I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement.
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to inter-
needful to meet and remove prejudice and passion in the South, and despondency in the East.
"Some words of affection—some of calm and cheerful confidence."
Mr. Seward submitted two paragraphs of his own, as suggestions for closing the speech in a conciliatory and cheerful manner. The second was in that poetic vein which occasionally cropped out in Seward s speeches and writings, and over which Lincoln on better acquaintance was wont good-naturedly to rally him. Seward wrote:
"I close. We are not, we must not be, aliens or enemies, but fellow-countrymen and brethren. Although passion has strained our bonds of affection too hardly, they must not. I am sure they will not, be broken. The mystic chords which, proceeding from so many battlefields and so many patriot graves, pass through all the hearts and all hearths in this broad continent of ours, will yet again harmonize in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of the nation."
Lincoln took this paragraph, and by deft touches which reveal a literary taste beyond that of any statesman of his time, transformed it into his peroration. More than anything else in the address, it was the tender spirit and chaste beauty of these closing words that convinced the people that Lincoln measured up to the high mental stature demanded of one who was to be their leader during the most critical period of the life of the nation.
