And again, “You may talk as you please of the Abolition Cabal directing affairs from Washington; some well-meaning newspapers advise the President to keep his fingers out of the military pie, and all that sort of thing.  The truth is, if he did, the pie would be a sorry mess.  The old man sits here and wields, like a backwoods Jupiter, the bolts of war and the machinery of government with a hand especially steady and equally firm. .  I do not know whether the nation is worthy of him for another term.  I know the people want him.  There is no mistaking that fact.  But the politicians are strong yet, and he is not their ’kind of a cat.’  I hope God won’t see fit to scourge us for our sins by any of the two or three most prominent candidates on the ground."(28) This was the conclusion growing everywhere among the bulk of the people.  There is one more cause of it to be reckoned with.  Lincoln had not ceased to be the literary statesman.  In fact, he was that more effectively than ever.  His genius for fable-making took a new turn.  Many a visitor who came to find fault, went home to disseminate the apt fable with which the President had silenced his objections and captured his agreement.  His skill in narration also served him well.  Carpenter repeats a story about Andrew Johnson and his crude but stern religion which in mere print is not remarkable.  “I have elsewhere insinuated,” comments Carpenter, “that Mr. Lincoln was capable of much dramatic power. . . .  It was shown in his keen appreciation of Shakespeare, and unrivaled faculty of Storytelling.  The incident just related, for example, was given with a thrilling effect which mentally placed Johnson, for the time being, alongside Luther and Cromwell.  Profanity or irreverence was lost sight of in a fervid utterance of a highly wrought and great-souled determination, united with a rare exhibition of pathos and self-abnegation."(29)

In formal literature, he had done great things upon a far higher level than any of his writings previous to that sudden change in his style in 1860.  For one, there was the Fast Day Proclamation.  There was also a description of his country, of the heritage of the nation, in the third message.  Its aim was to give imaginative reality to the national idea; just as the second message had aimed to give argumentative reality.

“There is no line, straight or crooked, suitable for a national boundary upon which to divide.  Trace through from east to west, upon the line between the free and the slave Country and we shall find a little more than one-third of its length are rivers, easy to be crossed, and populated, or soon to be populated, thickly upon both sides; while nearly all its remaining length are merely surveyors’ lines, over which people may walk back and forth without any consciousness of their presence.  No part of this line can be made any more difficult to pass by writing it down on paper or parchment as a national boundary.