But there was the third thing in which the earlier style of Lincoln’s was wanting.  Marvelously apt for the purpose of the moment, his writings previous to 1861 are vanishing from the world’s memory.  The more notable writings of his later years have become classics.  And the difference does not turn on subject-matter.  All the ideas of his late writings had been formulated in the earlier.  The difference is purely literary.  The earlier writings were keen, powerful, full of character, melodious, impressive.  The later writings have all these qualities, and in addition, that constant power to awaken the imagination, to carry an idea beyond its own horizon into a boundless world of imperishable literary significance, which power in argumentative prose is beauty.  And how did Lincoln attain this?  That he had been maturing from within the power to do this, one is compelled by the analogy of his other mental experiences to believe.  At the same time, there can be no doubt who taught him the trick, who touched the secret spring and opened the new door to his mind.  It was Seward.  Long since it had been agreed between them that Seward was to be Secretary of State.(9) Lincoln asked him to criticize his inaugural.  Seward did so, and Lincoln, in the main, accepted his criticism.  But Seward went further.  He proposed a new paragraph.  He was not a great writer and yet he had something of that third thing which Lincoln hitherto had not exhibited.  However, in pursuing beauty of statement, he often came dangerously near to mere rhetoric; his taste was never sure; his sense of rhythm was inferior; the defects of his qualities were evident.  None the less, Lincoln saw at a glance that if he could infuse into Seward’s words his own more robust qualities, the result—­’would be a richer product than had ever issued from his own qualities as hitherto he had known them.  He effected this transmutation and in doing so raised his style to a new range of effectiveness.  The great Lincoln of literature appeared in the first inaugural and particularly in that noble passage which was the work of Lincoln and Seward together.  In a way it said only what Lincoln had already said—­especially in the speech at Harrisburg—­but with what a difference!

“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.  The government will not assail you.  You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.  You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.

“I am loath to close.  We are not enemies but friends.  Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.  The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."*