“This human struggle and scramble for office, for a way to live without work, will finally test the strength of our institutions,” he said to Mr. Herndon.
That has been the idea of every tormented President of the United States, from Washington to Roosevelt.
“He is an old criminal lawyer,” wrote one of his secretaries, “practiced in observing the ways of rascals, accustomed to reading them and circumventing them, but he does not commonly tell any man precisely what he thinks of him.”
Even so able a man as Secretary Seward did not at first recognize the force, genius and dignity that lay behind the rough, whimsical exterior of Lincoln, and gave himself the airs of a superior; but presently even Seward said: “He is the best of us all.”
While the country was ringing with the sounds of marching men after the fall of Fort Sumter, it was reported that a great force of Confederates was moving against Washington. There were only four or five thousand troops in the capital. A Massachusetts regiment on the way to Washington had been attacked by a mob. The Seventh Regiment of New York was expected, but the Marylanders had torn up the tracks and it did not come. The city was in danger of famine. The Confederate attack was hourly expected. The capital was cut off.
Lincoln’s anguish was unconcealed. Walking up and down his office, with a look of pain on his face, he gave vent to his dread.
“I begin to believe that there is no North. The Seventh Regiment is a myth.”
Again he paced the floor for half an hour.
“Why don’t they come? Why don’t they come?” he groaned.
