disgrace known as the regime of the
"carpet-baggers." How far Lincoln would have succeeded in saving the
country from these humiliating processes, no one can say; but that he
would have strenuously disapproved much that was done is not open to
reasonable doubt. On the other hand, it is by no means certain that his
theories, at least so far as they had been developed up to the time of
his death, either could have been, or ought to have been carried out.
This seems to be generally agreed. Perhaps they were too liberal;
perhaps he confided too much in a sudden change of heart, an immediate
growth of loyalty, among persons of whom nearly all were still
embittered, still believed that it was in a righteous cause that they
had suffered a cruel defeat.

But if the feasibility of Mr. Lincoln's plan is matter of fruitless
disputation, having to do only with fancied probabilities, and having
never been put to the proof of trial, at least no one will deny that it
was creditable to his nature. A strange freak of destiny arranged that
one of the most obstinate, sanguinary wars of history should be
conducted by one of the most humane men who ever lived, and that blood
should run in rivers at the order of a ruler to whom bloodshed was
repugnant, and to whom the European idol of military glory seemed a
symbol of barbarism. During the war Lincoln's chief purpose was the
restoration of national unity, and his day-dream was that it should be
achieved as a sincere and hearty reunion in feeling as well as in fact.
As he dwelt with much earnest aspiration upon this consummation, he
perhaps came to imagine a possibility of its instant accomplishment,
which did not really exist. His longing for a genuinely reunited country
was not a pious form of expression, but an intense sentiment, and an end
which he definitely expected to bring to pass. Not improbably this frame
of mind induced him to advance too fast and too far, in order to meet
with welcoming hand persons who were by no means in such a condition of
feeling that they could grasp that hand in good faith, or could fulfill
at once the obligations which such a reconciliation would have imposed
upon them, as matter of honor, in all their civil and political
relations. The reaction involved in passing from a state of hostilities
to a state of peace, the deep gratification of seeing so mortal a
struggle determined in favor of the national life, may have carried him
somewhat beyond the limitati