ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 105 



become war. All this was to be done without warning and 

 without preparation, while at the same time a social revolu 

 tion was to be accomplished in the political condition of four 

 millions of people, by softening the prejudices, allaying the 

 fears, and gradually obtaining the co-operation of their 

 unwilling liberators. Surely, if ever there were an occasion 

 when the heightened imagination of the historian might see 

 Destiny visibly intervening in human affairs, here was a 

 knot worthy of her shears. Never, perhaps, was any system 

 of government tried by so continuous and searching a strain 

 as ours during the last three years ; never has any shown 

 itself stronger ; and never could that strength be so directly 

 traced to the virtue and intelligence of the people to that 

 general enlightenment and prompt efficiency of public 

 opinion possible only under the influence of a political frame 

 work like our own. We find it hard to understand how 

 even a foreigner should be blind to the grandeur of the 

 combat of ideas that has been going on here to the heroic 

 energy, persistency, and self-reliance of a nation proving 

 that it knows how much dearer greatness is than mere 

 power ; and we own that it is impossible for us to conceive 

 the mental and moral condition of the American who does 

 not feel his spirit braced and heightened by being even a 

 spectator of such qualities and achievements. That a steady 

 purpose and a definite aim have been given to the jarring 

 forces which, at the beginning of the war, spent themselves 

 in the discussion of schemes which could only become oper 

 ative, if at all, after the war was over ; that a popular 

 excitement has been slowly intensified into an earnest 

 national will ; that a somewhat impracticable moral senti 

 ment has been made the unconscious instrument of a 

 practical moral end ; that the treason of covert enemies, 

 the jealousy of rivals, the unwise zeal of friends, have been 

 made not only useless for mischief, but even useful for 

 good ; that the conscientious sensitiveness of England to 

 the horrors of civil conflict has been prevented from com 

 plicating a domestic with a foreign war all these results, 

 any one of which might suffice to prove greatness in a ruler, 



