Abstract

Season of Confusion

The article discusses the book "Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis," by David M. Potter. Potter has high praise for U.S. Senator William H. Seward's effectiveness in keeping the U.S. authority unimpaired until new Administration was installed. But he points out that, though Seward was active and U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was silent, it was the enigmatic man in Springfield who assumed, from the very first, the control of his party. This was, in the opinion of the author, a questionable advantage, for he stigmatizes Lincoln's opposition to territorial compromise on slavery as the policy of a partisan leader. Lincoln had not yet attained the stature of great statesmanship, yet it seems severely critical to speak of his "consummate folly."