which now seems to us
fantastic in its deification of the unreal and the impossible. At the very
time when one side was holding him up as the apostle of social revolution
because he was against slavery, the leading abolitionist denounced him as
the "slave hound of Illinois." When he was the second time candidate for
President, the majority of his opponents attacked him because of what they
termed his extreme radicalism, while a minority threatened to bolt his
nomination because he was not radical enough. He had continually to check
those who wished to go forward too fast, at the very time that he overrode
the opposition of those who wished not to go forward at all. The goal was
never dim before his vision; but he picked his way cautiously, without
either halt or hurry, as he strode toward it, through such a morass of
difficulty that no man of less courage would have attempted it, while it
would surely have overwhelmed any man of judgment less serene.

Yet perhaps the most wonderful thing of all, and, from the standpoint of
the America of to-day and of the future, the most vitally important, was
the extraordinary way in which Lincoln could fight valiantly against what
he deemed wrong and yet preserve undiminished his love and respect for the
brother from whom he differed. In the hour of a triumph that would have
turned any weaker man's head, in the heat of a struggle which spurred many
a good man to dreadful vindictiveness, he said truthfully that so long as
he had been in his office he had never willingly planted a thorn in any
man's bosom, and besought his supporters to study the incidents of the
trial through which they were passing as philosophy from which to learn
wisdom and not as wrongs to be avenged; ending with the solemn exhortation
that, as the strife was over, all should reunite in a common effort to save
their common country.

He lived in days that were great and terrible, when brother fought against
brother for what each sincerely deemed to be the right. In a contest so
grim the strong men who alone can carry it through are rarely able to do
justice to the deep convictions of those with whom they grapple in mortal
strife. At such times men see through a glass darkly; to only the rarest
and loftiest spirits is vouchsafed that clear vision which gradually comes
to all, even the lesser, as the struggle fades into distance, and wounds
are forgotten, and peace creeps back to the hearts that were hurt.

But to