now held or thereafter acquired south of that line, it should be permitted.  Crittenden also proposed that when a Territory on either side of the line became a State, it should become free to decide the question for itself; but the discussion never reached this point.  On the proposal as to the Territories there seemed at first to be a prospect that the Republicans would agree, in which case the South might very likely have agreed too.  The desire for peace was intensely strong among the commercial men of New York and other cities, and it affected the great political managers and the statesmen who, like Seward himself, were in close touch with this commercial influence.  Tenacious adherence to declared principle may have been as strong in country districts as the desire for accommodation was in these cities, but it was at any rate far less vocal, and on the whole it seems that compromise was then in the air.  It seemed clear from the expressed opinions of his closest allies that Seward would support this compromise.  Now Seward just at this time received Lincoln’s offer of the office of Secretary of State, a great office and one in which Seward expected to rule Lincoln and the country, but in accepting which, as he did, he made it incumbent on himself not to part company at once with the man who would be nominally his chief.  Then there occurred a visit paid on Seward’s behalf by his friend Thurlow Weed, an astute political manager but also an able statesman, to Lincoln at Springfield.  Weed brought back a written statement of Lincoln’s views.  Seward’s support was not given to the compromise; nor naturally was that of the more radical Republicans, to use a term which now became common; and the Committee of Thirteen found itself unable to agree.

It is unnecessary to repeat what Lincoln’s conviction on this, to him the one essential point of policy, was, or to quote from the numerous letters in which from the time of his nomination he tried to keep the minds of his friends firm on this single principle, and to show them that if there were the slightest further yielding as to this, save indeed as to the peculiar case of New Mexico, which did not matter, and which perhaps he regarded as conceded already, the Southern policy of extending slavery and of “filibustering” against neighbouring counties for that purpose would revive in full force, and the whole labour of the Republican movement would have to begin over again.  Since his election he had been writing also to Southern politicians who were personally friendly, to Gilmer of North Carolina, to whom he offered Cabinet office, and to Stephens, making absolutely plain that his difference with them lay in this one point, but making it no less plain that on this point he was, with entire respect to them, immovable.  Now, on December 22, the New York Tribune was “enabled to state that Mr. Lincoln stands now as he stood in May last, square upon the Republican platform.”  The writing that Weed brought to Seward must have