the military skill and persistent courage of General Lee and the Confederate forces were able to prevent his reaching Richmond in that year. The Republican Convention, held at Baltimore in June, unanimously nominated Lincoln for a second presidential term. At his suggestion, Andrew Johnson, then military Governor of Tennessee, was nominated for Vice-President, the object being to conciliate popular favor in the Border States. At the Democratic Convention in Chicago, in August, strangely inconsistent action was taken; General McClellan was nominated for the Presidency, and the platform denounced the war as a failure. In November, Lincoln received of the popular votes 2,216,000, while McClellan got 1,800,000; but of the electoral votes Lincoln had 212 and McClellan only 21.

In June, Salmon P. Chase, who had ably conducted the Treasury Department, but had given President Lincoln much trouble by urging forward his own ideas and plans, offered his resignation, which was promptly accepted, much to his surprise. W. P. Fessenden was appointed in his place, and thenceforward the cabinet was much more harmonious. President Lincoln had high respect for the great abilities of Secretary Chase, and on the death of Chief-Justice R. B. Taney, generously and promptly appointed Chase to the vacancy in the Supreme Court. Throughout the presidency, in fact, Lincoln never hesitated to appoint to important positions persons who had been troublesome or hostile to himself, provided they possessed, in his judgment, the necessary qualifications for the duty required. No President ever had closer regard to Jefferson's primary requirements in regard to candidates for office: "Is he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?"

Upon entering on his second term, in March, 1865, Lincoln, in his inaugural address, reviewed in a brief but masterly way the history of the war, and rising to a lofty moral height set forth the profound significance of the mighty struggle now drawing to a close. As soon as the campaign opened the Confederates were driven from Richmond, and Lincoln, in April, entered the city which had been for nearly four years the Confederate capital. Under his direction most liberal terms were

offered to the Confederates, who laid down their arms, and he returned to Washington with earnest desire to solve the new problems of the restoration of the authority of the Union in the Southern States. But while seeking relaxation with his family at Ford's Theatre, he was shot in a private box by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who with others had formed a plot for the assassination of the President, Vice-President, and leading members of the Cabinet. The wounded President died early on the morning of the 15th of April, 1865. The murderer escaped across the stage, but was shot in a barn in Virginia, twelve days later. The national rejoicing over the return of peace was turned into grief for the martyred President, and indignation at the dastardly crimes by which madmen sought to paralyze the government at the moment of its triumph.

Abraham Lincoln was in personal appearance a thoroughly Western man-tall, slender, and wiry; he had a dark complexion, a broad, high forehead, coarse black hair, and deep-set gray eyes. In temper he was always mild and patient; though highly social and fond of conversation, wit and laughter, there was an aspect of settled melancholy in his features. From his youth he was noted as being abstemious, though brought up in a country where the use of whiskey was general. He was never addicted to tobacco in any form. Apt stories and pithy anecdotes, free from profanity and vulgarity, were ever ready to illustrate effectively his views on all subjects brought under discussion. His manner was simple, direct, and entirely free from awkwardness or affectation. He was quick to appreciate the opinions and characters of others, and tolerant of their differences from himself. He was thoroughly sincere and truthful, yet remarkable for revealing only so much of his own views or intentions as he deemed proper to the time and to the persons consulting him; hence, in some cases his purposes were reported differently by those having equally good opportunities of judging. He had also a habit, while President, of presenting in conversatien arguments against the very course he had determined to pursue, probably in order to study their full effect. He despised trickery, and ever sought to prevail by direct appeal to the higher nature

of those whom he wished to influence, whether on juries, in political assemblages, or in addresses to the States or the nation at large. Though often yielding much to conciliate others, he was inflexibly firm in principle and in every position once deliberately taken.

