To us, to-day, it seems that the President could not have missed a course so obvious; yet Mr. Seward, who suggested the absurdity, was a great statesman.  In truth, the President had shown not only sense but nerve.  For the difference between Seward’s past opportunities and experience and his own was appreciated by him as fully as by any one.  He knew perfectly well that what seemed the less was controlling what seemed the greater when he overruled his secretary.  It took courage on the part of a thoughtful man to put himself in such a position.  Other solemn reflections also could not be avoided.  Not less interested than any other citizen in the fate of the nation, he had also a personal relation to the ultimate event which was exclusively his own.  For he himself might be called, in a certain sense, the very cause of rebellion; of course the people who had elected him carried the real responsibility; but he stood as the token of the difference, the concrete provocation to the fight.  The South had said:  Abraham Lincoln brings secession.  It was frightful to think that, as he was in fact the signal, so posterity might mistake him for the very cause of the rending of a great nation, the failure of a grand experiment.  It might be that this destiny was before him, for the outcome of this struggle no one could foretell; it might be his sad lot to mark the end of the line of Presidents of the United States.  Lincoln was not a man who could escape the full weight of these reflections, and it is to be remembered that all actions were taken beneath that weight.  It was a strong man, then, who stood up and said, This is my load and I will carry it; and who did carry it, when others offered to shift much of it upon their own shoulders; also who would not give an hour’s thought to a scheme which promised to lift it away entirely, and to leave it for some other who by and by should come after him.

It is worth while to remember that Mr. Lincoln was the most advised man, often the worst advised man, in the annals of mankind.  The torrent must have been terribly confusing!  Another instance deserves mention:  shortly before Mr. Seward’s strange proposal, Governor Hicks, distracted at the tumult in Maryland, had suggested that the quarrel between North and South should be referred to Lord Lyons as arbitrator!  It was difficult to know whether to be amused or resentful before a proposition at once so silly and so ignominious.  Yet it came from an important official, and it was only one instance among thousands.  With war as an actuality, such vagaries as those of Hicks and Seward came sharply to an end.  People wondered and talked somewhat as to how long hostilities would last, how much they would cost, how they would end; and were not more correct in these speculations than they had been in others.  But though the day of gross absurdities was over, the era of advice endured permanently.  That peculiar national trait whereby every American knows at least