...attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three...now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills that we of the North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong,...

...been a century of political and social readjustments. In the midst of the Civil War Lincoln wrote : 'Now, at the end of three years' struggle the Nation's condition is not what cither party or any man expected or devised.' And at its close the historian, Draper, says : " 'Its...

...Bossuet, he wrote in the spring of 1864: "I claim not to have controlled events but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now at the end of three...can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain." It was fate that gave Lincoln the martyr's crown and the good fortune of being justified by events....

...no compliments to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three...nation's condition is not what either party, or any man, desired or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the...

...are within his reach. Said Abraham Lincoln, 'I claim not to have controlled events, but confess that events have controlled me. Now at the end of three...nation's condition is not what either party or any man desired or expected.' There spoke not the dignified statesman of the academic tradition who moulds...

...humility which led him to write in 1864: "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three...what either party or any man devised or expected." Lincoln was often racked by doubts. In tie conduct of grave human affairs, dogitic certainty is often...

...when I did not so think and feel. ... I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three...any man devised or expected. God alone can claim it. Whether it is tending seems planned. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also...

...that continued in the struggle. For instance in a letter of 1864 to the editor in Kentucky, he says "If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North, as well as the South, shall pay finally for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein...

...to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me." "Now," he continued, ".at the end of three years struggle the nation's...man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it." Again and again he reverted to the idea that behind all the struggles and losses of the war a Divine...

...reprinted in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln,*. 7, p. 40. Rutgers University Press (1953, 1990). Now, at the end of three years' struggle the nation's...man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Letter to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864, reprinted in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, v. 7, p....