“I don’t know,” sez Cousin John sadly—“I don’t know; perhaps mistakes were inevitable. The question was so great and momentous, and the danger and the difficulties seemed so impenetrable on every side.” “Lincoln did the best he could,” sez Josiah sturdily; “and I know it.” “And so do I know it,” sez Cousin John. “That wise, great heart could not make any other mistake only a mistake of judgment, and he was sorely tried to know what was best to do. The burden weighed down upon him so, I fancy he was glad to lay it down in any way. “The times were so dark that any measure adopted for safety was only groping towards the light, only catching at the first rope of safety that seemed to lower itself through the heavy clouds of war. “The heavy eyes and true hearts watching through those black hours will never be forgotten by this republic. “And now, in looking back and criticising the errors of that time, it is like the talk of those who are watching a storm at sea, when, in order to save the ship, wrong ropes may be seized, and life-boats cast out into the stormy waves may be swept down and lost. But if the ship is saved, let the survivors of the crew forever bless and praise the brave hands and hearts that dared the storm and the peril. “But when the sky is clearer you can see more plainly than when the tempest is whirling about you and death and ruin are riding on the gale. “You can see plainer and you can see farther. “Now, it was a great and charitable idea, looking at it from one side, to let those who had tried their best to ruin the Union at once take an equal place with those who had perilled life and property to save it—to give them _at once_ the same rights in making the laws they had set at defiance. “It was a generous and charitable idea, looking on it from one side, but from another side it looked risky, very risky, and it looked dangerous to the further peace and perpetuity of that Union. “A little delay might not have done any harm—a little delay in giving them the full rights of citizenship. “And it might, Heaven knows, have been as well if the slaves had had a gradual bringing up of mind and character to meet the needs of legal responsibility, if they had not been _at once_ invested with all the rights and responsibilities which well-trained Christian scholars find it so difficult to assume, if they had not been required to solve by the ballot deep questions of statesmanship, the names of which they could not spell out in the newspaper. “Could such ignorance make them otherwise than a dangerous element in politics, dangerous to themselves and dangerous to the welfare of the Union?