of the great
classics of American literature and history. Thus he ended: "I am loth
to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.
Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of
affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every
battlefield and patriot's grave to every living heart and hearthstone
all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when
again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our
nature."

Through the weeks that followed, Lincoln was plunged in a sea of
perplexities, while the nation seemed weltering in chaos, with nothing
clear but the steady purpose of the Confederate leaders to maintain
their position and achieve complete independence by the shortest road.
Lincoln had formed a Cabinet including some very able and some ordinary
men, with one--Seward--of highest promise and at first of most
disappointing performance. He regarded himself as the real power in the
administration; he underrated alike the gravity of the situation and the
President's ability to cope with it; he trusted to conciliation and
smooth assurance; and he tried to take the reins of control into his own
hands--an attempt which Lincoln quietly foiled. The President and his
Cabinet were as yet strangers to each other. In the Senate (the House
was not in session), Douglas assailed the President's position, and
declared three courses to be open: Constitutional redress of the South's
grievances; the acceptance of Secession; or its forcible
repression,--the first the best, the last the worst. Three commissioners
of the Confederacy were in Washington, refused official recognition, but
holding some indirect intercourse with Seward, which they apparently
misunderstood and exaggerated. A swarm of office-seekers, like Egyptian
locusts, beset the President amid his heavy cares. The border States,
trembling in the balance, called for the wisest handling. Heaviest and
most pressing was the problem what to do with Fort Sumter. Closely
beleaguered, with failing supplies, it must soon fall unless relieved.
Almost impossible to relieve or save it, said the army officers; easy to
slip in supplies, contradicted the naval officers. Leave Sumter to fall
and you dishearten the North, urged Chase and Blair in the Cabinet;
answered Seward, Reinforce it, and you provoke instant war.

Lincoln answered the question in his own way. He was true to the
principle he had laid down