his unconquerable tenacity, They had played with effect on
the fears of Lincoln; they had recognised in him the motive power of
the Federal hosts; but they had not yet learned, for the Northern
people themselves had not yet learned it, that they were opposed by
an adversary whose resolution was as unyielding as their own, who
loved the Union even as they loved Virginia, and who ruled the nation
with the same tact and skill that they ruled their soldiers.

In these pages Mr. Lincoln has not been spared. He made mistakes, and
he himself would have been the last to claim infallibility. He had
entered the White House with a rich endowment of common-sense, a high
sense of duty, and an extraordinary knowledge of the American
character; but his ignorance of statesmanship directing arms was
great, and his military errors were numerous. Putting these aside,
his tenure of office during the dark days of "61 and "62 had been
marked by the very highest political sagacity; his courage and his
patriotism had sustained the nation in its distress; and in spite of
every obstacle he was gradually bringing into being a unity of
sympathy and of purpose, which in the early days of the war had
seemed an impossible ideal. Not the least politic of his measures was
the edict of emancipation, published after the battle of Sharpsburg.
It was not a measure without flaw. It contained paragraphs which
might fairly be interpreted, and were so interpreted by the
Confederates, as inciting the negroes to rise against their masters,
thus exposing to all the horrors of a servile insurrection, with its
accompaniments of murder and outrage, the farms and plantations where
the women and children of the South lived lonely and unprotected. But
if the edict served only to embitter the Southerners, to bind the
whole country together in a still closer league of resistance, and to
make peace except by conquest impossible, it was worth the price. The
party in the North which fought for the re-establishment of the Union
had carried on the war with but small success. The tale of reverses
had told at last upon recruiting. Men were unwilling to come forward;
and those who were bribed by large bounties to join the armies were
of a different character to the original volunteer. Enthusiasm in the
cause was fast diminishing when Lincoln, purely on his own
initiative, proclaimed emancipation, and, investing the war with the
dignity of a crusade, inspired the soldier with a n