r mental
experiences to believe. At the same time, there can be no doubt who
taught him the trick, who touched the secret spring and opened the new
door to his mind. It was Seward. Long since it had been agreed between
them that Seward was to be Secretary of State.(9) Lincoln asked him
to criticize his inaugural. Seward did so, and Lincoln, in the main,
accepted his criticism. But Seward went further. He proposed a new
paragraph. He was not a great writer and yet he had something of that
third thing which Lincoln hitherto had not exhibited. However, in
pursuing beauty of statement, he often came dangerously near to mere
rhetoric; his taste was never sure; his sense of rhythm was inferior;
the defects of his qualities were evident. None the less, Lincoln saw at
a glance that if he could infuse into Seward's words his own more robust
qualities, the result--'would be a richer product than had ever issued
from his own qualities as hitherto he had known them. He effected
this transmutation and in doing so raised his style to a new range of
effectiveness. The great Lincoln of literature appeared in the first
inaugural and particularly in that noble passage which was the work
of Lincoln and Seward together. In a way it said only what Lincoln had
already said--especially in the speech at Harrisburg--but with what a
difference!

"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is
the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.
You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You
have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I
shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.

"I am loath to close. We are not enemies but friends. Though passion
may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic
chords of memory stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave,
to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet
swell the chorus of the Union when again touched as surely they will be,
by the better angels of our nature."*

*Lincoln VI, 184; N. & H., III, 343. Seward advised the
omission of part of the original draft of the first of these
two paragraphs. After "defend it," Lincoln had written, "You
can forbear the assault upon it. I can not shrink from the
defense of it. With you and not with me is the solemn
question 'Shall it be peace or a sword?'" Having str