sides now prepared to fight in good earnest.  The sword was drawn, the scabbard thrown away.  Both sides were confident of victory.  The Southern leaders were under the delusion that the Yankees would not fight, and that they cared more for dollars than for their country.  Moreover, the Southern States had long been training their young men in the military schools, and had for months been collecting materials of war.  As cotton was an acknowledged “king,” the planters calculated on the support of England, which could not do without their bales.  Lastly, they knew that the North had been divided against itself, and that the Democratic politicians sympathized with them in reference to slavery.  The Federal leaders, on the other hand, relied on the force of numbers, of wealth, and national prestige.  Very few supposed that the contest would be protracted.  Seward thought that it would not last over three months.  Nor did the South think of conquering the North, but supposed it could secure its own independence.  It certainly was resolved on making a desperate fight to defend its peculiar institution.  As it was generally thought in England that this attempt would succeed, as England had no special love for the Union, and as the Union, and not opposition to slavery, was the rallying cry of the North, England gave to the South its moral support.

Lincoln assumed his burden with great modesty, but with a steady firmness and determination, and surprised his cabinet by his force of will.  Nicolay and Hay relate an anecdote of great significance.  Seward, who occupied the first place in the cabinet, which he deserved on account of his experience and abilities, was not altogether pleased with the slow progress of things, and wrote to Lincoln an extraordinary letter in less than a month after his inauguration, suggesting more active operations, with specific memoranda of a proposed policy.  “Whatever policy we adopt,” said he, “there must be an energetic prosecution of it.  For this purpose it must be somebody’s business to pursue and direct it incessantly.  Either the President must do it himself, or devolve it on some member of his cabinet.  It is not my especial province; but I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility.”  In brief, it was an intimation, “If you feel not equal to the emergency, perhaps you can find a man not a thousand miles away who is equal to it.”

Lincoln, in his reply, showed transcendent tact.  Although an inexperienced local politician, suddenly placed at the head of a great nation, in a tremendous crisis, and surrounded in his cabinet and in Congress by men of acknowledged expert ability in statecraft, he had his own ideas, but he needed the counsel and help of these men as well.  He could not afford to part with the services of a man like Seward, nor would he offend him by any assumption of dignity or resentment at his unasked advice.  He good-naturedly replied, in substance:  “The policy laid down in my inaugural met your distinct approval, and it has thus far been exactly followed.  As to attending to its prosecution, if this must be done, I must do it, and I wish, and suppose I am entitled to have, the advice of all the cabinet.”