The problem before him was bigger than faction, bigger than party,
bigger than Slavery. Could a government founded on the genuine
principles of Democracy live? Could such a Union be held together
composed of warring sections with vast territories extending over
thousands of miles, washed by two oceans extending from the frozen
mountains of Canada to the endless summers of the tropics?
If the Southern people should unite in a slave-holding Confederacy, it
was not only a question as to whether he could shape an army mighty
enough to conquer them, the more urgent and by far the graver problem
was whether he could mould into unity the warring factions of the
turbulent, passion-torn North. These people who had elected him--could
he ever hope to bind them into a solid fighting unit? If their
representatives in his Cabinet were truly representatives the task was
beyond human power.
And yet the tall, lonely figure calmly faced it without a tremor. In the
depths of his cavernous eyes there burned a steady flame but few of the
men about him saw, or understood if they saw--that flame was something
new in the history of the race--a faith in the common man which dared to
give a new valuation to the individual and set new standards for the
Democracy of the world. He believed that the heart of the masses of the
people North, South, East and West was sound at the core and that as
their Chief Magistrate he could ultimately appeal to them over the heads
of all traditions--all factions, and all accepted leaders.
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