he was equally careful to mark his acts as exceptional measures, justifiable only by the imperative necessities of the civil war, so that they might not pass into history as precedents for similar acts in time of peace.  It is an unquestionable fact that during the reconstruction period which followed the war, more things were done capable of serving as dangerous precedents than during the war itself.  Thus it may truly be said of him not only that under his guidance the republic was saved from disruption and the country was purified of the blot of slavery, but that, during the stormiest and most perilous crisis in our history, he so conducted the government and so wielded his almost dictatorial power as to leave essentially intact our free institutions in all things that concern the rights and liberties of the citizens.  He understood well the nature of the problem.  In his first message to Congress he defined it in admirably pointed language:  “Must a government be of necessity too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?  Is there in all republics this inherent weakness?” This question he answered in the name of the great American republic, as no man could have answered it better, with a triumphant “No....”

It has been said that Abraham Lincoln died at the right moment for his fame.  However that may be, he had, at the time of his death, certainly not exhausted his usefulness to his country.  He was probably the only man who could have guided the nation through the perplexities of the reconstruction period in such a manner as to prevent in the work of peace the revival of the passions of the war.  He would indeed not have escaped serious controversy as to details of policy; but he could have weathered it far better than any other statesman of his time, for his prestige with the active politicians had been immensely strengthened by his triumphant re-election; and, what is more important, he would have been supported by the confidence of the victorious Northern people that he would do all to secure the safety of the Union and the rights of the emancipated negro, and at the same time by the confidence of the defeated Southern people that nothing would be done by him from motives of vindictiveness, or of unreasoning fanaticism, or of a selfish party spirit.  “With malice toward none, with charity for all,” the foremost of the victors would have personified in himself the genius of reconciliation.

He might have rendered the country a great service in another direction.  A few days after the fall of Richmond, he pointed out to a friend the crowd of office-seekers besieging his door.  “Look at that,” said he.  “Now we have conquered the rebellion, but here you see something that may become more dangerous to this republic than the rebellion itself.”  It is true, Lincoln as President did not profess what we now call civil service reform principles.  He used the patronage of the government