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Show Had Mr. Lincoln Lived THE discussion of what would have been done in the first few years after our great Civil war closed is being renewed in the east. There cannot can-not much be gained by such discussion. It is clear enough that there would have been much quarreling. quarrel-ing. Appomattox was as much of a defeat to the Sumners and Shurtzes of the north as it was to the Southern Confederacy as their occupation was mostly gone. The south was finally reconstructed, recon-structed, Sumner never was. Had Mr. Lincoln Lin-coln lived ten years longer he would have had plenty of criticism and abuse, no matter what he might have done, and would have had the old crowd pursuing him whatever policy he might have sought to have adopted. It must be kept in mind that no generous endorsement was ever given him by those who ought to have been his warmest supporters until he died. They bore him no good will until the mighty triumph of his death awed them into grudging praise of him. Mr. Greely even had been a constant trouble to him for years, not that he did not want to be fair, but because of his impulsive and erratic ways which caused him to always be radical in the wrong place and at the wrong time. He was a wonderfully wonder-fully brilliant man, but his head was never level and he was woefully deficient in that quality which is known as sound judgment. Had he been an army man he would have shone splendidly as a brigadier general, but had he ever been given an independent command, he would have utterly failed. Even before Mr. Lincoln's death tho nucleus nuc-leus of that party of discontent which made the country so much trouble in the succeeding twenty years, was forming. Then speculations as to what would have been amount to little for Mr. Lincoln's appointed work was finished. And it was enough to make a needed need-ed example to his countrymen and to insure for him an immortal fame. |