It is interesting to note that Lowell frankly expresses in this article his regret that Lincoln instead of Seward should have been selected as candidate for the presidency. He saw in Seward a reasonable and persistent exponent of the cardinal doctrines of the party, and hence he wished him at the front as the most conspicuous representative. “It was assumed that his nomination would have embittered the contest, and tainted the Republican creed with radicalism; but we doubt it. We cannot think that a party gains by not hitting its hardest, or by sugaring its opinions. Republicanism is not a conspiracy to obtain office under false pretences. It has a definite aim, an earnest purpose, and the unflinching tenacity of profound conviction.” Evidently he had not yet, as very few at the East had, made the acquaintance of Mr. Lincoln, but he accepts the nomination with confidence. “Mr. Lincoln,” he says, “has proved both his ability and his integrity; he has had experience enough in public affairs to make him a statesman, and not enough to make him a politician.... He represents a party who know that true policy is gradual in its advances, that it is conditional and not absolute, that it must deal with facts and not with sentiments, but who know also that it is wiser to stamp out evil in the spark than to wait till there is no help but in fighting fire with fire. They are the only conservative party, because they are the only one that is not willing to pawn to-morrow for the means to gamble with to-day. They have no hostility to the South, but a determined one to doctrines of whose ruinous tendency every day more and more convinces them.” And again he emphatically declares of the members of the party which he believes about to triumph at the polls: “They believe that slavery is a wrong morally, a mistake politically, and a misfortune practically, wherever it exists; that it has nullified our influence abroad and forced us to compromise with our better instincts at home; that it has perverted our government from its legitimate objects, weakened the respect for the laws by making them the tools of its purposes, and sapped the faith of men in any higher political morality than interest or any better statesmanship than chicane. They mean in every lawful way to hem it within its present limits.”