authority.  “If the people should by whatever mode or means make it an executive duty to re-enslave such persons, another, and not I, must be their instrument to perform it.”  This last sentence was no meaningless flourish; the Constitutional Amendment prohibiting slavery could not be passed for some time, and might conceivably be defeated; in the meantime the Courts might possibly have declared any negro in the Southern States a slave; Lincoln’s words let it be seen that they would have found themselves without an arm to enforce their decision.  But in fact there was no longer an issue with the South as to abolition.  Jefferson Davis had himself declared that slavery was gone, for most slaves had now freed themselves, and that he for his part troubled very little over that.  There remained, then, no issue between North and South except that between Independence and Union.

On the same day that he sent his annual message Lincoln gave himself a characteristic pleasure by another communication which he sent to the Senate.  Old Roger Taney of the Dred Scott case had died in October; the Senate was now requested to confirm the President’s nomination of a new Chief Justice to succeed him; and the President had nominated Chase.  Chase’s reputation as a lawyer had seemed to fit him for the position, but the well informed declared that, in spite of some appearances on the platform for Lincoln he still kept “going around peddling his griefs in private ears and sowing dissatisfaction against Lincoln.”  So in spite of Lincoln’s pregnant remark on this subject that he “did not believe in keeping any man under,” nobody supposed that Lincoln would appoint him.  Sumner and Congressman Alley of Massachusetts had indeed gone to Lincoln to urge the appointment.  “We found, to our dismay,” Alley relates, “that the President had heard of the bitter criticisms of Mr. Chase upon himself and his Administration.  Mr. Lincoln urged many of Chase’s defects, to discover, as we afterwards learned, how his objection could be answered.  We were both discouraged and made up our minds that the President did not mean to appoint Mr. Chase.  It really seemed too much to expect of poor human nature.”  One morning Alley again saw the President.  “I have something to tell you that will make you happy,” said Lincoln.  “I have just sent Mr. Chase word that he is to be appointed Chief Justice, and you are the first man I have told of it.”  Alley said something natural about Lincoln’s magnanimity, but was told in reply what the only real difficulty had been.  Lincoln from his “convictions of duty to the Republican party and the country” had always meant to appoint Chase, subject to one doubt which he had revolved in his mind till he had settled it.  This doubt was simply whether Chase, beset as he was by a craving for the Presidency which he could never obtain, would ever really turn his attention with a will to becoming the great Chief Justice that Lincoln thought he could be.  Lincoln’s