em a new turn, a new significance.

Lincoln's was one of those natures in which ideas have to become latent
before they can be precipitated by outward circumstance into definite
form. Always with him the idea that was to become powerful at a crisis
was one that he had long held in solution, that had permeated
him without his formulating it, that had entwined itself with his
heartstrings; never was it merely a conscious act of the logical
faculty. His characteristics as a lawyer--preoccupation with basal
ideas, with ethical significance, with those emotions which form the
ultimates of life--these always determined his thought. His idea of
nationalism was a typical case. He had always believed in the reality of
the national government as a sovereign fact. But he had thought little
about it; rather he had taken it for granted. It was so close to his
desire that he could not without an effort acknowledge the sincerity
of disbelief in it. That was why he was so slow in forming a true
comprehension of the real force opposing him. Disunion had appeared
to him a mere device of party strategy. That it was grounded upon a
genuine, a passionate conception of government, one irreconcilable with
his own, struck him, when at last he grasped it, as a deep offense. The
literary statesman sprang again to life. He threw all the strength of
his mind, the peculiar strength that had made him president, into a
statement of the case for nationalism.

His vehicle for publishing his case was the first message to
Congress.(1) It forms an amazing contrast with the first inaugural.
The argument over slavery that underlies the whole of the inaugural has
vanished. The message does not mention slavery. From the first word to
the last, it is an argument for the right of the central government to
exercise sovereign power, and for the duty of the American people--to
give their lives for the Union. No hint of compromise; nought of the
cautious and conciliatory tone of the inaugural. It is the blast of a
trumpet--a war trumpet. It is the voice of a stern mind confronting an
adversary that arouses in him no sympathy, no tolerance even, much less
any thought of concession. Needless to insist that this adversary is
an idea. Toward every human adversary, Lincoln was always unbelievably
tender. Though little of a theologian, he appreciated intuitively
some metaphysical ideas; he projected into politics the philosopher's
distinction between sin and the sinner.