He made speeches at Indianapolis, Columbus, Steubenville, Pittsburg, Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany and New York. He begged the American people to be patient. No blood would be shed unless the government was compelled to act in self-defense. There would be no “coercion” or “invasion” of the South, but the United States would retake its own forts and other property and collect duties on importations. In Cincinnati Lincoln spoke to the South, which was reviling him and defying the national authority, in terms that prove how eager he was to avert armed conflict: “We mean to leave you alone, and in no way interfere with your institutions; to abide by all and every compromise of the Constitution; and, in a word, coming back to the original proposition, to treat you, so far as degenerate men--if we have degenerated--may, according to the examples of those noble fathers, Washington, Jefferson and Madison. We mean to remember that you are as good as we are; that there is no difference between us other than the difference of circumstances. We mean to recognize and bear in mind always that you have as good hearts in your bosoms as other people, or as we claim to have, and to treat you accordingly.” It took a great soul in a man of Lincoln’s heroic origin, direct methods, intense patriotism and deep hatred of slavery to speak in such terms to rebellion. The time came when he hurled a million armed men against the insurgent South, when with a stroke of his pen he set free four millions of slaves, representing a property value of about two and a half billion dollars; and when, with fire and sword and the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of lives and billions on billions of treasure, he proved to the world that democratic institutions were strong enough to resist the mightiest shocks of civil war. But as he moved on to the scene of his great ordeal in Washington, there was nothing but temperate reason, kindness and peace on his lips. It must not be forgotten that the tall, gawky, sad-faced lawyer in ill-fitting funereal black, was no limp-limbed product of sedentary sentimentalism, but a man with muscles of steel, who had thrashed and cowed the most dreaded desperadoes of the frontier, a self-made son of the wilderness, who had battled against floods, famines and wild beasts; and who had in him the stout heart and steady will of the cabin-born and forest-bred. Lincoln was incapable of fear, save the fear of folly or injustice. He was not afraid even of ridicule, that poisoned weapon before which so many strong men tremble. As the nation prepared to honor the hundredth anniversary of his birth, well might it remember him, newly separated from his provincial and rude, but heroic West, advancing between the haggard passions of a divided country with firm, brotherly hands held out to the whole people.