Disregarding the entreaties of his friends, to beware of asking of the people 'what the people would never stand,' disregarding the clamours of his enemies about personal freedom, he insisted upon conscription, believing that by these means alone the Union could be saved. And what was the result? A section of the press foamed with indignation. Mobs yelled, demonstrated, and in their illogical fury, lynched negroes, seeing in these unfortunates the cause of all their troubles. But the mobs were not the American people. They were only a noisy and contemptible minority of the American people, whose importance as well as courage had been vastly over-rated. The quiet people were in deadly earnest, and they supported their President.[3] [Sidenote: LINCOLN AND CONSCRIPTION] But the task which Lincoln set himself was one of the hardest that a democratic statesman ever undertook. The demand which he determined to make, and did make, may well have tried his heart as he sat alone in the night watches. For compulsion was a violation of the habits and prejudices of the old American stock, while it was even more distasteful to new immigrants. It was contrary to the traditions and theories of the Republic, and, as many thought, to its fundamental principles. It was open to scornful attack on grounds of sentiment. Against a foe who were so weak, both in numbers and wealth, how humiliating to be driven to such desperate measures! But most of all--outweighing all other considerations--this war of North and South was not only war, but civil war. Families and lifelong friendships were divided. What compulsion meant, therefore, in this case was, that brothers were to be forced to {419} kill brothers, husbands were to be sent out to slay the kinsmen of their wives, or--as they marched with Sherman through Georgia--to set a light with their own hands to the old homesteads where they had been born. Between the warring States there were no differences of blood, tradition, or religion; or of ideas of right and wrong; no hatred against a foreign race; only an acute opposition of political ideals. Compulsion, therefore, was a great thing to ask of the American people. But the American people are a great people, and they understood. And Lincoln was a great man,--one of the greatest, noblest, and most human in the whole of history,--and he did not hesitate to ask, to insist, and to use force. What the end was does not need to be stated here; except merely this, that a lingering and bloody war was thereby greatly shortened, and that the Union was saved.