and to rally to one
flag generals as widely apart in sentiment and policy as Phelps and
Fitz John Porter. That under such difficulties he sometimes erred in
judgment and occasionally failed in execution, is not strange, for he
was a man, but that he erred so seldom, and that he so admirably
retrieved his mistakes, shows that he was more by far than an
ordinary man; more by far than an average statesman. Standing where
we do today, we feel that he was divinely appointed for the crisis;
that he was chosen to be the Moses of our pilgrimage, albeit, he was
to die at Pisgah and be buried against Beth-Peor, while a Joshua
should be commissioned to lead us into the land of promise.

In studying the administration of these four eventful years, it
seems to me there were four grand landmarks of principle governing
him, ever visible to the eye of the President, by which he steadily
made his way.

I. THE UNION IS INCAPABLE OF DIVISION.

In his first Inaugural, he said: "I hold that in contemplation of
universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is
perpetual." In his reply to Fernando Wood, then Mayor of New York, he
said, "There is nothing that could ever bring me willingly to consent
to the destruction of the Union." By this rule he walked. The Union
was one for all time, and there was no authority for its division
lodged anywhere. He would use no force, would exercise no authority
not needed for this purpose. But what force _was_ needed, whether
moral or physical, should be employed. Hence the call for troops.
Hence the marching armies of the Republic, and the thunder of cannon
at the gates of Vicksburg, Charleston and Richmond. Hence the
suspension of the _habeas corpus_, the seizure and occasional
imprisonment of treason-shriekers and sympathizers, for which he has
been denounced as a tyrant by journals, which, slandering him while
living, have the effrontery to put on the semblance of grief and
throw lying emblems of mourning to the wind! For the exercise of that
authority, he went for trial to the American people, and they
triumphantly sustained him.

II. The second grand regulating idea of his administration may be
best stated in his own words: "GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE BY THE
PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE." He conceded the people _to be the
Government_. Their will was above the opinion of secretaries and
generals. He recognized their right to dictate the policy of the
administration. Their majesty