simple creed was the integrity and perpetuity of the nation.

Mr. Lincoln showed in his inaugural his accurate appreciation of the new situation. Owing all that he had become in the world to a few antislavery speeches, elevated to the presidency by votes which really meant little else than hostility to slavery, what was more natural than that he should at this moment revert to this great topic and make the old dispute the main part and real substance of his address? But this fatal error he avoided. With unerring judgment he dwelt little on that momentous issue which had only just been displaced, and took his stand fairly upon that still more momentous one which had so newly come up. He spoke for the Union; upon that basis a united North ought to support him; upon that basis the more northern of the slave States might remain loyal. As matter of fact Union had suddenly become the real issue, but it needed at the hands of the President to be publicly and explicitly announced as such; his recognition was essential; he gave it on this earliest opportunity, and the announcement was the first great service of the new Republican ruler. It seems now as though he could hardly have done otherwise or have fallen into the error of allying himself with bygone or false issues. It may be admitted that he could not have passed this new one by; but the important matter was that of proportion and relation, and in this it was easy to blunder. In truth it

was a crisis when blundering was so easy that nearly all the really able men of the North had been doing it badly for three or four months past, and not a few of them were going to continue it for two or three months to come. Therefore, the sound conception of the inaugural deserves to be considered as an indication, one among many, of Lincoln's capacity for seeing with entire distinctness the great main fact, and for recognizing it as such. Other matters, which lay over and around such a fact, side issues, questions of detail, affairs of disguise or deception, never confused or misled him. He knew with unerring accuracy where the biggest fact lay, and he always anchored fast to it, and stayed with it. For many years he had been anchored to anti-slavery; now, in the face of the nation, he shifted his anchorage to the Union; and each time he held securely.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BEGINNING OF WAR.

the

FROM the inaugural ceremonies Lincoln drove quietly back through Pennsylvania Avenue and entered the White House, the President of the United States, alas, united no longer. Many an anxious citizen breathed more freely when the dreaded hours had passed without disturbance. But burdens a thousand-fold heavier than any which were lifted from others descended upon new ruler. Save, however, that the thoughtful, far-away expression of sadness had of late seemed deeper and more impressive than ever before, Lincoln gave no sign of inward trouble. His singular temperament armed him with a rare and peculiar strength beneath responsibility and in the face of duty. He has been seen, with entire tranquillity, not only seeking, but seeming to assume as his natural due or destiny, positions which appeared preposterously out of accord alike with his early career and with his later opportunities for development. In trying to explain this, it is easier to say what was not the underlying quality than what it was. Certainly there was no taint whatsoever of that vulgar self-confidence, which is so apt

to lead the "free and equal" citizens of the great Republic into grotesque positions. Perhaps it was a grand simplicity of faith; a profound instinctive confidence that by patient, honest thinking it would be possible to know the right road, and by earnest enduring courage to follow it. Perhaps it was that so-called divine inspiration which seems always a part of the highest human fitness. The fact which is distinctly visible is, that a fair, plain and honest method of thinking saved him from the perplexities which beset subtle dialecticians in politics and in constitutional law. He had lately said that his course was "as plain as a turnpike road;" it was, to execute the public laws.

His duty was simple; his understanding of it was unclouded by doubt or sophistry; his resolution to do it was firm; but whether his hands would be strengthened sufficiently to enable him to do it was a question of grave anxiety. The President of a Republic can do everything if the people are at his back, and almost nothing if the people are not at his back. Where, then, were now the people of the United States? In seven States they were openly and unitedly against him; in at least seven more they were under a very strong temptation to range themselves against him in case of a conflict; and as for the Republican States of the North, on that fourth day of March, 1861, no man could say to what point they would sustain the administration. There had as yet come slight indications of any change in the conceding, com

promising temper of that section. Greeley and Seward and Wendell Phillips, representative men, were little better than Secessionists. The statement sounds ridiculous, yet the proof against each comes from his own mouth. The "Tribune" had retracted none of those disunion sentiments, of which examples have been given. Even so late as April 10, 1861, Mr. Seward wrote officially to Mr. C. F. Adams, Minister to England, “Only an imperial and despotic government could subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrectionary members of the State. This federal, republican country of ours is, of all forms of government, the very one which is the most unfitted for such a labor." He had been and still was favoring delay and conciliation, in the visionary hope that the seceders would follow the scriptural precedent of the prodigal son. On April 9, the rumor of a fight at Sumter being spread abroad, Mr. Phillips said: "Here are a series of States, girding the Gulf, who think that their peculiar institutions require that they should have a separate government. They have a right to decide that question without appealing to you Standing with the principles of '76 behind us, who can deny them the right?.. Abraham Lincoln has no right to a soldier in Fort Sumter. . . . There is no longer a Union. . . Mr. Jefferson Davis is angry, and Mr. Abraham Lincoln is mad, and they agree to fight. . . . You

or me.

1 At New Bedford, in a lecture "which was interrupted by frequent hisses." Schouler, Hist. of Mass. in the Civil War, i. 44-47.