months to come.  Therefore the sound conception of the inaugural deserves to be considered as an indication, one among many, of Lincoln’s capacity for seeing with entire distinctness the great main fact, and for recognizing it as such.  Other matters, which lay over and around such a fact, side issues, questions of detail, affairs of disguise or deception, never confused or misled him.  He knew with unerring accuracy where the biggest fact lay, and he always anchored fast to it and stayed with it.  For many years he had been anchored to anti-slavery; now, in the face of the nation, he shifted his anchorage to the Union; and each time he held securely.

FOOTNOTES: 

[114] Breckenridge was the legitimate representative of the administrationists, and his ticket received only 847,953 votes out of 4,680,193.  Douglas and Buchanan were at open war.

[115] See remarks of Mr. Elaine upon use of this word. Twenty Years of Congress, i. 219.

[116] But it should be said that Attorney-General Black supported these views in a very elaborate opinion, which he had furnished to the President, and which was transmitted to Congress at the same time with the message.

[117] Greeley afterwards truly said that his journal had plenty of company in these sentiments, even among the Republican sheets. Amer.  Conflict, i. 359.  Reference is made in the text to the utterances of the Tribune more because it was so prominent and influential than because it was very peculiar in its position.

[118] Wilson, Rise and Fall of Slave Power, iii. 63-69; N. and H. in. 255.  See account of “the Pine Street meeting,” New York, in Dix’s Memoirs of Dix, i. 347.

[119] For an account of this by General Dix himself, see Memoirs of John A. Dix, by Morgan Dix, i. 370-373.

[120] Arkansas, California, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, and Wisconsin

[121] It differed from that of the United States very little, save in containing a distinct recognition of slavery, and in being made by the States instead of by the people.

[122] American Conflict, i. 351.

[123] This includes Delaware, 110,420, and Maryland, 599,846.

[124] Marshal Kane and most of the police were reported to be Secessionists.  Pinkerton, Spy of the Rebellion, 50, 61.

[125] Lamon says that Mr. Lincoln afterwards regretted this journey, and became convinced “that he had committed a grave mistake.”  Lamon, 527.  So also McClure, 45, 48.