There are plenty of indications in the literature of the time that Lincoln’s determination soon began to be widely felt and to be appreciated by common people.  Literally, crowds of people from all parts of the North saw him, exchanged a sentence or two, and carried home their impressions; and those who were near him record the constant fortitude of his bearing, noting as marked exceptions the unrestrained words of impatience and half-humorous despondency which did on rare occasions escape him.  In a negative way, too, even the political world bore its testimony to this; his administration was charged with almost every other form of weakness, but there was never a suspicion that he would give in.  Nor again, in the severest criticisms upon him by knowledgeable men that have been unearthed and collected, does the suggestion of petty personal aims or of anything but unselfish devotion ever find a place.  The belief that he could be trusted spread itself among plain people, and, given this belief, plain people liked him the better because he was plain.  But if at the distance at which we contemplate him, and at which from the moment of his death all America contemplated him, certain grand traits emerge, it is not for a moment to be supposed that in his life he stood out in front of the people as a great leader, or indeed as a leader at all, in the manner, say, of Chatham or even of Palmerston.  Lincoln came to Washington doubtless with some deep thoughts which other men had not thought, doubtless also with some important knowledge, for instance of the border States, which many statesmen lacked, but he came there a man inexperienced in affairs.  It was a part of his strength that he knew this very well, that he meant to learn, thought he could learn, did not mean to be hurried where he had not the knowledge to decide, entirely appreciated superior knowledge in others, and was entirely unawed by it.  But Senators and Representatives in Congress and journalists of high standing, as a rule, perceived the inexperience and not the strength.  The deliberation with which he acted, patiently watching events, saying little, listening to all sides, conversing with a naivete which was genuine but not quite artless, seemingly obdurate to the pressure of wise counsels on one side and on the other—­all this struck many anxious observers as sheer incompetence, and when there was just and natural cause for their anxiety, there was no established presumption of his wisdom to set against it.  And this effect was enhanced by what may be called his plainness, his awkwardness, and actual eccentricity in many minor matters.  To many intelligent people who met him they were a grievous stumbling-block, and though some most cultivated men were not at all struck by them, and were pleased instead by his “seeming sincere, and honest, and steady,” or the like, it is clear that no one in Washington was greatly impressed by him at first meeting.  His oddities were real and incorrigible.  Young