Failures?  Not so.  Every seeming defeat was a slow success.  His was the growth of the oak, and not of Jonah’s gourd.  Every scaffolding of temporary elevation he pulled down, every ladder of transient expectation which broke under his feet accumulated his strength, and piled up a solid mound which raised him to wider usefulness and clearer vision.  He could not become a master workman until he had served a tedious apprenticeship.  It was the quarter of a century of reading thinking, speech-making and legislating which qualified him for selection as the chosen champion of the Illinois Republicans in the great Lincoln-Douglas joint debates of 1858.  It was the great intellectual victory won in these debates, plus the title “Honest old Abe,” won by truth and manhood among his neighbors during a whole generation, that led the people of the United States to confide to his hands the duties and powers of President.

And when, after thirty years of endeavor, success had beaten down defeat; when Lincoln had been nominated elected, and inaugurated, came the crowning trial of his faith and constancy.  When the people, by free and lawful choice, had placed honor and power in his hands; when his signature could convene Congress, approve laws, make ministers, cause ships to sail and armies to move; when he could speak with potential voice to other rulers of other lands, there suddenly came upon the government and the nation the symptoms of a fatal paralysis; honor seemed to dwindle and power to vanish.  Was he then, after all, not to be President?  Was patriotism dead?  Was the Constitution waste paper?  Was the Union gone?

The indications were, indeed, ominous.  Seven States were in rebellion.  There was treason in Congress, treason in the Supreme Court, treason in the army and navy.  Confusion and discord rent public opinion.  To use Lincoln’s own forcible simile, sinners were calling the righteous to repentance.  Finally, the flag, insulted on the Star of the West, trailed in capitulation at Sumter and then came the humiliation of the Baltimore riot, and the President practically for a few days a prisoner in the capital of the nation.

But his apprenticeship had been served, and there was no more failure.  With faith and justice and generosity he conducted for four long years a civil war whose frontiers stretched from the Potomac to the Rio Grande; whose soldiers numbered a million men on each side; in which, counting skirmishes and battles small and great, was fought an average of two engagements every day; and during which every twenty-four hours saw an expenditure of two millions of money.  The labor, the thought, the responsibility, the strain of intellect and anguish of soul that he gave to this great task, who can measure?

The sincerity of the fathers of the Republic was impugned he justified them.  The Declaration of Independence was called a “string of glittering generalities” and a “self-evident lie”; he refuted the aspersion.  The Constitution was perverted; he corrected the error.  The flag was insulted; he redressed the offense.  The government was assailed? he restored its authority.  Slavery thrust the sword of civil war at the heart of the nation? he crushed slavery, and cemented the purified Union in new and stronger bonds.