“I give you joy of the Election. Seldom in history was so much staked on
a popular vote—I suppose never in history.
“One hears everywhere anecdotes of late, very late, remorse overtaking
the hardened sinners and just saving them from final reprobation.”
Journal, 1864-65. “Why talk of President Lincoln’s equality of manners
to the elegant or titled men with whom Everett or others saw him? A
sincerely upright and intelligent man as he was, placed in the chair,
has no need to think of his manners or appearance. His work day by day
educates him rapidly and to the best. He exerts the enormous power of
this continent in every hour, in every conversation, in every act;—thinks
and decides under this pressure, forced to see the vast and various
bearings of the measures he adopts: _he_ cannot palter, he cannot but
carry a grace beyond his own, a dignity, by means of what he drops, e.
g., all pretension and trick, and arrives, of course, at a simplicity,
which is the perfection of manners.”