This first message completes the evolution of Lincoln as a political thinker. It is his third, his last great landmark. The Peoria speech, which drew to a focus all the implications of his early life, laid the basis of his political significance; the Cooper Union speech, summing up his conflict with Douglas, applied his thinking to the new issue precipitated by John Brown; but in both these he was still predominantly a negative thinker, still the voice of an opposition. With the first message, he became creative; he drew together what was latent in his earlier thought; he discarded the negative; he laid the foundation of all his subsequent policy. The breadth and depth of his thinking is revealed by the fulness with which the message develops the implications of his theory. In so doing, he anticipated the main issues that were to follow: his determination to keep nationalism from being narrowed into mere "Northernism"; his effort to create an all-parties government; his stubborn insistence that he was suppressing an insurrection, not waging external war; his doctrine that the Executive, having been chosen by the entire people, was the one expression of the sovereignty of the people, and therefore, the repository of all these exceptional "war powers" that are dormant in time of peace. Upon each of those issues he was destined to wage fierce battles with the politicians who controlled Congress, who sought to make Congress his master, who thwarted, tormented and almost defeated him. In the light of subsequent history the first message has another aspect besides its significance as political science. In its clear understanding of the implications of his attitude, it attains political second sight. As Lincoln, immovable, gazes far into the future, his power of vision makes him, yet again though in a widely different sense, the "seer in a trance, Seeing all his own mischance." His troubles with Congress began at once. The message was received on July fourth, politely, but with scant response to its ideas. During two weeks, while Congress in its fatuousness thought that the battle impending in Virginia would settle things, the majority in Congress would not give assent to Lincoln's view of what the war was about. And then came Bull Run. In a flash the situation changed. Fatuousness was puffed out like a candle in a wind. The rankest extremist saw that Congress must cease from its debates and show its hand; must say what the war was about; must inform the nation whether it did or did not agree with the President.