plenty of indications in the literature of the time that
Lincoln's determination soon began to be widely felt and to be
appreciated by common people. Literally, crowds of people from all
parts of the North saw him, exchanged a sentence or two, and carried
home their impressions; and those who were near him record the constant
fortitude of his bearing, noting as marked exceptions the unrestrained
words of impatience and half-humorous despondency which did on rare
occasions escape him. In a negative way, too, even the political world
bore its testimony to this; his administration was charged with almost
every other form of weakness, but there was never a suspicion that he
would give in. Nor again, in the severest criticisms upon him by
knowledgeable men that have been unearthed and collected, does the
suggestion of petty personal aims or of anything but unselfish devotion
ever find a place. The belief that he could be trusted spread itself
among plain people, and, given this belief, plain people liked him the
better because he was plain. But if at the distance at which we
contemplate him, and at which from the moment of his death all America
contemplated him, certain grand traits emerge, it is not for a moment
to be supposed that in his life he stood out in front of the people as
a great leader, or indeed as a leader at all, in the manner, say, of
Chatham or even of Palmerston. Lincoln came to Washington doubtless
with some deep thoughts which other men had not thought, doubtless also
with some important knowledge, for instance of the border States, which
many statesmen lacked, but he came there a man inexperienced in
affairs. It was a part of his strength that he knew this very well,
that he meant to learn, thought he could learn, did not mean to be
hurried where he had not the knowledge to decide, entirely appreciated
superior knowledge in others, and was entirely unawed by it. But
Senators and Representatives in Congress and journalists of high
standing, as a rule, perceived the inexperience and not the strength.
The deliberation with which he acted, patiently watching events, saying
little, listening to all sides, conversing with a naivete which was
genuine but not quite artless, seemingly obdurate to the pressure of
wise counsels on one side and on the other--all this struck many
anxious observers as sheer incompetence, and when there was just and
natural cause for their anxiety, there was no established presu