Abraham Lincoln, Volume I

by Jr. John T. Morse

North. With what anxiety, with how much doubt, the people of the Northern States scanned their singular and untried choice can never be fully appreciated by persons who cannot remember those wearisome, overladen days. He was an unknown quantity in the awful problem. In his debates with Douglas he had given some indication of what was in him, but outside of Illinois not one man in a hundred was familiar with those debates. Nor did even they furnish conclusive proof of his administrative capacity, especially in these days of novel and mortal stress. For a time he seemed to wait, to drift; until the day of his inauguration he gave no sign; then in his speech the people, whose hearts were standing still in their eagerness to hear, found reassuring sentences. Yet nothing seemed to follow during many anxious weeks; the suns rose and the suns set, and still the leader raised no standard around which the people could rally, uttered no inspiring word of command which could unite the dissevered political cliques. What was in his mind all this while can never be known, though no knowledge could be more interesting. Was he in a simple attitude of expectancy, awaiting the march of events, watchful for some one of them to give him the cue as well as the opportunity for action? Many believe that this was the case; and if it was, no other course could have

been more intelligent. In due time events came which brought decision with them, the crisis shaped itself, and he was ready with clear and prompt action. When it was known what he would do, matters were settled. The people, once assured that the fight would be made, entered upon it with such a temper and in possession of such resources that, in spite of those trying fluctuations which any wise man could have foreseen, they were sure in the end to win.

It would be out of place in these prefatory paragraphs, to attempt any skeleton picture of the momentous struggle. I believe that the story is told very completely in the lives which compose this group. The statesmen who controlled events during the war were a new group; they were not young men, neither were they unknown or untried in public affairs; but they were for the first time in control. In their younger days they had been under the shadow and predominance of the old school of statesmen, whose object had been to prevent, or at least to defer indefinitely, precisely that crisis which was now present. They themselves, on the other hand, had been strenuously advocating the policies which had at last brought that crisis into existence. But the election of Abraham Lincoln was their first, and as yet their only triumph. In all previous trials of strength they had been

defeated. Their present success was like the bursting of a torrent through a dam. At the instant when they attained it they found themselves involved in a political swirl and clash of momentous difficulties. It was a tremendous test to which they were being subjected. The part which Lincoln played, at their head, I have endeavored to depict in his life. The manner in which he controlled without commanding, his rare combination of confidence in his own judgment with entire absence of self-assertion, his instinctive appreciation of the meaning and bearing of facts, his capacity to recognize the precise time until which action should be postponed and then to know that action must be taken, suggesting the idea of prescience, his long-suffering and tolerance towards impolitic, obstructive, or over-rash individuals, his marvelous gift of keeping in touch with the people, form a group of qualities which, united in the President of the United States at that mortal juncture, are as strong evidence as anything which this generation has seen to corroborate a faith in an overruling Providence. Conceive what might have happened if it had been some other of our presidents who had happened to have his term begin in 1861! Yet, after all the study that can be made of him, there are unexplainable elements in Lincoln's character which will leave him forever

an enigma. If the world ever settles down to the acceptance of any definite, accurate picture of him, it will surely be a false picture. There must always be vague, indefinable uncertainties in any presentation of him which shall be truly made.

Of the men who labored with him, I have left myself room to say little, nor need much be said here. Their lives tell their stories. Taken together, these biographies contain the history, upon the civil side, of the war period. Seward represents the policy of the administration as a whole, for all civil business centred in the office of the secretary of state. He was a man of extraordinary ability. It is true that he made a strange blunder or two, at the outset, odd episodes in his intelligent, clear-sighted, cool-headed career,—psychologically interesting, as has been suggested; but he immediately recovered himself and settled down to that course of wise statesmanship which was justly to be expected of him.

Chase handled the finances of the country with brilliant success. People have criticised him, especially have said that his legal-tender scheme was a needless and mischievous measure. But his task was immeasurably difficult, and he had to act with great promptitude, having little time for consideration, obliged to provide instantly for immediate exigencies, forced to respect the present state of

feeling among the moneyed classes, though it might be transitory, and to be controlled by the possibilities of the passing moment. He met the gigantic daily outlay without even a temporary interruption, and the country grew rich, not only nominally in an inflated currency, but actually in a great development of material resources, beneath his management of the treasury. To find fault with him, and to talk of the "might have been" seems unworthy; also unsatisfactory, since the consequences of a different policy are wholly matter of supposition.

Charles Sumner, the preacher of the crusade, stands for the moral element. Possibly his most important work came before the war. But the prestige which he had gained made him a man to be reckoned with, and he had a following of fervent and resolute men in the country so numerous that his support was essential and his opinions had to be treated with respect.

The career of Charles Francis Adams in England will be read for the first time in the life which forms a part of this series. It has been written by his son, of course with every possible advantage, and it is one of the most interesting chapters in the history of the civil war. Of him, too, it may be said that he seems to have been specially raised up for precisely the duty which he had to