the new Administration prior to the attack upon Sumter
forms perhaps the most remarkable chapter in the history of the
war. All the troubles of the previous Administration were now
turned over to Mr. Lincoln, and while no measures had been provided
to aid him in their settlement the crisis was constantly becoming
more imminent. The country was perfectly at sea; and while all
hope of reconciliation was fading from day to day, Mr. Seward
insisted that peace would come within "sixty days." His optimism
would have been most amusing, if the salvation of the country had
not been at stake. The President himself not only still hoped,
but believed, that there would be no war; and notwithstanding all
the abuse that had been heaped upon Mr. Buchanan by the Republicans
for his feeble and vacillating course, and especially his denial
of the right of the government to coerce the recusant States, the
policy of the new Administration, up to the attack upon Sumter,
was identical with that of his predecessor. In Mr. Seward's official
letter to Mr. Adams, dated April 10, 1861, he says the President
"would not be disposed to reject a cardinal dogma of theirs (the
secessionists), namely, that the Federal Government could not reduce
the seceding States to obedience through conquest, even though he
were disposed to question that proposition. But in fact the
President willingly accepts it as true. Only and imperial and
despotic Government could subjugate thoroughly disaffected and
insurrectionary members of the State. * * * The President, on the
one hand, will not suffer the Federal authority to fall into
abeyance, nor will he, on the other hand, aggravate existing evils
by attempts at coercion, which must assume the direct form of war
against any of the revolutionary States." These are very remarkable
avowals, in the light of the absolute unavoidableness of the conflict
at the time they were made; and they naturally tended to precipitate
rather than avert the threatened catastrophe. It will not do to
say that Secretary Seward spoke only for himself, and not for the
Administration; for the fact has since been established by the
evidence of other members of the Cabinet that Mr. Lincoln, while
he had great faith in Mr. Seward at first, was always himself the
President. No member of it was his dictator. I do not say that
he endorsed all Mr. Seward's peculiar views, for the latter went
still further, as the country has since learned, a