How erroneous this opinion was may be seen from a single incident.

Among the earliest, most difficult, and most delicate duties of his administration was the adjustment of our relations with Great Britain. Serious complications, even hostilities, were apprehended. On the 21st of May, 1861, the Secretary of State presented to the President his draught of a letter of instructions to Minister Adams, in which the position of the United States and the attitude of Great Britain were set forth with the clearness and force which long experience and great ability had placed at the command of the Secretary. Upon almost every page of that original draught are erasures, additions, and marginal notes in the handwriting of Abraham Lincoln, which exhibit a sagacity, a breadth of wisdom, and a comprehension of the whole subject, impossible to be found except in a man of the very first order. And these modifications of a great state paper were made by a man who but three months before had entered for the first time the wide theatre of executive action.

Gifted with an insight and a foresight which the ancients would have called divination, he saw, in the midst of darkness and obscurity, the logic of events, and forecast the result. From the first, in his own quaint, original way, without

ostentation or offense to his associates, he was pilot and commander of his administration. He was one of the few great rulers whose wisdom increased with his power, and whose spirit grew gentler and tenderer as his triumphs were multiplied. This was the man, and these his associates, who look down upon us from the

canvas.

The present is not a fitting occasion to examine, with any completeness, the causes that led to the Proclamation of Emancipation; but the peculiar relation of that act to the character of Abraham Lincoln cannot be understood, without considering one remarkable fact in his history. His earlier years were passed in a region remote from the centres of political thought, and without access to the great world of books. But the few books that came within his reach he devoured with the divine hunger of genius. One paper, above all others, led him captive, and filled his spirit with the majesty of its truth and the sublimity of its eloquence. It was the Declaration of American Independence. The author and the signers of that instrument became, in his early youth, the heroes of his political worship. I doubt if history affords any example of a life so early, so deeply, and so permanently influenced by a single political truth, as was Abraham Lincoln's by the central

doctrine of the Declaration,-the liberty and equality of all men. Long before his fame had become national he said,

That is the electric cord in the Declaration,that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, and that will link such hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.

That truth runs, like a thread of gold, through the whole web of his political life. It was the spear-point of his logic in his debates with Douglas. It was the inspiring theme of his remarkable speech at the Cooper Institute, New York, in 1860, which gave him the nomination to the Presidency. It filled him with reverent awe when on his way to the capital to enter the shadows of the terrible conflict then impending, he uttered, in Independence Hall, at Philadelphia, these remarkable words, which were prophecy then, but are history now:

I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here, and framed and adopted that Declaration of Independence. I have pon

dered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that in

dependence. I have often enquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the mother land, but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that, in due time, the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis. If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say, I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.

Deep and strong was his devotion to liberty; yet deeper and stronger still was his devotion to the Union; for he believed that without the Union permanent liberty for either race on this continent would be impossible. And because of this belief, he was reluctant, perhaps more reluctant than most of his associates, to strike slavery with the sword. For many months the passionate appeals of millions of his associates seemed not to move him. He listened to all the

phases of the discussion, and stated, in language clearer and stronger than any opponent had used, the dangers, the difficulties, and the possible futility of the act. In reference to its practical wisdom, Congress, the Cabinet, and the country were divided. Several of his generals had proclaimed the freedom of slaves within the limits of their commands. The President revoked their proclamations. His first Secretary of War had inserted a paragraph in his annual report advocating a similar policy. The President suppressed it. On the 19th of August, 1862, Horace Greeley published a letter addressed to the President, entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions," in which he said:

On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one disinterested, determined, intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel that all attempts to put down the rebellion and at the same time uphold its inciting cause are preposterous and futile.

To this the President responded in that evermemorable reply of August 22, in which he said:

If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them.