gaining ground; he might be giving extreme offence to the strongest Republican.  “If they choose,” he said, “to make a point of this I do not doubt that they can do harm” (indeed, those powerful men Wade and Davis now declared against his re-election with ability and extraordinary bitterness); but he continued:  “At all events I must keep some consciousness of being somewhere near right.  I must keep some standard or principle fixed within myself.”  The Bill would have repressed loyal efforts already made to establish State Governments in the South.  It contained also a provision imposing the abolition of slavery on every such reconstructed State.  This was an attempt to remedy any flaw in the constitutional effect of the Proclamation of Emancipation.  But it was certainly in itself flagrantly unconstitutional; and the only conclusive way of abolishing slavery was the Constitutional Amendment, for which Lincoln was now anxious.  This was not a pedantic point, for there might have been great trouble if the courts had later found a constitutional flaw in some negro’s title to freedom.  But the correctness of Lincoln’s view hardly matters.  In lots of little things, like a tired man who was careless by nature, Lincoln may perhaps have yielded to influence or acted for his political convenience in ways which may justly be censured, but it would be merely immoral to care whether he did so or did not, since at the crisis of his fate he could risk all for one scruple.  In an earlier stage of his controversies with the parties he had written:  “From time to time I have done and said what appeared to me proper to do and say.  The public knows it all.  It obliges nobody to follow me, and I trust it obliges me to follow nobody.  The Radicals and Conservatives each agree with me in some things and disagree in others.  I could wish both to agree with me in all things; for then they would agree with each other, and be too strong for any foe from any quarter.  They, however, choose to do otherwise, and I do not question their right.  I, too, shall do what seems to be my duty.  I hold whoever commands in Missouri or elsewhere responsible to me and not to either Radicals or Conservatives.  It is my duty to hear all; but at last I must, within my sphere, judge what to do and what to forbear.”

In this same month of July, after the Confederate General Early’s appearance before Washington had given Lincoln a pause from political cares, another trouble reached a point at which it is known to have tried his patience more than any other trouble of his Presidency.  Peace after war is not always a matter of substituting the diplomatist for the soldier.  When two sides were fighting, one for Union and the other for Independence, one or the other had to surrender the whole point at issue.  In this case there might appear to have been a third possibility.  The Southern States might have been invited to return to the Union on terms which admitted their right to