in Mr. Lincoln. All this department of his life he had kept carefully hidden from them. Why he should say that he was obliged to appear differently to others does not appear; but the fact is a matter of history that he never exposed his own religious life to those who had no sympathy with it. It is doubtful whether the clergymen of Springfield knew anything of these experiences. Very few of them were in political sympathy with him; and it is evident that he could open his heart to no one except under the most favorable circumstances. The fountain from which gushed up so grand and good a life was kept carefully covered from the eyes of the world. Its possessor looked into it often, but the careless or curious crowd were never favored with the vision. There was much in his conduct that was simply a cover to these thoughts-an attempt to conceal them. It is more than probable that, on separating with Mr. Bateman on this occasion, he met some old friend, and, departing by a single bound from his tearful melancholy and his sublime religious passion, he told him some story, or indulged in some jest, that filled his own heart with mirthfulness, and awoke convulsions of laughter in him who heard it.

These sudden and wide transitions of feeling were common with him. He lived for years a double life—a deep and a shallow one. Oppressed with great responsibilities, absorbed by the most profound problems relating to his own spirit and destiny, brought into sympathetic relation with the woes of the world, and living much in the very depths of a sadness whose natural fountain had been deepened by the experience of his life, he found no relief except by direct and entire translation to that other channel of his life which lay among his shallowest emotions. His sense of the ludicrous and the grotesque, of the witty and the funny, was really something wonderful; and when this sense was appealed to by a story, or an incident, or a jest, he seemed to leave all his dignity aside, and give himself up to mirth with no more of self-restraint than if he were a boy of twelve years. He resorted to this channel of life for relief. It was here that he won

It was here that he

strength for trial by forgetting trial. restored the balance which sadness had destroyed. Such a nature and character seem full of contradictions; and a man who is subject to such transitions will always be a mystery to those who do not know him wholly. Thus no two men among his intimate friends will agree concerning him.

The writer has conversed with multitudes of men who claimed to know Mr. Lincoln intimately; yet there are not two of the whole number who agree in their estimate of him. The fact was that he rarely showed more than one aspect of himself to one man. He opened himself to men in different directions. It was rare that he exhibited what was religious in him; and he never did this at all, except when he found just the nature and character that were sympathetic with that aspect and element of his character. A great deal of his best, deepest, largest life he kept almost constantly from view, because he would not expose it to the eyes and apprehension of the careless multitude.

To illustrate the effect of the peculiarity of Mr. Lincoln's intercourse with men, it may be said that men who knew him through all his professional and political life have offered opinions as diametrically opposite as these, viz: that he was a very ambitious man, and that he was without a particle of ambition; that he was one of the saddest men that ever lived, and that he was one of the jolliest men that ever lived; that he was very religious, but that he was not a Christian; that he was a Christian, but did not know it; that he was so far from being a religious man or a Christian that "the less said upon that subject the better;" that he was the most cunning man in America, and that he had not a particle of cunning in him; that he had the strongest personal attachments, and that he had no personal attachments at all—only a general good feeling toward everybody; that he was a man of indomitable will, and that he was a man almost without a will: that he was a tyrant, and that he was the softest-hearted, most brotherly man that ever lived; that he was remarkable for his pure-mindedness, and that he was the foulest in his

jests and stories of any man in the country; that he was a witty man, and that he was only a retailer of the wit of others; that his apparent candor and fairness were only apparent, and that they were as real as his head and his hands; that he was a boor, and that he was in all essential respects a gentleman; that he was a leader of the people, and that he was always led by the people; that he was cool and impassive, and that he was susceptible of the strongest passions. It is only by tracing these separate streams of impression back to their fountain that we are able to arrive at anything like a compe tent comprehension of the man, or to learn why he came to be held in such various estimation. Men caught only separate aspects of his character-only the fragments that were called into exhibition by their own qualities.