The basis of Lincoln's political creed was the right and duty of each people to self-government; this end he sought to realize in all his public acts affecting the same. In his conduct of the nation during the momentous crisis in which he was the chief executive, he had no ambitious selfish ends; his only wish was that the Union of the States should be fully restored, whatever might become of himself. Hence he did not hesitate to call to public duty the most capable persons, whatever might be their personal attitude to himself. Thus, he took the surly Stanton into the cabinet; he restored the self-opinionated McClellan to command; he bore patiently with the impatient Chase's vagaries, and, after he had left the cabinet in a huff, appointed him Chief-Justice of the United States. He even in 1863, when disheartened by Democratic resistance to his war-measures, made overtures to McClellan and to Governor Seymour of New York to support either of them for the Presidency if they would at that time openly declare in favor of the vigorous prosecution of the war.

Lincoln, by his marked self-control and conscientious moderation in the use of power, and by rousing the highest sense of public duty in others, secured from them that practical devotion to the welfare of the country which the times demanded, and of which he was the most conspicuous example. His legacy was peace to his country, liberty to the enslaved, and an inspiring example of patriotism to the world. The great party which despised and rejected him has learned to revere his memory; the Southern States, which sought to leave the Union, because they would not have this man to rule over them, lament him as their best friend; the race to which he gave the priceless blessing of liberty testify their gratitude for his life; the world unites in tributes to his honor and enshrines him among the benefactors of mankind.

When Carpenter's picture of the Signing of the Emancipation Proclamation was presented to the Government in

1878, Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, who had been VicePresident of the Southern Confederacy, bore this friendly and truthful testimony to Lincoln's character:

"I knew Mr. Lincoln well. We met in the House in December, 1847. We were together during the Thirtieth Congress. I was as intimate with him as with any other man of that Congress, except, perhaps, my colleague, Mr. Toombs. Of Mr. Lincoln's general character I need not speak. He was warm-hearted; he was generous; he was magnanimous; he was most truly, as he afterwards said on a memorable occasion, 'with malice toward none, with charity for all.' He had a native genius far above his fellows. Every fountain of his heart was overflowing with the 'milk of human kindness.' From my attachment to him, so much deeper was the pang in my own breast, as well as of millions, at the horrible manner of his 'taking off.' This was the climax of our troubles, and the spring from which came unnumbered woes."

Still grander and more adequate is the tribute from the Northern poet, James Russell Lowell, who had taken part in the anti-slavery struggle:

Here was a type of the true elder race,

And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face;

I praise him not; it were too late;

And some innative weakness there must be

In him who condescends to victory.

Such as the present gives, and cannot wait,
Safe in himself as in a fate.

So always, firmly, he:

He knew to bide his time,

And can his fame abide,

Still patient in his simple faith sublime,

Till the wise years decide.

Great captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,

But at last silence comes:

These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,

Our children shall behold his fame,

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
New birth of our new soil, the first American.

THE GREATNESS OF LINCOLN.

We almost invariably find that the more completely the records of great historical personages are drawn to light by the historians, also the more is unearthed of what is not to their credit, together with what is calculated to strengthen their claim for greatness; for, as a German proverb says, where there is much light there are also deep shadows. Lincoln forms an exception to this rule. The deeper critical history has penetrated into the innermost recesses of his public life, the more he has grown, intellectually and morally. Not only morally, but also intellectually. Not that he has been discovered to be, what nobody at the time suspected him of being, a great political genius, taking in at a glance the most intricate problems presented to him, and intuitively striking the right way leading to their solution.

The more searching the investigation of his career and conduct has become, the more the highly significant fact has been revealed, that to a great and very uncommon extent his intellectual soundness and keenness sprang from his moral purity and greatness. His robust common sense, his inborn shrewdness, his intimate touch with the feeling and thinking of the masses, and the habit formed in the years of boyhood to think every problem fully out and reduce it to its simplest form,-all that was undoubtedly of immense service to him in wrestling with all the appalling questions of the national and international politics. Singly and collectively all these valuable qualities were, however, not the main reason of the imposing sagacity of his political judgment, often hitting the nail on the head even when the mark was widely missed by those of his advisers who were reputed greatly his superiors in natural intelligence, and had, in fact, all the advantages of a much better education and far more extended experience. Because with utter singleness of purpose he