"I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticising their command and withholding confidence in him, will now turn upon you." Chancellorsville was the fulfillment. XII. MR. LINCOLN was a statesman. The great stumbling-block--the great obstruction--in Lincoln's way, and in the way of thousands, was the old doctrine of States Rights. This doctrine was first established to protect slavery. It was clung to to protect the inter-State slave trade. It became sacred in connection with the Fugitive Slave Law, and it was finally used as the corner-stone of Secession. This doctrine was never appealed to in defence of the right--always in support of the wrong. For many years politicians upon both sides of this question endeavored to express the exact relations existing between the Federal Government and the States, and I know of no one who succeeded, except Lincoln. In his message of 1861, delivered on July the 4th, the definition is given, and it is perfect: "Whatever concerns the whole should be confided to the whole--to the General Government. Whatever concerns only the State should be left exclusively to the State." When that definition is realized in practice, this country becomes a Nation. Then we shall know that the first allegiance of the citizen is not to his State, but to the Republic, and that the first duty of the Republic is to protect the citizen, not only when in other lands, but at home, and that this duty cannot be discharged by delegating it to the States. Lincoln believed in the sovereignty of the people--in the supremacy of the Nation--in the territorial integrity of the Republic. XIII. A GREAT actor can be known only when he has assumed the principal character in a great drama. Possibly the greatest actors have never appeared, and it may be that the greatest soldiers have lived the lives of perfect peace. Lincoln assumed the leading part in the greatest drama ever enacted upon the stage of this continent. His criticisms of military movements, his correspondence with his generals and others on the conduct of the war, show that he was at all times master of the situation--that he was a natural strategist, that he appreciated the difficulties and advantages of every kind, and that in "the still and mental" field of war he stood the peer of any man beneath the flag. Had McClellan followed his advice, he would have taken Richmond. Had Hooker acted in accordance with his suggestions, Chancellorsville would have been a victory for the Nation. Lincoln's political prophecies were all fulfilled. We know now that he not only stood at the top, but that he occupied the centre, from first to last, and that he did this by reason of his intelligence, his humor, his philosophy, his courage and his patriotism.