THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 231 



March 4, the triumph at Appomattox of April 

 9, and the assassin s bullet of April 14. No 

 class of British society denied to Abraham Lin 

 coln a high place among the heroes of the En 

 glish-speaking race, and none could evade the 

 truth, proclaimed by the whole story of his 

 life, that he was the purest possible product, as 

 well as the successful leader, of the American 

 democracy. 



For the seven full years following the end of 

 the war in the United States, diplomacy found 

 engrossing labor in the task of restoring the 

 concord that was so rudely shattered in 1861. 

 Domestic problems of highest significance di 

 verted popular attention in large measure from 

 a dangerous international situation. Recon 

 struction in the United States, federation in 

 Canada and her British neighbors, electoral re 

 form and Irish disestablishment in the United 

 Kingdom these insured to the foreign offices 

 much-needed time for their slow pacific processes. 

 The ministers labored always in the conscious 

 ness of impending peril. It was the heroic 

 age of the Hohenzollern monarchy, and German 

 unity was taking shape at Bismarck s bidding 

 out of the ruin of Prussia s neighbors. Den 

 mark was partitioned in 1864; Austria, Han- 



