nctively comprehending the temper and prejudices of a people as to
make them gradually conscious of the superior wisdom of his freedom
from temper and prejudice,--it is by qualities such as these that a
magistrate shows himself worthy to be chief in a commonwealth of
freemen. And it is for qualities such as these that we firmly believe
History will rank Mr. Lincoln among the most prudent of statesmen and
the most successful of rulers. If we wish to appreciate him, we have
only to conceive the inevitable chaos in which we should now be
weltering, had a weak man or an unwise one been chosen in his stead.

"Bare is back," says the Norse proverb, "without brother behind it";
and this is, by analogy, true of an elective magistracy. The
hereditary ruler in any critical emergency may reckon on the
inexhaustible resources of _prestige_, of sentiment, of superstition,
of dependent interest, while the new man must slowly and painfully
create all these out of the unwilling material around him, by
superiority of character, by patient singleness of purpose, by
sagacious presentiment of popular tendencies and instinctive sympathy
with the national character. Mr. Lincoln's task was one of peculiar
and exceptional difficulty. Long habit had accustomed the American
people to the notion of a party in power, and of a President as its
creature and organ, while the more vital fact, that the executive for
the time being represents the abstract idea of government as a
permanent principle superior to all party and all private interest, had
gradually become unfamiliar. They had so long seen the public policy
more or less directed by views of party, and often even of personal
advantage, as to be ready to suspect the motives of a chief magistrate
compelled, for the first time in our history, to feel himself the head
and hand of a great nation, and to act upon the fundamental maxim, laid
down by all publicists, that the first duty of a government is to
defend and maintain its own existence. Accordingly, a powerful weapon
seemed to be put into the hands of the opposition by the necessity
under which the administration found itself of applying this old truth
to new relations. Nor were the opposition his only nor his most
dangerous opponents.

The Republicans had carried the country upon an issue in which ethics
were more directly and visibly mingled with politics than usual. Their
leaders were trained to a method of oratory which relied fo