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?" The people of the United States were able under the wise leadership of Lincoln to answer this question "no." Lincoln begins at once with the public utterances of the first year of the War to take the people of the United States into his confidence. He is their representative, their servant. He reasons out before the people, as if it constituted a great jury, the analysis of their position, of their responsibilities, and the grounds on which as their representative this or that decision is arrived at. Says Schurz: "Lincoln wielded the powers of government when stern resolution and relentless force were the order of the day, and, won and ruled the popular mind and heart by the tender sympathies of his nature.”

The attack on Sumter placed upon the administration the duty of organising at once for the contest now inevitable the forces of the country. This work of organisation came at best but late because those who were fighting to break up the nation had their preparations well advanced. The first call for troops directed the governors of the loyal States to supply seventy-five thou

sand men for the restoration of the authority of the government. Massachusetts was the first State to respond by despatching to the front, within twenty-four hours of the publication of the call, its Sixth Regiment of Militia; the Seventh of New York started twenty-four hours later. The history of the passage of the Sixth through Baltimore, of the attack upon the columns, and of the deaths, in the resulting affray, of soldiers and of citizens has often been told. When word came to Washington that Baltimore was obstructing the passage of troops bound southward, troops called for the defence of the capital, the isolation of the government became sadly apparent. For a weary and anxious ten days, Lincoln and his associates were dreading from morning to morning the approach over the long bridge of the troops from Virginia whose camp-fires could be seen from the southern windows of the White House, and were looking anxiously northward for the arrival of the men on whose prompt service the safety of the capital was to depend. I have myself stood in Lincoln's old study, the windows of which overlook the Potomac, and have recalled to mind the fearful pressure of anxiety that must have weighed upon the President during those long days; as looking across the river, he could

trace by the smoke the picket lines of the Virginia troops. He must have thought of the possibility that he was to be the last President of the United States, that the torch handed over to him by the faltering hands of his predecessor was to expire while he was responsible for the flame. The immediate tension was finally broken by the appearance of the weary and battered companies of the Massachusetts troops and the arrival two days later, by the way of Annapolis, of the New York Seventh with an additional battalion from Boston.

It was, however, not only in April, 1861, that the capital was in peril. The anxiety of the President (never for himself but only for his responsibilities) was to be repeated in July, 1863, when Lee was in Maryland, and in July, 1864, at the time of Early's raid.

We may remember the peculiar burdens that come upon the commander-in-chief through his position at the rear of the armies he is directing. The rear of a battle is, even in the time of victory, a place of demoralising influence. It takes a man of strong nerve not to lose heart when the only people with whom he is in immediate contact are those who through disability or discouragement are making their way to the rear. The sutlers, the

teamsters, the wounded men, the panic-struck (and with the best of soldiers certain groups do lose heart from time to time, men who in another action when started right are ready to take their full share of the fighting)—these are the groups that in any action are streaming to the rear. It is impossible not to be affected by the undermining of their spirits and of their hopefulness. If the battle is going wrongly, if in addition to those who are properly making their way to the rear, there come also bodies of troops pushed out of their position who have lost heart and who have lost faith in their commanders, the pressure towards demoralisation is almost irresistible.

We may recall that during the entire four years of War, Lincoln, the commander-in-chief, was always in the rear. Difficult as was the task of the men who led columns into action, of the generals in the field who had the immediate responsibility for the direction of those columns and of the fighting line, it was in no way to be compared with the pressure and sadness of the burden of the man who stood back of all the lines, and to whom came all the discouragements, the complaints, the growls, the criticisms, the requisitions or demands for resources that were not available, the reports of disasters, sometimes ex

aggerated and sometimes unduly smoothed over, the futile suggestions, the conflicting counsels, the indignant protests, the absurd schemes, the self-seeking applications, that poured into the White House from all points of the field of action and from all parts of the Border States and of the North. The man who during four years could stand that kind of battering and pressure and who, instead of having his hopefulness crushed out of him, instead of losing heart or power of direction or the full control of his responsibilities, steadily developed in patience, in strength, in width of nature, and in the wisdom of experience, so that he was able not only to keep heart firm and mind clear but to give to the soldiers in the front and to the nation behind the soldiers the influence of his great heart and clear mind and of his firm purpose, that man had within him the nature of the hero. Selected in time of need to bear the burdens of the nation, he was able so to fulfil his responsibilities that he takes place in the world's history as a leader of men.

In July, 1861, one of the special problems to be adjusted was the attitude of the Border States. Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia had not been willing at the outset to cast in their lot with the South, but they were not pre