The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1896-04-23
LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET
A Lecture Delivered on TUESDAY,.
March 10th, by G. A. Dana
of New York.
CONTINUED.

These are amiab1e and low
able personal qualities, but the
great thing was the fact that
he succeeded: that the civil
war was ended under his rule.
He succeeded, with the forces
of the anti-slavery States, in
putting down a rebellion in
which twelve millions of people
were concerned, determined
people, educated people, fight
ing for their ideas and their
property, fighting to the last,
. fighting to the death. 1 don't
think there is anything else in
history to compare with that
achievement. How did he do
it?
In the first place, he never
was in haste. AS I said, he
never took a step too soon, and
also he never took a step too
late. When the whole North
ern country seemed to be clam
oring for him to issue a
proclamation ,abolishing slav-
cry, he didn't doit. Deputation
after deputation wentto Wash
ington. remember once a humid
red gentlemen came, dressed in
black coats, mostly clergymen,
from Massachusetts,. They APP
1pealed to him to proclaim the
abolition of slavery. But he
didn't do it. He allowed Mr..
Cameron and Gen. Butler to
execute their great idea of treat
ing slaves as contraband of
war, and of protecting those
who had got into our lines
against being recaptured by
their Southern owners. But
he would not prematurely make
the proclamation that was so
much desired. Finally the
time came: and of that he was
the judge. Nobody else decided
it; nobody commanded it; the
proclamation was issued as he
thought best; and it was effica-
cious. The people of the North,
who during the long contest
over slavery had always stood
strenuously blythe compromises
of the Constitution, might
themselves have become half
rebels if this proclamation had
been issued too soon. They at
last were tired of waiting, tired
of endeavoring to preserve even
a show of regard for what was
called the compromises of the
Constitution when they be-
lieved the Constitution itself
was in danger. Thus public
opinion was ripe when the pro-
clamation came, and that was
the beginning of the end.
This unerring judgment, this
patience which waited and
which knew when the right
time, had arrived: those we're
intellectual qualities that 1 do
not find exercised upon any
such scale by any other man in
history, and with such unerr-
ing precision. This proves
Abraham Lincoln to have been
intellectually one of the great
est of rulers. If we look
through the record of great
men, where has there ever been
one to be matched along side of
him? I don't know. He could
have issued this proclamation
two years before, perhaps, and
the consequence of it might
have been our entire defeat;
but when tcame it did it's work,
and it did us no harm whatever.
Nobody protested against it,
not even the Confederates
themselves. But they felt it
deeply.
Another interesting fact
about Abraham Lincoln was
that he developed into a great
military man, that is to say, a
man of supreme military judg-
ment. I do not risk anything
in saying that if you will study
the records of the war, and
study the writing relating to it,
you will agree with me that
the greatest general we had,
greater than Grant or Thomas,
was Abraham Lincoln. It was
not so at the beginning; but af-
ter three or four years of con-
slant practice in the science
and art of war, he arrived at
this extraordinary knowledge
of it, so that Won Moltke was
not a better General or an ADLER
planner or expounder of cam
paign than Presidedt Lincoln
was. He was, to sum it up, a