h now became common; and the
Committee of Thirteen found itself unable to agree.

It is unnecessary to repeat what Lincoln's conviction on this, to him the
one essential point of policy, was, or to quote from the numerous letters
in which from the time of his nomination he tried to keep the minds of
his friends firm on this single principle, and to show them that if there
were the slightest further yielding as to this, save indeed as to the
peculiar case of New Mexico, which did not matter, and which perhaps he
regarded as conceded already, the Southern policy of extending slavery
and of "filibustering" against neighbouring counties for that purpose
would revive in full force, and the whole labour of the Republican
movement would have to begin over again. Since his election he had been
writing also to Southern politicians who were personally friendly, to
Gilmer of North Carolina, to whom he offered Cabinet office, and to
Stephens, making absolutely plain that his difference with them lay in
this one point, but making it no less plain that on this point he was,
with entire respect to them, immovable. Now, on December 22, the _New
York Tribune_ was "enabled to state that Mr. Lincoln stands now as he
stood in May last, square upon the Republican platform." The writing
that Weed brought to Seward must have said, perhaps more elaborately, the
same. If Lincoln had not stood square upon that platform there were
others like Senator Wade of Ohio and Senator Grimes of Iowa who might
have done so and might have been able to wreck the compromise. Lincoln,
however, did wreck it, at a time when it seemed likely to succeed, and it
is most probable that thereby he caused the Civil War. It cannot be said
that he definitely expected the Civil War. Probably he avoided making
any definite forecast; but he expressed no alarm, and he privately told a
friend about this time that "he could not in his heart believe that the
South designed the overthrow of the Government." But, if he had in his
heart believed it, nothing in his life gives reason to think that he
would have been more anxious to conciliate the South; on the contrary, it
is in line with all we know of his feelings to suppose that he would have
thought firmness all the more imperative. We cannot recall the solemnity
of his long-considered speech about "a house divided against itself,"
with which all his words and acts accorded, without seeing that, if
perhaps he speculated l