the
nation."

[Footnote 714: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 3, p. 513.]

[Footnote 715: Nicolay and Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 3, p. 343,
_note_.]

This was the germ of a fine poetic thought, says John Hay, that "Mr.
Lincoln took, and, in a new development and perfect form, gave to it
the life and spirit and beauty which have made it celebrated." As it
appears in the President-elect's clear, firm handwriting, it reads as
follows: "I am loth to close. We are not enemies but friends. We must
not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break
our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from
every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and
hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of
the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better
angels of our nature."[716]

[Footnote 716: _Ibid._, pp. 343, 344, and _note_.

For fac-simile of the paragraph as written by Seward and rewritten by
Lincoln, see _Ibid._, Vol. 3, p. 336. For the entire address, with all
suggested and adopted changes, see _Ibid._, Vol. 3, pp. 327 to 344.

At Seward's dinner table on the evening of March 4, the peroration of
the inaugural address was especially commended by A. Oakey Hall,
afterward mayor of New York, who quickly put it into rhyme:

"The mystic chords of Memory
That stretch from patriot graves;
From battlefields to living hearts,
Or hearth-stones freed from slaves,
An Union chorus shall prolong,
And grandly, proudly swell,
When by those better angels touched
Who in all natures dwell."]

The spirit that softened Lincoln's inaugural into an appeal that
touched every heart, had breathed into the debates of Congress the
conciliation and forbearance that marked the divide between the
conservative and radical Republican. This difference, at the last
moment, occasioned Lincoln much solicitude. He had come to Washington
with his Cabinet completed except as to a secretary of the treasury
and a secretary of war. For the latter place Seward preferred Simon
Cameron, and, in forcing the appointment by his powerful advocacy, he
dealt a retributive blow to Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania, who had
vigorously opposed him at Chicago and was now the most conspicuous of
Cameron's foes.[717] But Senator Chase of Ohio, to whom Seward
strenuously objected because of his uncompromising attitude, was given
the tre