward 139, Fremont 32, McLean 13, Trumbull 7, Chase 6. There was none for Lincoln. But he was thought of enough immediately after the election which settled the senatorship. Indeed, every student of American politics must know that his nomination by the Republican party for president was logical and almost inevitable.

The election of Lincoln to the presidency necessarily committed the executive administration of the nation to his views, his legal reasoning, and his political attitudes. The South understood it perfectly. Her situation made revolution inevitable. War was certain unless Lincoln failed. He was the one man in the nation who most wanted peace and who best knew that war was at hand. He pleaded that the bonds of friendship be not broken. But he had sworn to execute the laws and protect the property of the United States, and of course he would do it. Of course there would be resistance. Of course that meant war.

Lincoln's legal reasoning halted the slave system at the borders of free territory. Then his mind extended or constructed a basis of law for meeting the insurrection which resulted and for prosecuting the war to a successful culmination. He wavered not at all. With anguish of soul, he evolved legal theory and exercised unusual powers as the quickly moving events required. That theory, and those events, put him quickly in command of millions of freemen armed for the saving of the Union. In the awful conflict all possibility of compromise or neutrality disappeared. If the Union lived slavery would have to go. If the Union were dissevered, slavery would triumph after being abolished in every other form of government formed and directed by Saxon and Teuton peoples. Democracy would be dishonored. Lincoln strained legal theory and exercised his executive powers to their limit. It made him an abolitionist and the Great Emancipator. Legal theory, and political policy, and military force, definitely and distinctly combined with moral principle to bring the nation that was near to death, back to life. "Union and Liberty" survived.

We can not leave the subject without a kindly thought of Douglas. True, he made a political mistake which changed the course of his country's history. True, freedom had the right to expect that one born and trained as he was should take other than a neutral course upon the extension of slavery. But his short

comings were incidental. He was a great figure the night that he rose in the Senate, half an hour before midnight, and spoke until the rays of the sun broke over the Capitol, in closing the argument upon his Nebraska bill. The fundamental principle of his bill was unsound, but it is not given to all men to know that there are times when a middle course is not enough. He was struggling, amid the portending clouds, with the contending forces of a great party and the gathering perils of a great national crisis. We are sorry that he took a middle course. We can but wish that he had stood firmly for the intuitions that the Green Mountain State and the Empire State must have planted in him. We can not fail to wonder what it might have brought to him- possibly the presidency, certainly the deeper regard of a country destined to become wholly free. But when he held Lincoln's hat at the inauguration, and when his last words were There can be no neutrals in this war," we must declare the basic attributes of sincerity and patriotism which filled his soul.

And we do it with more pleasure when we recall that the course of Douglas brought to the headship of the nation the "malice towards none," the "charity for all," the "firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right," the broad and deep human sympathy, the legal learning, the unrivaled gift of statement, the perspective which placed the Union above all else, the statesmanship that rose above all partisanship, and the commanding genius which could lead the Republic through the Red sea; for these were the great attributes of Abraham Lincoln.

ELECTION AS COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION1

Remarks and motion of Vice Chancellor McKelway

Gentlemen of the Board of Regents: Before we proceed to any other business at this meeting, I wish to provide for the orderly progress of our transactions for future years. My intention is to ask the Board to elect a Commissioner of Education to serve during the pleasure of the Board, and I shall nominate Dr Andrew S. Draper to succeed himself.

I know this is the unanimous intention of the Board, and the unanimous desire of the universities, academies, common schools, and of all the bodies whatever in any way affected by an interest in education or by a responsibility for it, in our Commonwealth. I know also that Dr Draper's election will confirm the expectation of every state in our Union and of every nation abroad with which we officially have educational relations of any kind.

This is Dr Draper's first election by us. It is his reelection, however, to this office. Six years ago he was elected to the office by the Legislature and the law prescribed that, after his first term, the Board of Regents should itself choose his successors. That method of procedure was wise when it was adopted. It signalized the effected unification of our state educational system. It substituted unity for duality, and harmony for inherent liabilities of discord, division and like factors of friction. The prescribed system and the prescribed man to be its executive have got along well together. The Board of Regents can claim that their choice of the Commissioner for a life term is a vindication of the first choice of him for this office by the Legislature and of the action of the Legislature in its investment of us with the choice of future commissioners.

