ay to him, consists in the careful examination
of just those actions and just those qualities of his upon which candid
detraction has in fact fastened, or on which candid admiration has
pronounced with hesitancy.

CHAPTER VII

THE CONDITIONS OF THE WAR

In recounting the history of Lincoln's Presidency, it will be necessary
to mark the course of the Civil War stage by stage as we proceed.
There are, however, one or two general features of the contest with
which it may be well to deal by way of preface.

It has seldom happened that a people entering upon a great war have
understood at the outset what the character of that war would be. When
the American Civil War broke out the North expected an easy victory,
but, as disappointment came soon and was long maintained, many clever
people adopted the opinion, which early prevailed in Europe, that there
was no possibility of their success at all. At the first the
difficulty of the task was unrecognised; under early and long-sustained
disappointment the strength by which those difficulties could be
overcome began to be despaired of without reason.

The North, after several slave States, which were at first doubtful,
had adhered to it, had more than double the population of the South; of
the Southern population a very large part were slaves, who, though
industrially useful, could not be enlisted. In material resources the
superiority of the North was no less marked, and its material wealth
grew during the war to a greater extent than had perhaps ever happened
to any other belligerent power. These advantages were likely to be
decisive in the end, if the North could and would endure to the end.
But at the very beginning these advantages simply did not tell at all,
for the immediately available military force of the North was
insignificant, and that of the South clearly superior to it; and even
when they began to tell, it was bound to be very long before their full
weight could be brought to bear. And the object which was to be
obtained was supremely difficult of attainment. It was not a defeat of
the South which might result in the alteration of a frontier, the
cession of some Colonies, the payment of an indemnity, and such like
matters; it was a conquest of the South so complete that the Union
could be restored on a firmer basis than before. Any less result than
this would be failure in the war. And the country, to be thus
completely conquered by an unmilitary