and the position of Governor in a State—­a State it must be remembered is independent in almost the whole of what we call domestic politics—­is strictly analogous to the position of President in the Union, and, especially in a great State, is the best training ground for the Presidency.  But beyond this, Seward, between whom and Lincoln the real contest lay, had for some time filled a recognised though unofficial position as the leader of his party.  He had failed, as has been seen in his dealings with Douglas, in stern insistence upon principle, but the failure was due rather to his sanguine and hopeful temper than to lack of courage.  On the whole from the time when he first stood up against Webster in the discussions of 1850, when Lincoln was both silent and obscure, he had earned his position well.  Hereafter, as Lincoln’s subordinate, he was to do his country first-rate service, and to earn a pure fame as the most generously loyal subordinate to a chief whom he had thought himself fit to command.  We happen to have ample means of estimating now all Lincoln’s Republican competitors; we know that none of the rest were equal to Seward; and we know that Seward himself, if he had had his way, would have brought the common cause to ruin.  Looking back now at the comparison which Lincoln, when he entered into the contest, must have drawn between himself and Seward—­for of the rest we need not take account—­we can see that to himself at least and some few in Illinois he had now proved his capacities, and that in Seward’s public record, more especially in his attitude towards Douglas, he had the means of measuring Seward.  In spite of the far greater experience of the latter he may have thought himself to be his superior in that indefinable thing—­the sheer strength of a man.  Not only may he have thought this; he must have known it.  He had shown his grasp of the essential facts when he forced the Republican party to do battle with Douglas and the party of indifference; he showed the same now when, after long years of patience and self-discipline, he pushed himself into Seward’s place as the Republican leader.

All the same, what little we know of the methods by which he now helped his own promotion suggests that the people who then and long after set him down as a second-rate person may have had a good deal to go upon.  A kind friend has produced a letter which he wrote in March, 1860, to a Kansas gentleman who desired to be a delegate to the Republican Convention, and who offered, upon condition, to persuade his fellow delegates from Kansas to support Lincoln.  Here is the letter:  “As to your kind wishes for myself, allow me to say I cannot enter the ring on the money basis—­first because in the main it is wrong; and secondly I have not and cannot get the money.  I say in the main the use of money is wrong; but for certain objects in a political contest the use of some is both right and indispensable.  With me, as with yourself, this long struggle has