"Tell the English people
I mean them no harm." Yet it is evident that Lincoln's supporters in
America, the writer of the Biglow Papers, for instance, ascribed to him
a wise, restraining power in the _Trent_ dispute. What is more,
Lincoln later claimed this for himself. Two or three years later, in
one of the confidences with which he often startled men who were but
slight acquaintances, but who generally turned out worthy of
confidence, he exclaimed with emphatic self-satisfaction, "Seward knows
that I am his master," and recalled with satisfaction how he had forced
Seward to yield to England in the _Trent_ affair. It would have been
entirely unlike him to claim praise when it was wholly undue to him; we
find him, for example, writing to Fox, of the Navy Department, about "a
blunder which was probably in part mine, and certainly was not yours";
so that a puzzling question arises here. It is quite possible that
Lincoln, who did not press his proposal of arbitration, really
manoeuvred Seward and the Cabinet into full acceptance of the British
demands by making them see the consequences of any other action. It is
also, however, likely enough that, being, as he was, interested in
arbitration generally, he was too inexperienced to see the
inappropriateness of the proposal in this case. If so, we may none the
less credit him with having forced Seward to work for peace and
friendly relations with Great Britain, and made that minister the
agent, more skilful than himself, of a peaceful resolution which in its
origin was his own.

5. _The Great Questions of Domestic Policy_.

The larger questions of civil policy which arose out of the fact of the
war, and which weighed heavily on Lincoln before the end of 1861, can
be related with less intricate detail if the fundamental point of
difficulty is made clear.

Upon July 4 Congress met. In an able Message which was a skilful but
simple appeal not only to Congress, but to the "plain people," the
President set forth the nature of the struggle as he conceived it,
putting perhaps in its most powerful form the contention that the Union
was indissoluble, and declaring that the "experiment" of "our popular
government" would have failed once for all if it did not prove that
"when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no
successful appeal back to bullets." He recounted the steps which he
had taken since the bombardment of Fort Sumter, some of which migh