Abraham Lincoln
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us to conceive the mental and moral condition of the American who
does not feel his spirit braced and heightened by being even a
spectator of such qualities and achievements. That a steady
purpose and a definite aim have been given to the jarring forces
which, at the beginning of the war, spent themselves in the
discussion of schemes which could only become operative, if at all,
after the war was over; that a popular excitement has been slowly
intensified into an earnest national will; that a somewhat
impracticable moral sentiment has been made the unconscious
instrument of a practical moral end; that the treason of covert
enemies, the jealousy of rivals, the unwise zeal of friends, have been
made not only useless for mischief, but even useful for good; that
the conscientious sensitiveness of England to the horrors of civil
conflict has been prevented from complicating a domestic with a
foreign war;--all these results, any one of which might suffice to
prove greatness in a ruler, have been mainly due to the good sense,
the good-humor, the sagacity, the large-mindedness, and the
unselfish honesty of the unknown man whom a blind fortune, as it
seemed, had lifted from the crowd to the most dangerous and
difficult eminence of modern times. It is by presence of mind in
untried emergencies that the native metal of a man is tested; it is by
the sagacity to see, and the fearless honesty to admit, whatever of
truth there may be in an adverse opinion, in order more
convincingly to expose the fallacy that lurks behind it, that a
reasoner at length gains for his mere statement of a fact the force of
argument; it is by a wise forecast which allows hostile combinations
to go so far as by the inevitable reaction to become elements of his
own power, that a politician proves his genius for state-craft; and
especially it is by so gently guiding public sentiment that he seems
to follow it, by so yielding doubtful points that he can be firm
without seeming obstinate in essential ones, and thus gain the
advantages of compromise without the weakness of concession; by
so instinctively comprehending the temper and prejudices of a