to
Webster's credit, had been made possible by the acceptance of the
earlier statesman's contention, assumed the thesis as placed beyond
all controversy, and, making it the exhortation of his speech, gave
to it the character of a sacred adjuration: "That we here highly
resolve ... that government of the people, by the people, and for
the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Another example of Lincoln's ability to improve the composition of
another writer is the closing paragraph of his first inaugural
address. The President-elect had submitted the manuscript of this most
important speech, which would be universally scrutinized to find what
policy he would adopt toward the seceded States, to Seward, his chosen
Secretary of State, for criticism and suggestion. Mr. Seward approved
the argument, but advised the addition of a closing paragraph "to meet
and remove prejudice and passion in the South; and despondency in the
East." He submitted two paragraphs of his own as alternative models.
The second was in that poetic vein which occasionally cropped out in
Seward's speeches, and over which Lincoln on better acquaintance was
wont good-naturedly to rally him. It is evidence of Lincoln's
predilection for poetic language, at least at the close of a speech,
that he adopted the latter paragraph. It ran:

"I close. We are not, we must not be, aliens or enemies, but
fellow-countrymen and brethren. Although passion has strained our
bonds of affection too hardly, they must not, I am sure they will not,
be broken. The mystic chords which, proceeding from so many
battlefields and so many patriot graves, pass through all the hearts
and all hearths in this broad continent of ours, will yet again
harmonize in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian
angel of the nation."

Lincoln, by deft touches which reveal a literary taste beyond that of
any statesman of his time, indeed beyond that which he himself had yet
exhibited, transformed this passage into his peroration. His
emendations were largely in the way of excision of unnecessary
phrases, resolution of sentences broken in construction into several
shorter, more direct ones, and change of general and vague terms in
rhetorical figure to concrete and picturesque words. He wrote:

"I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be
enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds
of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretc