all the difficulties besetting him, Mr. Lincoln did well, although
he might have done better. Much allowance, must be made to one
situated as he was. He undoubtedly deserves the most of the encomiums
that have been lavished upon him. At the same time, the conclusion is
inevitable that his fame as a statesman will ultimately depend less
upon his treatment of the slavery issue than upon any other part of
his public administration. The fact will always appear that it was
the policy of Salmon P. Chase, Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens,
Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, and other advocates of the radical
cure, with whom the President was in constant opposition, that
prevailed in the end, and with a decisiveness that proves it to have
been feasible and sound from the beginning. Mr. Lincoln's most ultra
prescription--his Emancipation Proclamation--was ineffective. If it
was intended to eradicate slavery altogether, it was too narrow; if to
free the slaves of Rebels only, it was too broad. So with his other
propositions. His thirty-seven-year-liberation scheme, his "tinkering
off" policy (as he called it) for Missouri, his reconstruction
proposals, and his colonization projects, all failed. Indeed, if we
take his official action from first to last, it is a question whether
the President, owing to his extreme conservatism, was not more of an
obstructionist than a promoter of the Anti-Slavery cause.

Not that any change of opinion on the point just stated will
materially affect the general estimate in which Mr. Lincoln is held.
Although his popularity, due, in part at least, to the extravagance of
over-zealous admirers, has without much doubt already passed its
perihelion, it can never disappear or greatly diminish. His untiring
and exhaustive labors for the Union, the many lovable traits of his
unique personality, his unquestionable honesty, his courage, his
patriotism, and, above all, his tragic taking off, have unalterably
determined his place in the regard of his countrymen. Indeed, so
strong is the admiration in which he is held, that it would be vain to
attempt to disabuse many, by any amount of proof and argument, of the
opinion that African slavery in this country was actually and
exclusively killed by a presidential edict. So firmly fixed in the
popular belief is that historical myth that it will undoubtedly live
for many years, if not generations, although history in the end will
right it like all other misunderstandi