He closes with the famous invocation to the fellow Americans of the South against whom throughout the whole message there had not been one word of bitterness or rancour:  “We are not enemies but friends.  We must not be enemies.  Though passion may have strained our relations, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

It was, however, too late for argument, and too late for invocations of friendship.  The issue had been forced by the South and the war for which the leaders of the South had for months, if not for years, been making preparation was now to be begun by Southern action.  It remained to make clear to the North, where the people up to the last moment had been unwilling to believe in the possibility of civil war, that the nation could be preserved only by fighting for its existence.  It remained to organise the men of the North into armies which should be competent to carry out this tremendous task of maintaining the nation’s existence.

It was just after the great inaugural and when his head must have been full of cares and his hands of work, that Lincoln took time to write a touching little note that I find in his correspondence.  It was addressed to a boy who had evidently spoken with natural pride of having met the President and whose word had been questioned: 

    “The White House, March 18, 1861.

    “I did see and talk in May last at Springfield, Illinois, with
    Master George Edward Patten.”

With the beginning of the work of the administration, came trouble with the members of the Cabinet.  The several secretaries were, in form at least, the choice of the President, but as must always be the case in the shaping of a Cabinet, and as was particularly necessary at a time when it was of first importance to bring into harmonious relations all of the political groups of the North which were prepared to be loyal to the government, the men who took office in the first Cabinet of Lincoln represented not any personal preference of the President, but political or national requirements.  The Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, had, as we know, been Lincoln’s leading opponent for the Presidential nomination and had expressed with some freedom of criticism his disappointment that he, the natural leader of the party, should be put to one side for an uncultivated, inexperienced Westerner.  Mr. Seward possessed both experience and culture; more than this, he was a scholar, and came of a long line of gentlefolk.  He had public spirit, courage, legitimate political ambition, and some of the qualities of leadership.  His nature was, however, not quite large enough to stand the pressure of political disappointment nor quite elastic enough to develop rapidly under the tremendous urgency of absolutely new requirements.  It is in evidence that more than once in the management of the complex and serious difficulties of the State Department during the years of war, Seward lost his