pitilessly and unconsciously cruel as sincerity formulated into
dogma. It is always demoralizing to extend the domain of sentiment
over questions where it has no legitimate jurisdiction; and perhaps
the severest strain upon Mr. Lincoln was in resisting a tendency of
his own supporters which chimed with his own private desires,
while wholly opposed to his convictions of what would be wise
policy.

The change which three years have brought about is too remarkable
to be passed over without comment, too weighty in its lesson not to
be laid to heart. Never did a President enter upon office with less
means at his command, outside his own strength of heart and
steadiness of understanding, for inspiring confidence in the people,
and so winning it for himself, than Mr. Lincoln. All that was known
of him was that he was a good stump-speaker, nominated for his
*availability,*--that is, because he had no history,--and chosen by a
party with whose more extreme opinions he was not in sympathy.
It might well be feared that a man past fifty, against whom the
ingenuity of hostile partisans could rake up no accusation, must be
lacking in manliness of character, in decision of principle, in
strength of will; that a man who was at best only the representative
of a party, and who yet did not fairly represent even that, would fail
of political, much more of popular, support. And certainly no one
ever entered upon office with so few resources of power in the
past, and so many materials of weakness in the present, as Mr.
Lincoln. Even in that half of the Union which acknowledged him as
President, there was a large, and at that time dangerous, minority,
that hardly admitted his claim to the office, and even in the party
that elected him there was also a large minority that suspected him
of being secretly a communicant with the church of Laodicea.(1)