It was while this determination was still young that he went to New York and delivered what is probably the best known though far from the greatest of his speeches, the address at Cooper Union on Feb. 27, 186o. A large part of his purpose was to dissociate the Republican cause from the recent attempt of John Brown to provoke a slave insurrection. He succeeded brilliantly in giving to the Republican position a sober and conservative cast. Cooper Union established him as at least second choice for president in the minds of many of the Eastern Republicans. When, in the Republican National Convention at Chicago, it became plain that none of these Easterners could nominate his first choice, many of them combined with the Western supporters of Lincoln to nomi nate him uproariously on the third ballot. In the election, out of some 4,500,000 votes cast, he got less than 2,000,000 and all but about 24,000 of these were in the Free States. But this minority of the popular vote was so distributed that it gave him the electoral college and elected him president.
In 186o Lincoln was in one of those rising tides of energy that had come and gone throughout his life. Its culmination was reached on Dec. 20, the very day on which South Carolina seceded. (See UNITED STATES, HISTORY OF.) Congress had met ; it was believed that a compromise could be made with the Slave States on the basis of a division of the territories between slavery and freedom. Thurlow Weed had come to Springfield on behalf of the Republican leaders to find whether Lincoln would participate in compromise. On Dec. 20 he closed the door by issuing an ulti matum : he insisted on complete exclusion of slavery from the territories but he would promise to let slavery alone in the States and to advocate a strenuous enforcement of the laws for recovering fugitive slaves and returning them to their owners. This decision put an end to compromise and led straight to war. The next 18 months form the most singular period in Lincoln's life. They are his last period of the ebb tide. During this period he is often at the mercy of his indecision. And yet, from this welter of un certainty he issues suddenly, in July, 1862, the final Lincoln, sure of himself and master of his world.
various bodies such as an army board with ill-defined and con flicting functions. Having required McClellan to submit his plans to a council of general officers, Lincoln attended the council and promised to be governed by the opinion of the majority. The strange story of the latter part of the period of uncertainty is summed up in the contrast between his attitude at this council and his attitude about four months later, after McClellan's defeat in the Seven Days, when Lincoln visited the front and summoned the generals before him to make reports but asked of them no advice. Meanwhile he had suffered a profound personal affliction in the death of his favourite son and had been tormented almost beyond endurance by officious senators now organized in the Committee on the Conduct of the War. What caused his sudden emergence into self-confidence is a mystery. The transitional moment appears to be a sudden visit to West Point and a long confidential talk with Gen. Scott. A few days later, in his con ferences at the front, he took things into his own hands and never thereafter relinquished supreme control.
His story thenceforward is the story of his country. It is need less here to do more than catalogue in order the main events; his struggle with the Committee on the Conduct of the War for control of the army; his removal of Gen. Fremont because of the latter's rash course of freeing slaves in Missouri ; the narrow avoidance of war with England by promptly acknowledging the error of Commander Wilkes when he boarded a neutral ship and took off Confederate envoys; the establishment of a new under standing with regard to contraband (see further article on NEUTRALITY) ; his gradual solution of the problem of army con trol in a democracy; his slow acceptance of the idea that the policy of emancipation must be accepted as a war measure partly to solidify his own support at home, partly to secure international support ; his issue of the Emancipation Proclamation, tentatively on Sept. 22, 1862, permanently on Jan. 1, 1863; his temporary loss of popularity due largely to the terrible sufferings of the Federal armies in 1864 and the combination against him of the Abolitionists of the senate who felt he was lacking in sternness; the salvation of his leadership by Sheridan's victories in the Shenandoah valley and Sherman's capture of Atlanta; his second election as president ; his opposition to Congress with the purpose of setting up a generous plan of reconstruction in the conquered South. The latter purpose inspired one of his most notable ac tions. Shortly before his death, he proposed to his cabinet to urge upon Congress the appropriation of $400,000,000 to assist the South in its economic recovery. The opposition of the cabinet led him to set the scheme aside, temporarily, as he thought. His last public address contained an assurance to the nation that he was pondering this difficult problem. "I am considering and will not fail to act when satisfied that action will be proper." At that same moment, a fanatic of secession, John Wilkes Booth, was planning his assassination. While Lincoln was sitting in Ford's theatre, on the night of April 14, 1865, Booth stole into his box and shot him through the head. He lingered unconscious until 7 : 2 5 the next morning when he died.