How hard it is for us now to realize the appalling strain of responsibilities that could persuade a valiant frontiersman like Lincoln--knowing that Fort Sumter was already besieged; that the Florida forts were threatened and that an organized Confederate government, with drilled troops, was actually in possession of many States--to say so softly to the armed and defiant South: “I trust that this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally maintain and defend itself.” Just before he closed his speech Lincoln looked up from his manuscript, and his gray eyes--those eyes that could be so tender as to make his gaunt face beautiful--sought the silent, listening crowd. There were dark circles under his eyes. His whole bearing was that of a man in pain. Then he raised his splendid head and made that last sublime appeal against war: “I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” As Lincoln kissed the open Bible in the hands of Chief Justice Taney--who wrote the Dred Scott opinion supporting slavery--the thunder of artillery announced his vow to defend the Union. XII Those who in peaceful times like these wonder why so strong and direct a man as Lincoln should have been so eager to conciliate the haughty and rebellious Confederacy, to assure the rebels that there would be no “coercion” or “invasion,” and to appeal to their historic national consciousness, rather than to tell them in so many words that they would be scourged into obedience, must consider that he at last realized the Southern misunderstanding of his purpose and temperament which caused the Governor of Florida to write to the Governor of South Carolina: “If there is sufficient manliness at the South to strike for our rights, honor and safety, in God’s name let it be done before the inauguration of Lincoln.” Not only that, but Mr. Seward, the great Republican leader of the East, now Secretary of State, and one of the deadliest foes of slavery, within three weeks wrote this advice: “_Change the question before the public from one upon slavery, or about slavery_, for a question upon _union or disunion._” No man knew or loved Lincoln better than Leonard Sweet, who made this deliberate analysis of him: “In dealing with men he was a trimmer, and such a trimmer the world has never seen. Halifax, who was great in his day as a trimmer, would blush by the side of Lincoln; _yet Lincoln never trimmed in principles_, it was only in his conduct with men.”