Secretary of the Treasury; Gideon Welles became Secretary of the Navy; Montgomery Blair, PostmasterGeneral; Edward Bates, of Missouri, Attorney-General; Caleb B. Smith, Secretary of the Interior; while the Secretary of War was Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, later on succeeded by Edwin M. Stanton. Of these statesmen, strong and able though they severally were, the master hand in the rule of the nation was Lincoln himself, as we see in his effective though quiet rebuke to Seward, who had showed a disposition shortly after the President's installation, if not to take the direction of affairs into his own hand, to assert his own individuality as chief minister of the State. Not to be borne was this impatience of Mr. Seward, for Mr. Lincoln's capacity was undoubted to manage both affairs and men under him, while doing no violence constitutionally by any arbitrary proceedings of his own, or in vital matters overriding the wise, legitimate counsels of his Cabinet.

The aggressive act of the Confederacy in its attack on Fort Sumter, while it startled the North and inflamed its people with a righteous indignation, was promptly and vigorously met by President Lincoln, by an instant call, as commander-in-chief, for 75.000 men of the Union militia--a call that was immediately and enthusiastically responded to. With its issue as a retort to the Southern challenge to battle, Mr. Lincoln commanded the seceding States in arms to disperse and return peacefully to their homes within twenty days, while he at the same time appealed "to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid the effort to maintain the honor, the integrity and existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government." This was followed by placing the Southern ports under blockade, and by calls for larger levies of troops to cope with the crisis, which, on and after the battle of Bull Run (July 21, 1861) assumed menacing and destructive proportions. So grave was the emergency, and so protracted as well as disastrous at

first to the Northern arms was the struggle, that the cares and responsibilities of his exalted office bore heavily on the President and put a most serious and constant strain upon him and his Administration.

Especially onerous were the duties and depressing the effects upon Mr. Lincoln when a year even had elapsed with no decisive results, although at this time 200,000 men had been put in the field and experiment after experiment had been tried with the generals who had been successively appointed to chief command in the War. Amid the perplexities of the time, and the many discouragements and saddening military reverses that marked his four years' incumbency of office, only a resolute, patriotic purpose and an undaunted, invincible spirit could have sustained Mr. Lincoln in his duties until light at length, happily, broke through the gloom and the North emerged triumphant from the conflict.

Our purpose

The details of the mighty struggle, we need hardly say, it is foreign to the motif of the present volume here to relate; nor is there need obviously of this, with the many histories of the war and biographies of its several chief commanders available to the reader. rather is to follow, in as brief compass as possible, the main incidents in the career of President Lincoln, as an introduction to his chief Speeches and Addresses, and to throw light upon the mental and moral character of the man and on his equipment as an orator and debater of the first eminence among great American Statesmen. As we have said, the conflict, with its repeated disasters and dismays throughout the dark days of its early conduct, told heavily upon the President; and great was the tax upon his energies and anxieties in directing and managing affairs and in keeping the nation in heart to pursue the war to a successful close. Nor was the task made easier with dissension in the Cabinet, and criticisms from the outside, including all manner of misrepresentations and sometimes ridiculings and malignings, uncomplain

ingly borne, with the sturdiness and chivalry of his kindly, inoffensive nature. Obviously, moreover, the matter of selecting and appointing the generals-in-chief placed a heavy responsibility upon the President's shoulders, and often, unfortunately, was he called to this duty, in consequence of the successive failures or tardiness in movement of those in chief command. The restraint he placed upon himself in the matter of emancipating the slaves was a further trial to Lincoln, since, however anxious he was to resort to the measure, which finally led to the discomfiture of the South and brought the War to a close, he was long deterred from putting the liberating edict in force until it became indispensable (as well as justifiable) as a means "to the preservation of the Constitution through the preservation of the nation." At length, the time came when the peremptory decree of Emancipation could with reason and certain effectiveness be launched; and this was done Jan. 1, 1863, with obvious and fortunate results. Almost instantly thereafter there were signs of breaking day, in the events that followedin the siege and capture of Vicksburg and the clearing and opening of the Mississippi; in the military movements that led to the cutting of the Confederate States in twain; and in the operations, later on, such as the great battle of Chattanooga, Sheridan's driving the enemy from the Valley of the Shenandoah, the capture of Mobile, and the movements of Grant on his onward march upon Richmond, with Lee's rout and surrender at Appomattox and the finale of the war. The conflict, on both sides, had its appalling losses of both life and treasure; but the end, forecast even before his passing tragically from the scene, was to cheer Lincoln's heart and gladden his soul, despite all the sacrifices, on the Northern side, entailed to preserve the Union.

Though the war in many quarters had its numberless active and noisy opponents, and though many, more reasonably, grumbled at the entailed alarming deprecia

tion of the currency and the heaping up of financial deficits, with burdening pension-list imposts, Mr. Lincoln, at the expiring of his first term, was reëlected in 1864, with Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, on the ticket with him for Vice-President. Mr. Lincoln's election for a new term gave occasion for the preparation and delivery of the great Chief's Second Inaugural Address (delivered at Washington, Mar. 4. 1865), an utterance of brief, but dignified and memorable, interest. In the address, as it has been observed, are to be noted Mr. Lincoln's characteristic "tenderness and compassion, blended with stern energy and iron firmness of will, which shrank from bloodshed and violence, yet counted any sacrifice of blood and treasure as of little account in comparison with the transcendent blessing of national union and liberty." It closes with the following fine adjuration: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to build up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan -to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations." More brief still, but surpassing the Second Inaugural in pathetic tenderness and high literary interest, is Mr. Lincoln's address at the Dedication (Nov. 19, 1863) of the Gettysburg National Cemetery. For simple but fervid eloquence and unstudied beauty of rhetoric, the Address has hardly its equal among the immortal utterances of the world's oratory. Especially noteworthy is the dignity of its rhythmic sentences, as are its reticence and its remarkable condensation. How true and touching, as well as beautiful, is the following passage: "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.”

The auspicious aspect of affairs in 1865, in the prospect of a speedy termination of the prolonged and disastrous war, spread elation over the North and was an immense relief to all classes of the people. By President Lincoln it was hailed with manifest inward satisfaction; while great was his delight at the coming peaceful reunion of the nation. Happily, ere his own tragic death came, he was to learn of almost the final incident in the long chronicle of internecine strife, for at Appomattox, on April 9th, Lee, the great leader of the Southern arms, surrendered the army of Northern Virginia to General Grant, and practically the end came of the rebellion. In startling and pitiful contrast to the return of peace over the land, was the event which sent a thrill of horror throughout and beyond the nation, the striking down of the loved President, at Ford's Theatre in Washington, on the evening of April 14th, by the weapon of the assassin, J. Wilkes Booth, "a demented sympathizer with the cause of disunion." Early in the morning of the following fateful day, Lincoln's soul passed from its earthly tenement, and a pall of deep gloom spread over the land, broken only by the lamentations of the people he loved so well. The funeral obsequies of the martyred chieftain a day or two later followed, and Lincoln's remains were borne amid mighty pageantries to their last resting