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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, ruled by an
undisputed, absolute will, but by means to be furnished by the voluntary
action of the people:--armies to be formed by voluntary enlistments;
large sums of money to be raised by the people, through representatives,
voluntarily taxing themselves; trust of extraordinary power to be
voluntarily granted; and war measures, not seldom restricting the rights
and liberties to which the citizen was accustomed, to be voluntarily
accepted and submitted to by the people, or at least a large majority of
them; and that this would have to be kept up not merely during a short
period of enthusiastic excitement; but possibly through weary years of
alternating success and disaster, hope and despondency.
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