ting beneath it, with an aggressive and
defiant enemy in front of it, with a public opinion divided,
distrustful, and compromising, behind it.

No more difficult task has ever been presented to any government
than that which Mr. Lincoln and his Cabinet assumed in the month
of March, 1861. To judge it now by any appearance of irresolution,
or by any seeming deficiency of courage, would be trying it by a
standard totally inapplicable and unfair. Before and beyond all
things, Mr. Lincoln desired to prevent war, and he felt that every
day of peace gave fresh hope that bloodshed might be avoided. In
his Inaugural address he had taken the strongest ground for the
preservation of the Union, and had carefully refrained from every
act and every expression which would justify, even in the public
opinion of the South, an outbreak of violence on the part of the
Confederates. He believed that the Southern revolt had attained
its great proportions in consequence of Mr. Buchanan's assertion
that he had not power to coerce a seceding State. Mr. Lincoln had
announced a different creed, and every week that the South continued
peaceful, his hope of amicable adjustment grew stronger. He believed
that with the continuance of peace, the Secessionists could be
brought to see that Union was better than war for all interests,
and that in an especial degree the institution of Slavery would be
imperiled by a resort to arms. He had faith in the sober second-
thought. If the South would deliberate, the Union would be saved.
He feared that the Southern mind was in the condition in which a
single untoward circumstance might precipitate a conflict, and he
determined that the blood of his brethren should not be on his
hands.

STATESMANSHIP OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

Mr. Lincoln saw, moreover, that war between a divided North and a
united South would be a remediless calamity. If, after all efforts
at peace, war should be found unavoidable, the Administration had
determined so to shape its policy, so to conduct its affairs, that
when the shock came it should leave the South entirely in the wrong,
and the government of the Union entirely in the right. Consolidated
as might be the front which the Rebellion would present, the
administration was resolved that it should not be more solid, more
immovable, more courageous, than that with which the supporters of
the government would meet it. Statesmanship cannot