Here, however, so many from similar surroundings have achieved similar results that this fact of itself does not necessarily unfold the man clearly and fully to us. He might have been put forward for that high station as a skillful and accomplished politician, from whose elevation hosts of partisans counted upon their own personal advancement and profit. Or he might have been a successful general; or one possessing merely negative qualities, with no salient points, all objectionable angularities rounded off till that desirable availability, which has at times been laid hold of for the Presidency had been reached; or, yet again, one who had for a long time been in the front ranks of an old and triumphant party, and, therefore, as such matters have been managed with us, admitted to have strong claims upon such party; or, lastly, one who, having for many years schemed and plotted and labored, in season and out of season, for the nomination, at last achieved it. For such Presidents have been furnished us. But he was neither. And yet the highest point to which an American may aspire he reached. Clearly, then, there must have been something of strength and of worth in the man. He was reëlected, the first President since Jackson to whom that honor had been accorded. And thirty-two years had passed--eight Presidential terms--since Jackson’s reëlection. He was, moreover, reëlected by a largely increased vote. The years covered by his administration were the stormiest in American history, “piled high,” as he himself said, “with difficulties.” No President was ever more severely attacked, more unsparingly denounced than he. None more belittled than he. And yet he was triumphantly reëlected. Why? For the same reason that first brought him before the country. Primarily and mainly because the mass of the people had unbounded confidence in his honesty and devotion to principle. Though these qualities, it is pleasant to say, have been by no means rare in our Presidents, yet Abraham Lincoln seemed so to speak, so steeped and saturated in them that a hold was thereby obtained upon the common mind, the like of which no other President since Washington had secured. The bitterest opponent of his policy was constrained, if candid, to admit, if not the existence of these qualities, at least the prevailing popular belief in their existence. What shall be said of him as a statesman? That he found the fabric of our National Government rocking from turret to foundation stone--that he left it, after four years of strife such as, happily, the world rarely witnesses, firmly fixed, and sure; this should serve in some sort, as an answer.