I should like to say many things in merited eulogy of Dr Draper's administration, but our unanimous designation of him for life will substitute vindication for praise, and action speaks louder and tells longer than words. I am restrained from tribute because he is in our presence, and does not like being praised when he is around. I am further restrained because when we praise his administration we praise ourselves as a part of it. Praise to the face is the first line of a rhymed couplet I would not even suggest, and praise of ourselves can well be outwardly omitted, no matter how much we may inwardly feel it is deserved.

1 Reprinted from Journal of Regents Meeting, March 31, 1910.

I will be excused from more than saying that we are content to let Dr Draper be judged by his record, and ourselves to be judged by our continuance of him and by our identification with him in the educational work of the state. He has been faithful, industrious, untiring, wise, firm, conservative, patient, tactful, just, and sanely progressive. Less should not, and more, when fully interpreted, could not be said of him, and naught better can be said of us, if it can be said that we have been, or have sought to be, as true to his best intendments as he has been to our best intendments in the cognate work the state has required of ourselves and of him.

Gentlemen, I nominate Dr Draper for State Commissioner of Education, and await your further pleasure.

Remarks of Regent Pliny T. Sexton

Mr Vice Chancellor: You have with such felicitous phrase and fitting feeling spoken, as I feel sure, the thoughts of all of us, that added words can be but those of needless iteration. But yet, husbands and wives delight to tell, over and over, of their love for each other, and the more so, perhaps, the more sure they feel of their mutual affection. And I am glad to avail myself of the privilege, which my relative seniority in this Board may allow me, of being the first to second the nomination of the Hon. Andrew S. Draper for reelection as Commissioner of Education of the State of New York.

In some countries where freedom is less understood and freedom of action less known than in ours, marriages are often made for people, and not by them. They are brought together as comparative strangers and have to learn to love and trust each other afterward, if at all. And, continuing a little the simile of the marriage relation, I may say that the union between Commissioner Draper and the Board of Regents was not, in its origin, one of mutual agreement. It was forced upon us by an act of the Legislature which did not have our approval. We met him after our legislative marriage, six years ago, with minds full of questioning, on our part, and doubtless he had thoughts of uncertainty and apprehension. But his frankness of speech, cordiality of spirit, and evident large mindedness and singleness of purpose to devote himself and all of his manifested great powers to the promotion of the educational welfare of this state, cleared the atmosphere and won us to him at once. As he then revealed himself to us, we realized his eminent fitness for his place, and I said to myself, at the close of that first

meeting, “There is a man to stand by, and I am going to stand by him." Such, I believe, was the impression which he made upon. us all, and it has been abundantly justified.

The Legislature did not, by its enactment of 1904, unify the educational system of the state. It stopped far short of that. It left the door open for possibly greater abuses and dissensions than had before prevailed. But, by a compact made at that first meeting between the Commissioner of Education and the Board of Regents -a compact which would have been impossible with a man of less greatness of thought and sincerity of purpose the actual educational unification which thoughtful educators had so long prayerfully hoped for became an accomplished fact and has since existed as an immeasurable blessing to the people of this Commonwealth.

We have learned to love and trust Commissioner Draper, since our official marriage with him. We have come to feel that he is entitled to our unquestioning confidence and admiration, not only as to his sincerity of purpose, but as to his great, almost unparalleled capacity for the special duty in life to which he has been called.

I do not regard the action we are about to take on this occasion, except in a formal or technical sense, as his reelection. Rather, we are here today to reaffirm, gladly, the vows of unity with him which we plighted six years ago with no little trepidation. The union then begun has come to be regarded as providentially arranged and, borrowing from the church a ritualistic phrase - benedictive words I would say, "Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder."

Remarks of Regent Albert Vander Veer

Mr Vice Chancellor, may I be permitted to occupy just a moment? I want to say that it gives me great pleasure to speak of the loyal atmosphere that I know prevails within the walls of this building toward one who has been our executive officer and for whom we have this morning demonstrated our loyalty and affection, as has been mentioned in the nomination by the Vice Chancellor and in the seconding of the same by Regent Sexton.

I wish, Mr Vice Chancellor, to refer to one sentence in your remarks We have to confirm the expectation of our sister states." It has been my good fortune during the past few months in hotel drawing-rooms to talk of our educational institutions in this state,