Thus the months passed away until the election. His room was thronged by visitors from every portion of the Union, drawn to him by a great variety of motives; and to all he gave an open and cordial welcome. In the meantime his political opponents had virtually given up the contest. While they worked faithfully within their own organizations, they openly or secretly conceded his election. At the South no attempt was made to conceal the conviction that he would be the next President of the United States. Indeed, this was so entirely what they desired that they would have regarded the election of Mr. Douglas as a calamity, although it may well be doubted whether they would have been deterred from their disunion schemes by his election. They took pains to poison the public mind by every possible expedient. They identified the cause of the republicans with the John Brown raid into Virginia, with everything that was offensive to the pride of the South in Helper's "Impending Crisis," with "abolitionism" which was the most disgusting and dangerous sin in the proslavery catalogue of sins. It was all a lie. Not a republican was concerned in or approved of the John Brown invasion, for which Virginia had exacted the life of that stern old enthusiast.

Helper's book was a home production of the South; and the creed of the party had no item looking to the abolition of slavery. Not content with misrepresenting Mr. Lincoln's cause and principles, they traduced him and his associates upon the ticket. Mr. Lincoln was called the "Illinois ape,' and this, not by the rabble, but by the leaders of public opinion; while Mr. Hamlin was actually believed by many southern people to be a mulatto, through the representations of presses and politicians. Every falsehood that could sting the southern mind to malignity and resentment against the North, and make detestable the man whom the North was about to elect to the presidency, was shamelessly uttered. The object, of course, was to fill the southern mind with bitterness against the North, to alienate the Union from its affections, to foster its pride, and to prepare it for the premeditated and prepared separation.

Mr. Lincoln saw the gathering storm, and felt that upon him it would expend its wildest fury; yet he cherished no rescntment against these men or their section for all the wrongs they heaped upon him, and the woes they were bringing upon the country. He was only an instrument in the hands of a higher power. It was only the natural exhibition of the spirit of a system of wrong which was making its last terrible struggle for life. The hatred aroused in him passed over the heads of his enemies and fastened itself upon the institution which could make such demons of men. If he was an instrument in the hands of a higher power, they were instruments in the hands of a lower power, malignant but mighty indeed. He had charity, because he felt these men to be the victims of a false education-of a great mistake. He remembered that had he been bred as they had been, the probabilities were that he should sympathize with them.

He

Mr. Lincoln was what was called a wise candidate. held his tongue. No abuse provoked him to utter a word in self-vindication. He had accepted the platform of the party and his record was before the country. So he calmly awaited the result.

On the sixth of November the election took place throughout the whole country, and the result was Mr. Lincoln's triumph, not by a majority of the votes cast, but by a handsome plurality. The popular vote for him was 1,857,610; while Stephen A. Douglas received 1,365,976 votes, John C. Breckinridge 847,953, and John Bell 590,631. In the electoral college Mr. Lincoln had 180 votes, Mr. Douglas receiving 12, Mr. Breckinridge 72, and Mr. Bell 39; and when, on the following thirteenth of February, in a joint session of both Houses of Congress, these votes were declared, it was the of fice of John C. Breckinridge himself, then Vice-President, to pronounce Mr. Lincoln the constitutionally elected President of the United States for four years from the succeeding fourth of March. And this man who, by going into the election as a candidate for the presidency, and declaring the result of the contest, had bound himself by every principle of honor to abide by the result, was a foul traitor at heart, and only left the chair he disgraced to become a leader in the armies of treason.

The result of the election was great popular rejoicing at the North, great exasperation at the South, great fear and trembling among compromisers of both sections, and a general conviction that the crisis so long threatened was actually upon the nation. Among the republicans there was this feeling: that they had fairly, on an open declaration of principles and policy, and strictly according to the provisions of the Constitution, elected a president; and that if, for this, the South was determined to make war, the contest might as well come first as last. They knew they had made no proposition and entertained no intention to interfere with slavery in the states where the Constitution protected it, that they had made no aggressions upon the institution, and had only endeavored to limit its spread into free territory. If this was cause of war, then they were ready for the fight. Feeling thus, and thus declaring themselves, they still did not generally believe there would be a war. They thought the matter would yet rise upon the wings of some convenient wind and be blown away.