potential
voice to other rulers of other lands, there suddenly came upon the
government and the nation the symptoms of a fatal paralysis; honor
seemed to dwindle and power to vanish. Was he then, after all, not to be
President? Was patriotism dead? Was the Constitution waste paper? Was
the Union gone?

The indications were, indeed, ominous. Seven States were in rebellion.
There was treason in Congress, treason in the Supreme Court, treason in
the army and navy. Confusion and discord rent public opinion. To use
Lincoln's own forcible simile, sinners were calling the righteous to
repentance. Finally, the flag, insulted on the _Star of the West_,
trailed in capitulation at Sumter and then came the humiliation of the
Baltimore riot, and the President practically for a few days a prisoner
in the capital of the nation.

But his apprenticeship had been served, and there was no more failure.
With faith and justice and generosity he conducted for four long years a
civil war whose frontiers stretched from the Potomac to the Rio Grande;
whose soldiers numbered a million men on each side; in which, counting
skirmishes and battles small and great, was fought an average of two
engagements every day; and during which every twenty-four hours saw an
expenditure of two millions of money. The labor, the thought, the
responsibility, the strain of intellect and anguish of soul that he gave
to this great task, who can measure?

The sincerity of the fathers of the Republic was impugned he justified
them. The Declaration of Independence was called a "string of glittering
generalities" and a "self-evident lie"; he refuted the aspersion. The
Constitution was perverted; he corrected the error. The flag was
insulted; he redressed the offense. The government was assailed? he
restored its authority. Slavery thrust the sword of civil war at the
heart of the nation? he crushed slavery, and cemented the purified Union
in new and stronger bonds.

And all the while conciliation was as active as vindication was stern.
He reasoned and pleaded with the anger of the South; he gave
insurrection time to repent; he forbore to execute retaliation; he
offered recompense to slaveholders; he pardoned treason.

What but lifetime schooling in disappointment; what but the pioneer's
self-reliance and freedom from prejudice; what but the patient faith,
the clear perceptions of natural right, the unwarped sympathy and
unbounding charity of this man with spirit so