never denied, while facts go far to confirm the statement, that he had an understanding with the secessionists to the effect that Sumter and other forts in the seceding states should be surrendered. In such a purpose he entertained no intention of permanent disunion, but there are many circumstances which indicate that he contemplated temporary separation, and a reunion by a national convention to revise the constitution, and among other things give new guaranties to the slave-holding states. A new faith in expedients such as in the absence of principle had been resorted to by the Albany lobby and made successful in great emergencies.

On the 10th of April, two days after sending to Judge Campbell "Faith as regards Sumter-wait and see,” he wrote to Mr. Adams: "Only an imperial or despotic government would subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrectionary members of the state. This federal republican system of ours is, of all forms of government, the very one which is most unfitted for such a labor. Happily however, this is only an imaginary defect. The system has, within itself adequate peaceful, conservative and recuperative forces. Firmness on the part of the government in maintaining and preserving the public institutions and property, and in executing the laws where authority can be exercised without waging war, combined with such measures of justice, moderation, and forbearance as will disarm reasoning opposition, will be sufficient to secure the public safety until returning reflection, concurring with the fearful experience of social evils, the inevitable fruits of faction, shall bring the recusant mem

bers cheerfully back into the family, which, after all, must prove their best and happiest, as it undeniably is their most natural home. The Constitution of the United States provides for that return by authorizing Congress, on application to be made by a certain majority of the States, to assemble a National Convention, in which the organic law can, if it be needful, be revised so as to remove all real obstacles to a reunion so suitable to the habits of the people, and so eminently conducive to the common safety and welfare."

This was the scheme, or policy if it may be so called, of Mr. Seward and his conferees at the beginning, but it was not the policy of Mr. Lincoln. The letter to Mr. Adams was prepared, it will be remembered, at the very time when the squadron to relieve Fort Sumter was rendered abortive, by his detaching the Powhatan, the flag-ship from the expedition. Mr. Lincoln was not a party to the arrangements. They were concerted and employed to defeat his efforts to use the power of the government to check and break down the early movements of the rebels. The national forces and authority were ejected from the forts in South Carolina and Georgia. The "wayward sisters were to go in peace," and be brought back by a National Convention," in which the organic law can be revised, so as to remove all real obstacles to a reunion."

Without discussing the soundness of the policy indicated in this letter to Mr. Adams and the facts which accord with that policy, it is sufficient to state, and subsequent events demonstrate, that it was not the policy of Mr. Lincoln, and the administration. In its details the course proposed by Mr. Seward conformed to

the policy of Buchanan and Black, that a state could not be coerced-the union was to be dismembered and reunited by a new, or revised constitution. In these proceedings, Mr. Seward perplexed, confused and embarrassed, but did not direct affairs of the administration.

THE distinctive measure of Mr. Lincoln's Administration, beyond all others, that which makes it an era in our national history, is the decree of Emancipation. This movement, almost revolutionary, was a step not anticipated by him when elected, and which neither he nor any of his Cabinet was prepared for, or would have assented to when they entered upon their duties. He and they had, regardless of party discipline, resisted the schemes for the extension of slavery into free. territory under the sanction of federal authority. All of them, though of different parties, were and ever had been opposed to slavery, but not one of them favored any interference with it by the National Government in the states where it was established or permitted. The assumption, after the acquisition of territory from Mexico, that slavery was a national and not a local institution had opened a new controversy in American politics, which contributed to the disintegration of old party organizations, each of which became in a measure sectional. The dissenting elements resisted the centralizing claim that slavery was national, not local; and ultimately, after a struggle of several years, they threw off old party allegiance and combined under a new organization, thenceforward known

as Republican. In the first stages of this movement neither Mr. Lincoln nor Mr. Seward participated. Both of them had sympathized with what was known as the Free-soil party in 1848, but declined to become identified with it. They were politicians, and not then prepared to abandon the organization with which they had previously acted. Mr. Lincoln, with the free thought and independence of the men of the West, less trained and bound to party than the disciplined politicians in the old states, holding no official position, a quiet but observing and reflecting citizen; truthful, honest, faithful to his convictions, and with the mental strength and courage to avow and maintain them, early appreciated the important principles involved in this rising question, and boldly cast off the shackles of party in defence of the right, and earnestly, irrespective of any and all parties, opposed the extension and aggressions of slavery. Mr. Seward was in those days in office, trammelled by party followers and party surroundings. Trained during his whole public career in the severest discipline of party, indebted to it for his high position, always subservient to its decrees and requirements, active and exacting in enforcing its obligations, he had not the independence and moral stamina to free himself from the restraints and despotism of party, whatever were his sympathies, until the Whig organization disbanded. The people of the West, who knew Mr. Lincoln and appreciated his capabilities, tried in 1856 to place him on the ticket with Fremont as a candidate for Vice-President. Although but slightly known in the East, such was the zeal and enthusiasm in his favor of those who knew him, that

nothing but the expediency of selecting an Eastern man to be associated with Fremont, who was from the West, prevented his nomination instead of Dayton. From the start he was a prominent Republican champion and leader, while Mr. Seward, a partisan politician, held off; was reluctant to leave the party with which he had been associated, hoping to make the new movement subservient to, or a part of the Whig party. Mr. Lincoln had no such purpose; the principles involved were with him above mere party. With no fortune, unaided by metropolitan funds or pecuniary assistance from any quarter, he gave his time and mind with unstinted devotion to the cause of freedom and in his memorable campaign with Douglass, alone and unassisted, he, through the empire State of the West, met the Senatorial giant on the questions of the extension of slavery, the rights of the states, the grants to and limitation of the powers of the general government, and displayed ability and power which won the applause of the country, and drew from Douglass himself expressions of profound respect.

When the Republicans, in convention at Chicago, chose their standard-bearer, they wisely and properly selected as their representative, the sincere and able man who had no great money-power in his interest, no disciplined lobby, no host of party followers, but who, like David, confided in the justice of his cause and with the simple weapons of truth and right, met the Goliath of slavery aggression, before assembled multitudes, in many a well-contested debate. The popular voice was not in error, or its confidence misplaced, when it selected and elected Lincoln.