credit to both men, and Seward, still smarting at his own defeat, was admirably loyal.  But his friends, though they had secured the appointment of Cameron to support them, thought increasingly ill of the prospects of a Cabinet which included the Radical Chase.  On the very night before his inauguration Lincoln received from Seward, who had just been helping to revise his Inaugural Address, a letter withdrawing his acceptance of office.  By some not clearly recorded exercise of that great power over men, which, if with some failures, was generally at his command, he forced Seward to see that the unconditional withdrawal of this letter was his public duty.  It must throughout what follows be remembered that Lincoln’s first and most constant duty was to hold together the jarring elements in the North which these jarring elements in his own Cabinet represented; and it was one of his great achievements that he kept together, for as long as was needful, able but discordant public servants who could never have combined together without him.

On February 11, 1861, Lincoln, standing on the gallery at the end of a railway car, upon the instant of departure from the home to which he never returned, said to his old neighbours (according to the version of his speech which his private secretary got him to dictate immediately after):  “My friends, no one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting.  To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything.  Here I have lived for a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man.  Here my children have been born and one is buried.  I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington.  Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed.  With that assistance, I cannot fail.  Trusting in Him who can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well.  To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.”

He was, indeed, going to a task not less great than Washington’s, but he was going to it with a preparation in many respects far inferior to his.  For the last eight years he had laboured as a public speaker, and in a measure as a party leader, and had displayed and developed comprehension, perhaps unequalled, of some of the larger causes which mould public affairs.  But, except in sheer moral discipline, those years had done nothing to supply the special training which he had previously lacked, for high executive office.  In such office at such a time ready decision in an obscure and passing situation may often be a not less requisite than philosophic grasp either of the popular mind or of eternal laws.  The powers which he had hitherto shown would still be needful to him, but so too would other powers which he had never practised in any comparable position, and which nature does not in a moment supply.  Any attempt to judge of Lincoln’s Presidency—­and it can only be judged at all when it has gone on some way—­must take account, not perhaps so much of his inexperience, as of his own reasonable consciousness of it and his great anxiety to use the advice of men who were in any way presumably more competent.