"A house divided against itself can not stand, I believe this country can not permanently endure half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all the one thing or the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction or its advocates will push it farther until it becomes alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South."

This declaration was the standard around which gathered the grandest political party that the world has ever seen, and this declaration made Lincoln the leader of that vast host.

In this, the first great crisis, Lincoln uttered the victorious truth that made him the foremost man in the Republic.

Then came another crisis-the crisis of secession and civil war.

Again Lincoln spoke the deepest feeling and the highest thought of the Nation. In his first message he said: "The central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy."

He also showed conclusively that the North and South, in spite of secession, must remain face to face that physically they could not separate that they must have more or less commerce, and that this commerce must be carried on, either between the two sections as friends or aliens.

This situation and its consequences he pointed out to absolute perfection in these words;

"Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws! Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws among friends!"

After having stated fully and fairly the philosophy of the conflict, after having said enough to satisfy any calm and thoughtful mind, he addressed himself to the hearts of America. Probably there are fewer and finer passages of literature than the close of Lincoln's first message:

"I am loth 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 patriotic grave to every loving heart and hearth-stone all over this broad land, will swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.'

These noble, these touching, these pathetic words, were delivered in the presence of rebellion, in the midst of spies and conspirators-surrounded by friends, most of whom were unknown and some of whom were wavering in their fidelity—at a time when secession was ar、 rogant and organized, when patriotism was silent, and when, to quote the expressive words of Lincoln himself, "Sinners were calling the righteous to repentance."

When Lincoln became President he was held in contempt by the South-underrated by the North and East -not appreciated even by his Cabinet—and yet he was not only one of the wisest but one of the shrewdest of mankind. Knowing that he had the right to enforce the laws of the Union in all parts of the United States and Territories-knowing, as he did, that the secessionists

were in the wrong, he also knew they had sympathizers,

not only in the North, but in other lands.

Consequent

ly he felt that it was of the utmost importance that the South should fire the first shot, should do some act that would solidify the North and gain for us the justification of the civilized world. He so managed affairs that while he was attempting simply to give food to our soldiers, the south commenced actual hostilities and fired on Sumter.

This course was pursued by Lincoln in spite of the advice of many friends, and yet a wiser thing was never done.

At that time Lincoln appreciated the scope and consequences of the impending conflict. Above all other thoughts in his mind was this: This conflict will settle the question, at least for centuries to come, whether man is capable of governing himself, and consequently is of greatest importance to the free than to the enslaved. He knew what depended on the issue, and he said: "We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth."

Then came a crisis in the North. It became clearer and clearer to Lincoln's mind, day by day, that the rebellion was slavery, and that it was necessary to keep the border States on the side of the Union.

For this purpose he proposed a scheme of emancipation and colonization—a scheme by which the owners of slaves should be paid the full value of what they called their "property." He called attention to the fact that he had adhered to the act of Congress to confiscate property used for insurrectionary purposes-that the Union must be preserved, and that therefore all indis

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He knew that if the border States agreed to gradual emancipation, and received compensation for their slaves, they would be forever lost to the Confederacy, whether secession succeeded or not. It was objected at the time by some that the scheme was far too expensive; but Lincoln, wiser than his advisers—far wiser than his enemies -demonstrated that from an economical point of view his course was the best.

He proposed that $400 be paid for slaves, including men, women and children. This was a large price, and yet it showed how much cheaper it was to purchase than carry on the war.

At that time, at the price mentioned, there were about $750,000 worth oi slaves in Delaware. The cost of carrying on the war was at least two millions of dollars a day, and for one-third of one day's expenses all the slaves in Deleware could be purchased. He also showed that all the slaves in Deleware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri could be bought, at the same price, for less than the expense of carrying on the war for eighty-seven days.

This was the wisest thing that could have been proposed, and yet such was the madness of the South, such the indignation of the North, that the advice was unheeded.

Again, in July, 1862, he urged on the representatives of the border States a scheme of gradual compensated emancipation; but the ropresentatives were too deaf to hear, too blind to see.

Lincoln always hated slavery, and yet he felt the obligations and duties of his position. In his first mes