and so little interference with the
ordinary course of law outside the field of military operations. No
American President ever wielded such power as that which was thrust into
Lincoln's hands. It is to be hoped that no American President ever
will have to be entrusted with such power again. But no man was ever
entrusted with it to whom its seductions were less dangerous than they
proved to be to Abraham Lincoln. With scrupulous care he endeavored,
even under the most trying circumstances, to remain strictly within the
constitutional limitations of his authority; and whenever the boundary
became indistinct, or when the dangers of the situation forced him
to cross it, he was equally careful to mark his acts as exceptional
measures, justifiable only by the imperative necessities of the civil
war, so that they might not pass into history as precedents for similar
acts in time of peace. It is an unquestionable fact that during the
reconstruction period which followed the war, more things were done
capable of serving as dangerous precedents than during the war itself.
Thus it may truly be said of him not only that under his guidance the
republic was saved from disruption and the country was purified of the
blot of slavery, but that, during the stormiest and most perilous crisis
in our history, he so conducted the government and so wielded his almost
dictatorial power as to leave essentially intact our free institutions
in all things that concern the rights and liberties of the citizens.
He understood well the nature of the problem. In his first message to
Congress he defined it in admirably pointed language: "Must a government
be of necessity too strong for the liberties of its own people, or
too weak to maintain its own existence? Is there in all republics this
inherent weakness?" This question he answered in the name of the great
American republic, as no man could have answered it better, with a
triumphant "No...."

It has been said that Abraham Lincoln died at the right moment for his
fame. However that may be, he had, at the time of his death, certainly
not exhausted his usefulness to his country. He was probably the only
man who could have guided the nation through the perplexities of the
reconstruction period in such a manner as to prevent in the work of
peace the revival of the passions of the war. He would indeed not have
escaped serious controversy as to details of policy; but he could have
weathered it far better t