ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 119 



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 success 

 ful 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, l without brother 

 behind it; and this is, by analogy, true of an elective magis 

 tracy. The hereditary ruler in any critical emergency may 

 reckon on the inexhaustible resources of prestige, of senti 

 ment, 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 for its effect rather on the moral 

 sense than the understanding. Their arguments were drawn, 

 not so much from experience as from general principles of 

 right and wrong. When the war came, their system 



