We rejoice that a vast community of our own race has at length given an authoritative expression to sentiments which are entertained by everyone in this country.

We trust to see the American Government employed in tasks more worthy of a State founded on the doctrines of liberty and equality than the invention of shifts and devices to perpetuate servitude; and we hear in this great protest of American freedom the tardy echo of those humane doctrines to which England has so long become a convert." Other leading journals, though with less of patronizing self-complacency, struck the same note as the _Times_.

The _Economist_ attributed Lincoln's election to a shift in the sympathies of the "lower orders" in the electorate who had now deserted their former leaders, the slave-owning aristocracy of the South, and allied themselves with the refined and wise leaders of the North.

Lincoln, it argued, was not an extremist in any sense.

His plan of action lay within the limits of statesmanlike moderation[36].