CIVIL WARS
occurred to some of the actors themselves. Once President Lincoln was pressed to offer terms to the South, and said that he could not treat with parties in arms against the government. The Confederate emissary argued that it had been often done, "especially by Charles I when at war with the British Parliament." Lincoln nimbly avoided the pitfall. "I do not profess," said he, "to be posted in history. On all such matters I will turn you over to Seward. All I distinctly recollect about Charles I is that he lost his head hi the end[1]."
It is natural that there should be many points of similarity. Take two races of the same stock, both trained by free institutions and both nurtured by the same creeds, heat them in the fire of political passions, subject them to the strain and pressure of civil war, and we should expect results of much the same kind to follow.
But the conditions under which the two
3
- ↑ James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States, from the Compromise of 1850, iii. 356, v. 70.
