reconsider their positions.  “The dogmas of the quiet past,” he said, “are inadequate to the stormy present.  The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.  As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.  We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.  Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.  We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves.  No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us.  We say we are for the Union.  The world will not forget that we say this.  We know how to save the Union.  The world knows we do know how to save it.  In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free.  We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth.  Other means may succeed, this could not fail.”  The last four words expressed too confident a hope as to what Northern policy apart from Northern arms could do towards ending the war, but it was impossible to exaggerate the value which a policy, concerted between parties in a spirit of moderation, would have had in the settlement after victory.  Every honest Democrat who then refused any action against slavery must have regretted it before three years were out, and many sensible Republicans who saw no use in such moderation may have lived to regret their part too.  Nothing was done.  It is thought that Lincoln expected this; but the Proclamation of Emancipation would begin to operate within a month; it would produce by the end of the war a situation in which the country would be compelled to decide on the principle of slavery, and Lincoln had at least done his part in preparing men to face the issue.

Before this, the nervous and irritable feeling of many Northern politicians, who found in emancipation a good subject for quarrel among themselves and in the slow progress of the war a good subject of quarrel with the Administration, led to a crisis in Lincoln’s Cabinet.  Radicals were inclined to think Seward’s influence in the Administration the cause of all public evils; some of them had now got hold of a foolish private letter, which he had written to Adams in England a few months before, denouncing the advocates of emancipation.  Desiring his downfall, they induced a small “caucus” of Republican Senators to speak in the name of the party and the nation and send the President a resolution demanding such changes in his Cabinet as would produce better results in the war.  Discontented men of opposite opinions could unite in demanding success in the war; and Conservative Senators joined in this resolution hoping that it would get rid not only of Seward, but also of Chase and Stanton, the objects of their particular antipathy.  Seward, on hearing of this, gave Lincoln his resignation, which was kept private.  Though egotistic, he was a clever man, and evidently a pleasant man to work with; he was a useful Minister under a wise chief, though he later