It goes without further demonstration that Lincoln transcended the passions of the war. How easy it is for a leader whose political and personal prestige are at stake to be carried along with the tide of hatred of a people at war, we have, unhappily, seen many times. No other victor in a civil conflict has conducted himself with more humanity, and this not in some fine gesture after victory was secured—although there was that too—but during the struggle, while the issue was still in doubt and maximum strain was placed upon the feelings. Without losing sight of his ultimate goal, he treated everyone with personal kindness, including people who went out of their way in attempts to wound him. And probably it was his habit of looking at things through objective definitions which kept him from confusing being logically right with being personally right. In the “Meditation on the Divine Will” he wrote, “In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party....”[111] That could be written only by one who has attained the highest level of self-discipline. It explains too why he should write, in his letter to Cuthbert Bullitt: “I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing.”[112] Lastly, there is the extraordinary confession of common guilt in the Second Inaugural Address, which, if it had been honored by the government he led, would have constituted a step without precedent in history in the achievement of reconciliation after war. It is supposable, Lincoln said, that God has given “to both North and South this terrible war.” Hardly seventy-five years later we were to see nations falling into the ancient habit of claiming exclusive right in their quarrels and even of demanding unconditional surrender. As late as February, 1865, Lincoln stood ready to negotiate, and his offer, far from requiring “unconditional surrender,” required but one condition—return of the seceded states to the Union. There is, when we reflect upon the matter, a certain morality in clarity of thought, and the man who had learned to define with Euclid and who had kept his opponents in argument out of the excluded middle, could not be pushed into a settlement which satisfied only passion. The settlement had to be objectively right. Between his world view and his mode of argument and his response to great occasions there is a relationship so close that to speak of any one apart is to leave the exposition incomplete.