following his own reelection a year later, did Lincoln
come so near being free from care as then. Perhaps that explains why
his fundamental literary power reasserted itself so remarkably, why this
speech of his at the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg
on the 19th of November, 1863, remains one of the most memorable
orations ever delivered:

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met
on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion
of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their
lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper
that we should do this.

"But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we
cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled
here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The
world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can
never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to
be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have
thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to
the great task remaining before us: that from these honored dead we
take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall
not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new
birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and
for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

CHAPTER VIII. THE RULE OF LINCOLN

The fundamental problem of the Lincoln Government was the raising of
armies, the sudden conversion of a community which was essentially
industrial into a disciplined military organization. The accomplishment
of so gigantic a transformation taxed the abilities of two Secretaries
of War. The first, Simon Cameron, owed his place in the Cabinet to
the double fact of being one of the ablest of political bosses and
of standing high among Lincoln's competitors for the Presidential
nomination. Personally honest, he was also a political cynic to whom
tradition ascribes the epigram defining an honest polit