election of Abraham Lincoln was their first, and as yet their only
triumph. In all previous trials of strength they had been defeated.
Their present success was like the bursting of a torrent through a dam.
At the instant when they attained it they found themselves involved in a
political swirl and clash of momentous difficulties. It was a tremendous
test to which they were being subjected. The part which Lincoln played,
at their head, I have endeavored to depict in his life. The manner in
which he controlled without commanding, his rare combination of
confidence in his own judgment with entire absence of self-assertion,
his instinctive appreciation of the meaning and bearing of facts, his
capacity to recognize the precise time until which action should be
postponed and then to know that action must be taken, suggesting the
idea of prescience, his long-suffering and tolerance towards impolitic,
obstructive, or over-rash individuals, his marvelous gift of keeping in
touch with the people, form a group of qualities which, united in the
President of the United States at that mortal juncture, are as strong
evidence as anything which this generation has seen to corroborate a
faith in an overruling Providence. Conceive what might have happened if
it had been some other of our presidents who had happened to have his
term begin in 1861! Yet, after all the study that can be made of him,
there are unexplainable elements in Lincoln's character which will leave
him forever an enigma. If the world ever settles down to the acceptance
of any definite, accurate picture of him, it will surely be a false
picture. There must always be vague, indefinable uncertainties in any
presentation of him which shall be truly made.

Of the men who labored with him, I have left myself room to say little,
nor need much be said here. Their lives tell their stories. Taken
together, these biographies contain the history, upon the civil side, of
the war period. Seward represents the policy of the administration as a