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62 people actually wondered how such a man could dare to undertake a task which, as he himself had said to his neighbors in his parting speech, was “more difficult than that of Washington himself had been.”

But Lincoln brought to that task, aside from other uncommon qualities, the first requisite, — an intuitive comprehension of its nature. While he did not indulge in the delusion that the Union could be maintained or restored without a conflict of arms, he could indeed not foresee all the problems he would have to solve. He instinctively understood, however, by what means that conflict would have to be conducted by the government of a democracy. He knew that the impending war, whether great or small, would not be like a foreign war, exciting a united national enthusiasm, but a civil war, likely to fan to uncommon heat the animosities of party even in the localities controlled by the government; that this war would have to be carried on, not by means of a ready-made machinery,