154 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



reckoned the most momentous of modern times — was 

 to be waged by a peoj^le divided at home, unnerved by 

 fifty years of jDeace, under a chief magistrate without ex- 

 perience and witho\it reputation, whose every measure 

 was sure to be cunni-ngly 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 sliould 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 



