It began amid the rockings of rebellion. A servile predecessor,
deplorably weak, if not criminal, had permitted treason to be freely
mouthed in the national capitol, treasonable action to be taken by
State authorities, and armed treason to resist and defy federal
authority, and environ with bristling works the forts and flag of the
Union. At such a juncture, Mr. Lincoln, then barely escaping
assassination, was inaugurated. As was right, he made all proper
efforts for conciliation, tendered the olive-branch, proposed such
changes as existing laws, and even of the Constitution, as should
secure Southern rights from the adverse legislation of a sectional
majority. All was refused, and traitors said, "We will not live with
you. Though you sign a blank sheet and leave us to fill it with our
own conditions, we will not abide with you."

Refusing peace, war was commenced, not by the President, but by
secessionists. War has been waged on a scale of astounding vastness
for four years, and Mr. Lincoln falls as the day of victory dawns.

His claim to the character of a great statesman is to be estimated
in view of the fiery ordeal which tried him, and not by the gauge of
peaceful days. In addition to the most powerful armed rebellion ever
organized, he was confronted by a skillful, able, persistent, well
compacted partisan opposition. He was to harmonize sectional feelings
as antagonistic as Massachusetts and Kentucky, and to rally to one
flag generals as widely apart in sentiment and policy as Phelps and
Fitz John Porter. That under such difficulties he sometimes erred in
judgment and occasionally failed in execution, is not strange, for he
was a man, but that he erred so seldom, and that he so admirably
retrieved his mistakes, shows that he was more by far than an