that civil war should be waged with the least possible breach of the Constitution, and be concluded with the least possible social change; many of them would wish to fight not to a finish but to a compromise.  On the other hand, there were those who loved liberty and hated alike the slave system of the South and the arrogance which it had engendered.  These—­the people distinguished within the Republican party as Radicals—­would pay little heed to constitutional restraints in repelling an attack on the Constitution, and they would wish from the first to make avowed war upon that which caused the war—­slavery.  In the border States there was of course more active sympathy with the South, and in conflict with this the Radicalism of some of these States became more stalwart and intractable.  To such causes of dissension was added as time went on sheer fatigue of the war, and strangely enough this influence was as powerful with a few Radicals as it was with the ingrained Democratic partisans.  They despaired of the result when success at last was imminent, and became sick of bloodshed when it passed what they presumably regarded as a reasonable amount.

It was the task of the Administration not only to conduct the war, but to preserve the unity of the North in spite of differences and its resolution in spite of disappointments.  Lincoln was in more than one way well fitted for this task.  Old experience in Illinois and Kentucky enabled him to understand very different points of view in regard to the cause of the South.  The new question that was now to arise about slavery was but a particular form of the larger question of principle to which he had long thought out an answer as firm and as definite as it was moderate and in a sense subtle.  He had, moreover, a quality of heart which, as it seemed to those near him, the protraction of the conflict, with its necessary strain upon him, only strengthened.  In him a tenacity, which scarcely could falter in the cause which he judged to be right, was not merely pure from bitterness towards his antagonists, it was actually bound up with a deep-seated kindliness towards them.  Whatever rank may be assigned to his services and to his deserts, it is first and foremost in these directions, though not in these directions alone, that the reader of his story must look for them.  Upon attentive study he will probably appear as the embodiment, in a degree and manner which are alike rare, of the more constant and the higher judgment of his people.  It is plainer still that he embodied the resolute purpose which underlay the fluctuations upon the surface of their political life.  The English military historians, Wood and Edmonds, in their retrospect over the course of the war, well sum up its dramatic aspect when they say:  “Against the great military genius of certain of the Southern leaders fate opposed the unbroken resolution and passionate devotion to the Union, which he worshipped, of the great Northern President.  As long as he lived, and ruled the people of the North, there could be no turning back.”