ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 10? 



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, arid 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 the 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 

 arrangements were drawn, not so much from experience as 

 from general principles of right and wrong. When the 

 war came, their system continued to be applicable and 

 effective, for here again the reason of the people was to be 

 reached and kindled through their sentiments. It was one 

 of those periods of excitement, gathering, contagious, 

 universal, which, while they last, exalt and clarify the 

 minds of men, giving to the mere words country, human 

 rights, democracy, a meaning and a force beyond that of 

 sober and logical argument. They were convictions, main 

 tained and defended by the supreme logic of passion. That 



