ourse could have been
more intelligent. In due time events came which brought decision with
them, the crisis shaped itself, and he was ready with clear and prompt
action. When it was known what he would do, matters were settled. The
people, once assured that the fight would be made, entered upon it with
such a temper and in possession of such resources that, in spite of
those trying fluctuations which any wise man could have foreseen, they
were sure in the end to win.

It would be out of place in these prefatory paragraphs, to attempt any
skeleton picture of the momentous struggle. I believe that the story is
told very completely in the lives which compose this group. The
statesmen who controlled events during the war were a new group; they
were not young men, neither were they unknown or untried in public
affairs; but they were for the first time in control. In their younger
days they had been under the shadow and predominance of the old school
of statesmen, whose object had been to prevent, or at least to defer
indefinitely, precisely that crisis which was now present. They
themselves, on the other hand, had been strenuously advocating the
policies which had at last brought that crisis into existence. But the
election of Abraham Lincoln was their first, and as yet their only
triumph. In all previous trials of strength they had been defeated.
Their present success was like the bursting of a torrent through a dam.
At the instant when they attained it they found themselves involved in a
political swirl and clash of momentous difficulties. It was a tremendous
test to which they were being subjected. The part which Lincoln played,
at their head, I have endeavored to depict in his life. The manner in
which he controlled without commanding, his rare combination of
confidence in his own judgment with entire absence of self-assertion,
his instinctive appreciation of the meaning and bearing of facts, his
capacity to recognize the precise time until which action should be
postponed and then to know that action must be taken, suggesting the
idea of prescience, his long-suffering and tolerance towards impolitic,
obstructive, or over-rash individuals, his marvelous gift of keeping in
touch with the people, form a group of qualities which, united in the
President of the United States at that mortal juncture, are as strong
evidence as anything which this generation has seen to corroborate a
faith in an overruling Providence. Conceive