p the Government
whenever they choose. If we fail, then we must conclude that we've
been all wrong from the start, and that the people need a tyrant, being
incapable of governing themselves."

Seward wrung his hands. "If you put it that way I cannot confute you.
But, oh, Mr. President, is there not some means of building a bridge?
I cannot think that honest Southerners would force war on such a narrow
issue.

"They wouldn't but for this slavery. It is that accursed system that
obscures their reason. If they fight, the best of them will fight out of
a mistaken loyalty to their State, but most will fight for the right to
keep their slaves.... If you are to have bridges, you must have solid
ground at both ends. I've heard a tale of some church members that
wanted to build a bridge over a dangerous river. Brother Jones suggested
one Myers, and Myers answered that, if necessary, he could build one to
hell. This alarmed the church members, and Jones, to quiet them, said he
believed his friend Myers was so good an architect that he could do it
if he said he could, though he felt bound himself to express some doubt
about the abutment on the infernal side."

A queer quizzical smile had relieved the gravity of the President's
face. But Seward was in no mood for tales.

"Is there no other way?" he moaned, and his suave voice sounded cracked
and harsh.

"There is no other way but to go forward. I've never been a man for
cutting across lots when I could go round by the road, but if the
roads are all shut we must take to open country. For it is altogether
necessary to go forward."

Seward seemed to pull himself together. He took a turn down the room and
then faced Lincoln.

"Mr. President," he said, "you do not know whether you have a majority
behind you even in the North. You have no experience of government
and none of war. The ablest men in your party are luke-warm or hostile
towards you. You have no army to speak of, and will have to make
everything from the beginning. You feel as I do about the horror of
war, and above all the horrors of civil war. You do not know whether
the people will support you. You grant that there is some justice in the
contention of the South, and you claim for your own case only a balance
of truth. You admit that to coerce the millions of the South back into
the Union is a kind of task which has never been performed in the world
before and one which the wise of all ages have pronounced impossib