Lincoln, therefore, did not have to trouble himself with this
portion of the population. On the other hand, that part which he
had to master included such emotional rhetoricians as Horace
Greeley; such fierce zealots as Henry Winter Davis of Maryland,
who made him trouble indeed, and Benjamin Wade, whom we have met
already; such military egoists as McClellan and Pope; such crafty
double-dealers as his own Secretary of the Treasury; such astute
grafters as Cameron; such miserable creatures as certain powerful
capitalists who sacrificed his army to their own lust for profits
filched from army contracts.
The wonder of Lincoln's achievement is that he contrived at last
to extend his hold over all these diverse elements; that he
persuaded some, outwitted others, and overcame them all. The
subtlety of this task would have ruined any statesman of the
driving sort. Explain Lincoln by any theory you will, his
personality was the keystone of the Northern arch; subtract it,
and the arch falls. The popular element being as complex and
powerful as it was, how could the presiding statesman have
mastered the situation if he had not been of so peculiar a sort
that he could influence all these diverse and powerful interests,
slowly, by degrees, without heat, without the imperative note,
almost in silence, with the universal, enfolding irresistibility
of the gradual things in nature, of the sun and the rain.
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