“This is essentially a people’s contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders.... It is now for them [the people] to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections.” To one of the many committees that went to the White House to complain that the war was not being pressed rapidly enough, he suggested a question and answer that were repeated all over the country. He was tired, pale, almost worn out. The ceaseless grind of work, the frightful and increasing responsibilities imposed by the war, the cruel jibes of critics all over the country, had deepened the furrows in his brow and wasted his homely face. Every mail brought threats of assassination. The far-away, rapt look in his eyes, the pitiful droop of his strong mouth, the pathetic sloping of his tall, black-clad figure, gave evidence of the strain upon him. “Gentlemen,” he said, with a smile that lit up his wonderful face, “suppose all the property you were worth was in gold, and you had put it in the hands of Blondin [the famous tight-rope walker] to carry across the Niagara River on a rope. Would you shake the cable, or keep shouting at him, ‘Blondin, stand up a little straighter--Blondin, stoop a little more--go a little faster--lean a little more to the north--lean a little more to the south’? No, you would hold your breath, as well as your tongue, and keep your hands off until he was safe over. The Government’s carrying an enormous weight. Untold treasures are in their hands. They are doing the best they can. Don’t badger them. Keep silence, and we will get you safe across.” Lincoln did not fight battles himself, but he searched patiently for generals who could, and then he trusted them, and kept the public off their backs. As he said to General Grant, “If a man can’t skin, he must hold a leg while somebody else does.” Imagine Lincoln, in his black frock coat and high hat, stealing out of the White House in the morning to kneel in the grass on the Mall and practice at a sheet of note paper with newly-invented rifles till the indignant sentries dash up shouting, to see the long figure unfold itself upward and recognize in the disturber the President of the United States! Imagine him playing with his children on the White House lawn, “his coat-tails standing out straight and his black hair tousled this way and that” as he dashes about, chased by his shrieking playmates!