the Gulf of Mexico, which the
administration was prepared to defend. And now it was proposed that
Lincoln, who had put down his foot with a bang yesterday, should take it
up with a shuffle to-day. And Lincoln reserved his judgment; and, which
is much more, went on reserving it till the question nearly settled
itself to his disgrace.

Lincoln lacked here, it would seem, not by any means the qualities of the
trained administrator, but just that rough perception and vigour which
untaught genius might be supposed to possess. The passionate Jackson
(who, by the way, was a far more educated man in the respects which
count) would not have acted so. Lincoln, it is true, had declared that
he would take no provocative step--"In your hands, my dissatisfied
fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war,"
and the risk which he would have taken by over-ruling that day the
opinion of the bulk of his Cabinet based on that of his chief military
adviser is obvious, but it seems to have been a lesser risk than he did
take in delaying so long to overrule his Cabinet. It is precisely
characteristic of his strength and of his weakness that he did not at
once yield to his advisers; that he long continued weighing the matter
undisturbed by the danger of delay; that he decided as soon as and no
sooner than he felt sure as to the political results, which alone here
mattered, for the military consequences amounted to nothing.

This story was entangled from the first with another difficult story.
Commissioners from the Southern Confederacy came to Washington and sought
interviews with Seward; they came to treat for the recognition of the
Confederacy and the peaceful surrender of forts and the like within its
borders. Meanwhile the action of Virginia was in the balance, and the
"Peace Convention," summoned by Virginia, still "threshing again," as
Lowell said, "the already twice-threshed straw of debate." The action of
Virginia and of other border States, about which Lincoln was intensely
solicitous, would certainly depend upon the action of the Government
towards the States that had already seceded. Might it not be well that
the Government should avoid immediate conflict with South Carolina about
Fort Sumter, though conflict with the Confederacy about Fort Pickens and
the rest would still impend? Was it not possible that conflict could be
staved off till an agreement could be reached with Virginia and the
border