154 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



reckoned the most momentous of modern times was 

 to be waged by a people divided at home, unnerved by 

 fifty years of peace, under a chief magistrate without ex 

 perience and without reputation, whose every measure 

 was sure to be cunningly hampered by a jealous and 

 unscrupulous minority, and who, while dealing with un 

 heard-of complications at home, must soothe a hostile 

 neutrality abroad, waiting only a pretext to become war. 

 All this was to be done without warning and without 

 preparation, while at the same time a social revolution 

 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 histo 

 rian 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 con 

 tinuous 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 framework 

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

 a foreigner should be blind to the grandeur of the com 

 bat 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 con 

 ceive 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 achieve 

 ments. That a steady purpose and a definite aim have 

 been given to the jarring forces which, at the beginning 



