one knew. To follow him through the four years of civil
war which ensued is, of course, impossible here. Suffice it to say that
no greater, no more difficult, task has ever been faced by any man
in modern times, and no one ever met a fierce trial and conflict more
successfully.

Lincoln put to the front the question of the Union, and let the question
of slavery drop, at first, into the background. He used every exertion
to hold the border States by moderate measures, and, in this way,
prevented the spread of the rebellion. For this moderation, the
antislavery extremists in the North assailed him, but nothing shows more
his far-sighted wisdom and strength of purpose than his action at this
time. By his policy at the beginning of his administration, he held
the border States, and united the people of the North in defense of the
Union.

As the war went on, he went on, too. He had never faltered in his
feelings about slavery. He knew, better than any one, that the
successful dissolution of the Union by the slave power meant, not
only the destruction of an empire, but the victory of the forces of
barbarism. But he also saw, what very few others at the moment could
see, that, if he was to win, he must carry his people with him, step
by step. So when he had rallied them to the defense of the Union, and
checked the spread of secession in the border States, in the autumn of
1862 he announced that he would issue a proclamation freeing the slaves.
The extremists had doubted him in the beginning, the conservative and
the timid doubted him now, but when the Emancipation Proclamation was
issued, on January 1, 1863, it was found that the people were with him
in that, as they had been with him when he staked everything upon the
maintenance of the Union. The war went on to victory, and in 1864
the people showed at the polls that they were with the President, and
reelected him by overwhelming majorities. Victories in the field went
hand in hand with success at the ballot-box, and, in the spring of 1865,
all was over. On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered at Appomattox, and five
days later, on April 14, a miserable assassin crept into the box at the
theater where the President was listening to a play, and shot him. The
blow to the country was terrible beyond words, for then men saw, in one
bright flash, how great a man had fallen.

Lincoln died a martyr to the cause to which he had given his life, and
both life and death were heroic. The