The character of no statesman in all the history of the world has been more generally or more completely misunderstood than that of Abraham Lincoln. Many writers describe him as a mere creature of circumstances floating like a piece of driftwood on the current of events; and about the only attribute of statesmanship they concede to him is a sort of instinctive divination of the popular feeling at a given period, and on a given subject. They do not thus dwarf Mr. Lincoln in set phrase or formal propositions, but that is the logic and effect of their narratives. Some of these writers go even further, and represent him as an almost unconscious instrument in the hands of the Almighty,--about as irresponsible as the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night which went before the Israelites through the wilderness. The truth is, that Mr. Lincoln was at once the ablest and the most adroit politician of modern times. In all the history of the world I can recall no example of a great leader, having to do with a people in any degree free, who himself shaped and guided events to the same extent, unless it was Julius Cæsar. Mr. Lincoln was not the creature of circumstances. He _made_ circumstances to suit the necessities of his own situation. He was less influenced by the inferior minds around him than was Washington, Jefferson, or Jackson. His policy was invariably formed by his own judgment, and it seldom took even the slightest color from the opinions of others, however decided. In this originality and independence of understanding he resembled somewhat the great William of Orange. Mr. Lincoln was supposed at the outset of his Administration to have placed himself, as it were, under the tutelage of William H. Seward; and later he was generally believed to have abjectly endured the almost insulting domination of Edwin M. Stanton. But I say without the slightest fear of contradiction, that neither Mr. Seward nor Mr. Stanton, great men as they both were, ever succeeded either in leading or misleading Mr. Lincoln in a single instance. The Administration was not a week old when Mr. Seward had found his level, and the larger purposes, dangerous and revolutionary, with which Mr. Stanton entered the War Department, were baffled and defeated before he had time to fashion the instruments of usurpation. Consciously or unconsciously, Mr. Seward and Mr. Stanton, like others, wrought out the will of the great man who had called them to his side to be appropriately used in furtherance of plans far greater and more comprehensive than they themselves had conceived. I shall not linger here to present instances of this subordination of high officials and party leaders to Mr. Lincoln; they may be gleaned without number from the published histories of the times. I shall content myself with recounting some of his relations with the illustrious, and at that time powerful, Democratic captain, George B. McClellan.