solution, that the wisest leaders, becoming dazed and overawed, uttered
the grossest follies. Men who had been energetic and vigorous before,
when they were pursuing a purpose, who became so again afterward, when
the distinct issue had taken shape, now lost for a time their
intellectual self-possession. The picture of the country during three or
four months, or rather an observant study of the prominent men of the
country, is sufficiently interesting historically, but is vastly more so
psychologically. I know of no other period in history in which this
peculiar element of interest exists to anywhere near an equal degree. It
is the study of human nature which for a brief time absorbs us, much
more than the study of events.

But this condition was, by its nature, transitory. Events moved, and
soon created defined and clean-cut issues, in relation to which
individuals were compelled to find their positions,--positions where
they could establish a belief, whether that belief should prove at last
to be right or wrong; positions wherein they were willing to abide to
the end, be that end victory or ruin. Primarily everything depended upon
Abraham Lincoln. If he should prove to be a weak man, like his
predecessor, or if he should prove to be a man of merely ordinary
capacity and character like the presidents who had followed Van Buren,
then all was over for the North. With what anxiety, with how much
doubt, the people of the Northern States scanned their singular and
untried choice can never be fully appreciated by persons who cannot
remember those wearisome, overladen days. He was an unknown quantity in
the awful problem. In his debates with Douglas he had given some
indication of what was in him, but outside of Illinois not one man in a
hundred was familiar with those debates. Nor did even they furnish
conclusive proof of his administrative capacity, especially in these
days of novel and mortal stress. For a time he seemed to wait, to drift;