But this condition was, by its nature, transitory. Events moved, and soon created defined and clean-cut issues, in relation to which individuals were compelled to find their positions,--positions where they could establish a belief, whether that belief should prove at last to be right or wrong; positions wherein they were willing to abide to the end, be that end victory or ruin. Primarily everything depended upon Abraham Lincoln. If he should prove to be a weak man, like his predecessor, or if he should prove to be a man of merely ordinary capacity and character like the presidents who had followed Van Buren, then all was over for the North. With what anxiety, with how much doubt, the people of the Northern States scanned their singular and untried choice can never be fully appreciated by persons who cannot remember those wearisome, overladen days. He was an unknown quantity in the awful problem. In his debates with Douglas he had given some indication of what was in him, but outside of Illinois not one man in a hundred was familiar with those debates. Nor did even they furnish conclusive proof of his administrative capacity, especially in these days of novel and mortal stress. For a time he seemed to wait, to drift; until the day of his inauguration he gave no sign; then in his speech the people, whose hearts were standing still in their eagerness to hear, found reassuring sentences. Yet nothing seemed to follow during many anxious weeks; the suns rose and the suns set, and still the leader raised no standard around which the people could rally, uttered no inspiring word of command which could unite the dissevered political cliques. What was in his mind all this while can never be known, though no knowledge could be more interesting. Was he in a simple attitude of expectancy, awaiting the march of events, watchful for some one of them to give him the cue as well as the opportunity for action? Many believe that this was the case; and if it was, no other course could have been more intelligent. In due time events came which brought decision with them, the crisis shaped itself, and he was ready with clear and prompt action. When it was known what he would do, matters were settled. The people, once assured that the fight would be made, entered upon it with such a temper and in possession of such resources that, in spite of those trying fluctuations which any wise man could have foreseen, they were sure in the end to win.