may have been rashness; it may have been folly; but, intellectually
at least, it was valor. Among Lincoln's other advisers, valor at that
moment was lacking. Contrast, however, was not the sole, nor the surest
basis of Seward's appeal to Lincoln. Their characters had a common
factor. For all their immeasurable difference in externals, both at
bottom were void of malice. It was this characteristic above all others
that gave them spiritually common ground. In Seward, this quality had
been under fire for a long while. The political furies of "that iron
time" had failed to rouse echoes in his serene and smiling soul.
Therefore, many men who accepted him as leader because, indeed, they
could not do without him--because none other in their camp had
his genius for management, for the glorification of political
intrigue--these same men followed him doubtfully, with bad grace,
willing to shift to some other leader whenever he might arise. The clue
to their distrust was Seward's amusement at the furious. Could a man
who laughed when you preached on the beauty of the hewing of Agag, could
such a man be sincere? And that Seward in some respects was not sincere,
history generally admits. He loved to poke fun at his opponents by
appearing to sneer at himself, by ridiculing the idea that he was ever
serious. His scale of political values was different from that of most
of his followers. Nineteen times out of twenty, he would treat what they
termed "principles" as mere political counters, as legitimate subjects
of bargain. If by any deal he could trade off any or all of these
nineteen in order to secure the twentieth, which for him was the only
vital one, he never scrupled to do so. Against a lurid background of
political ferocity, this amused, ironic figure came to be rated by the
extremists, both in his own and in the enemy camp as Mephistopheles.

No quality could have endeared him more certainly to Lincoln than the
very one which the bigots misunderstood. From his earliest youth Lincoln