It must be, then, as chief magistrate of the republic that he won the title of “great.” That, in fact, is the case. He was a great chief executive. As such, he deserves immortality. Because he sealed his work with his life-blood, his memory will always be sacred. But, is it absolutely certain that no other American would have succeeded in piloting the vessel of state through the storm of the Civil War? Is it quite certain that Stephen A. Douglas, himself, would not have succeeded where Mr. Lincoln succeeded? Who knows and can dogmatically say that Thaddeus Stevens or Oliver Morton, or Zach Chandler, or Ben Wade could not have done it? What was it that Mr. Lincoln did during the Civil War that was so much greater and grander than what might have been expected from Andrew Jackson in the same crisis? Somehow I fail to see it. He did not lose courage, but there were brave men before Agamemnon, and the world has never been lacking in heroic types that stand forth and meet emergencies. In studying Mr. Lincoln’s course during the Civil War we can discover a great deal of patience, a great deal of tact, a great deal of diplomacy, a great deal of determination to win, a great deal of consecration to patriotic duty. He struck the right key-note when he said that he was fighting not to free the negroes but to preserve the Union. This insight into the situation which enabled him to take the strongest possible position showed political genius of a high order. This alone would entitle him to be classed as a great statesman, a great chief magistrate, a great national leader. When we calmly reflect upon what he had to do, and the means which were at his command for doing it, we see nothing in the result that borders upon the miraculous. All the advantage was on his side. The fire-eaters of the South played into his hands beautifully. They were so very blind to what was necessary for their success that they even surrendered possession of Washington City, when they might just as well have held it and rushed their troops to it, thus making sure not only of Baltimore, but of the whole State of Maryland—to say nothing of the enormous moral advantage of holding possession of the capital of the nation. It was a clever strategy which, while talking peace, adopted those measures which compelled the Confederate authorities to fire upon the flag at Fort Sumter. But that most effective bit of strategy appears to have had its birth in the fertile brain of William H. Seward. The diplomacy which kept dangling before the eyes of the border states the promise to pay for the slaves until the necessity of duping the waverers had passed, was clever in its way; but there is no evidence that the fine Italian hand of Mr. Seward was not in this policy also.