altogether the assertion that the Union must be
preserved.(2) About the same time, in a public speech, he said he was
not going to be "humbugged" by the bogy of secession, and gave his
fatuous promise that all the trouble would be ended inside ninety days.
For all his brilliancy of a sort, he was spiritually obtuse. On him,
as on Douglas, Fate had lavished opportunities to see life as it is, to
understand the motives of men; but it could not make him use them. He
was incorrigibly cynical. He could not divest himself of the idea that
all this confusion was hubbub, was but an ordinary political game, that
his only cue was to assist his adversaries in saving their faces. In
spite of his rich experience,--in spite of being an accomplished man of
the world,--at least in his own estimation--he was as blind to the real
motives of that Southern majority which had rejected Breckinridge as was
the inexperienced Lincoln. The coolness with which he modified Lincoln's
proposals was evidence that he considered himself the great Republican
and Lincoln an accident. He was to do the same again--to his own regret.

When Lincoln issued his ultimatum, he was approaching the summit, if not
at the very summit, of another of his successive waves of vitality, of
self-confidence. That depression which came upon him about the end of
1858, which kept him undecided, in a mood of excessive caution during
most of 1859, had passed away. The presidential campaign with its
thrilling tension, its excitement, had charged him anew with confidence.
Although one more eclipse was in store for him--the darkest eclipse of
all--he was very nearly the definitive Lincoln of history. At least, he
had the courage which that Lincoln was to show.

He was now the target for a besieging army of politicians clamoring for
"spoils" in the shape of promises of preferment. It was a miserable and
disgraceful assault which profoundly offended him.(3) To his mind this
was not the same thing as the simple-hearted personal politics of
his younger days--friends standing together and helping one another
along--but a gross and monstrous rapacity. It was the first chill shadow
that followed the election day.

There were difficult intrigues over the Cabinet. Promises made by his
managers at Chicago were presented for redemption. Rival candidates
bidding for his favor, tried to cut each other's throats. For example,
there was the intrigue of the War Department. The Lincoln managers