Character of President Lincoln

“Jan. 7. (To Mr. Sumner.)—You will soon begin to busy yourselves with the task of President-making. I hope you will re-elect Mr. Lincoln. He is rising in reputation in Europe apart from the success of the North. He possesses great moral qualities, which in the long-run tell more on the fortunes of the world in these days than mere intellect. I always though his want of enlarged experience was a disadvantage to him. But he knows his own countrymen evidently, and that is the main point. And being a stranger to the rest of the world, he has the less temptation to embark in foreign controversies or quarrels. Nothing shows his solid sense more than the pertinacity with which he avoids all outside complications. His truthful elevation of character, and his somewhat stolid placidity of nature, put it quite beyond the power of other governments to fasten a quarrel on him, and inspire the fullest confidence in those who are committing themselves to the side of the North. I say all this on the assumption, that he has irrevocable committed himself to ‘abolition’ as the result of the war. Any compromise on that question would cover your cause with external infamy, and render the sanguinary civil war with which you have desolated he North and South, a useless butchery.”