102 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



of courage and security from every sod of it would have 

 evaporated beyond recall. We should be irrevocably cut 

 off from our past, and be forced to splice the ragged ends of 

 our lives upon whatever new conditions chance might leave 

 dangling for us. 



We confess that we had our doubts at first whether the 

 patriotism of our people were not too narrowly provincial 

 to embrace the proportions of national peril. We felt an 

 only too natural distrust of immense public meetings and 

 enthusiastic cheers. 



That a reaction should follow the holiday enthusiasm 

 with which the war was entered on, that it should follow 

 soon, and that the slackening of public spirit should be 

 proportionate to the previous over-tension, might well be 

 foreseen by all who had studied human nature or history. 

 Men acting gregariously are always in extremes ; as they 

 are one moment capable of higher courage, so they are 

 liable the next to baser depression, and it is often a matter 

 of chance whether numbers shall multiply confidence or 

 discouragement. Nor does deception lead more surely to 

 distrust of men than self-deception to suspicion of principles. 

 The only faith that wears well and holds its colour in all 

 weather is that which is woven of conviction and set with 

 the sharp mordant of experience. Enthusiasm is good 

 material for the orator, but the statesman needs something 

 more durable to work in ; must be able to rely on the 

 deliberate reason and consequent firmness of the people, 

 without which that presence of mind, no less essential in 

 times of moral than of material peril, will be wanting at the 

 critical moment. Would this fervour of the Free States 

 hold out 1 ? Was it kindled by a just feeling of the value of 

 constitutional liberty ? Had it body enough to withstand 

 the inevitable dampening of checks, reverses, delays ? Had 

 our population intelligence to comprehend that the choice 

 was between order and anarchy, between the equilibrium 

 of a government by law and the tussle of misrule by 

 pronunciamiento ? Could a war be maintained without 

 the ordinary stimulus of hatred and plunder, and with 



