With scrupulous care he endeavored, even under the most
trying circumstances, to remain strictly within the constitutional
limitations of his authority; and whenever the boundary became
indistinct, or when the dangers of the situation forced him to cross it,
he was equally careful to mark his acts as exceptional measures,
justifiable only by the imperative necessities of the civil war, so that
they might not pass into history as precedents for similar acts in time
of peace. It is an unquestionable fact that during the reconstruction
period which followed the war, more things were done capable of serving
as dangerous precedents than during the war itself. Thus it may truly be
said of him not only that under his guidance the republic was saved from
disruption and the country was purified of the blot of slavery, but that,
during the stormiest and most perilous crisis in our history, he so
conducted the government and so wielded his almost dictatorial power as
to leave essentially intact our free institutions in all things that
concern the rights and liberties of the citizens.
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