are charged with his constitutional conscience."(3) As Lincoln kept his doors open to all the world, as no one came and went with greater freedom than the Chairman of the Committee, the sneer was-what one might expect of the Committee.  Sumner said:  “I claim for Congress all that belongs to any government in the exercise of the rights of war.”  Disagreement with him, he treated with unspeakable disdain:  “Born in ignorance and pernicious in consequence, it ought to be received with hissings of contempt, and just in proportion as it obtains acceptance, with execration."(4) Henry Wilson declared that, come what might, the policy of the Administration would be shaped by the two Houses.  “I had rather give a policy to the President of the United States than take a policy from the President of the United States."(5) Trumbull thundered against the President’s theory as the last word in despotism.(6)

Such is the mental perspective in which to regard the speech of Stevens of January 22, 1862.  With masterly clearness, he put his finger on the heart of the matter:  the exceptional problems of a time of war, problems that can not be foreseen and prepared for by anticipatory legislation, may be solved in but one way, by the temporary creation of the dictator; this is as true of modern America as of ancient Rome; so far, most people are agreed; but this extraordinary function must not be vested in the Executive; on the contrary, it must be, it is, vested in the Legislature.  Stevens did not hesitate to push his theory to its limit.  He was not afraid of making the Legislature in time of war the irresponsible judge of its own acts.  Congress, said he, has all possible powers of government, even the dictator’s power; it could declare itself a dictator; under certain circumstances he was willing that it should do so.(7)

The intellectual boldness of Lincoln was matched by an equal boldness.  Between them, he and Stevens had perfectly defined their issue.  Granted that a dictator was needed, which should it be—­the President or Congress?

In the hesitancy at the White House during the last eclipse, in the public distress and the personal grief, Lincoln withheld himself from this debate.  No great utterances break the gloom of this period.  Nevertheless, what may be considered his reply to Stevens is to be found.  Buried in the forgotten portions of the Congressional Globe is a speech that surely was inspired-or, if not directly inspired, so close a reflection of the President’s thinking that it comes to the same thing at the end.

Its author, or apparent author, was one of the few serene figures in that Thirty-Seventh Congress which was swept so pitilessly by epidemics of passion.  When Douglas, after coming out valiantly for the Union and holding up Lincoln’s hands at the hour of crisis, suddenly died, the Illinois Legislature named as his successor in the Senate, Orville Henry Browning.  The new Senator was Lincoln’s intimate friend.