readily acknowledging that without the skill and fortitude of the great commanders, and the heroism of the soldiers and sailors under them, success could not have been achieved, the historian still finds that Lincoln’s judgment and will were by no means governed by those around him; that the most important steps were owing to his initiative; that his was the deciding and directing mind; and that it was pre-eminently he whose sagacity and whose character enlisted for the administration in its struggles the countenance, the sympathy, and the support of the people.  It is found, even, that his judgment on military matters was astonishingly acute, and that the advice and instructions he gave to the generals commanding in the field would not seldom have done honor to the ablest of them.  History, therefore, without overlooking, or palliating, or excusing any of his shortcomings or mistakes, continues to place him foremost among the saviours of the Union and the liberators of the slave.  More than that, it awards to him the merit of having accomplished what but few political philosophers would have recognized as possible,—­of leading the republic through four years of furious civil conflict without any serious detriment to its free institutions.

He was, indeed, while President, violently denounced by the opposition as a tyrant and a usurper, for having gone beyond his constitutional powers in authorizing or permitting the temporary suppression of newspapers, and in wantonly suspending the writ of habeas corpus and resorting to arbitrary arrests.  Nobody should be blamed who, when such things are done, in good faith and from patriotic motives protests against them.  In a republic, arbitrary stretches of power, even when demanded by necessity, should never be permitted to pass without a protest on the one hand, and without an apology on the other.  It is well they did not so pass during our civil war.  That arbitrary measures were resorted to is true.  That they were resorted to most sparingly, and only when the government thought them absolutely required by the safety of the republic, will now hardly be denied.  But certain it is that the history of the world does not furnish a single example of a government passing through so tremendous a crisis as our civil war was with so small a record of arbitrary acts, and so little interference with the ordinary course of law outside the field of military operations.  No American President ever wielded such power as that which was thrust into Lincoln’s hands.  It is to be hoped that no American President ever will have to be entrusted with such power again.  But no man was ever entrusted with it to whom its seductions were less dangerous than they proved to be to Abraham Lincoln.  With scrupulous care he endeavored, even under the most trying circumstances, to remain strictly within the constitutional limitations of his authority; and whenever the boundary became indistinct, or when the dangers of the situation forced him to cross it,