Mr.Lincoln had announced a different creed, and every week that the South continued peaceful, his hope of amicable adjustment grew stronger.

He believed that with the continuance of peace, the Secessionists could be brought to see that Union was better than war for all interests, and that in an especial degree the institution of Slavery would be imperiled by a resort to arms.

He had faith in the sober second- thought.

If the South would deliberate, the Union would be saved.
He feared that the Southern mind was in the condition in which a single untoward circumstance might precipitate a conflict, and he determined that the blood of his brethren should not be on his hands.
STATESMANSHIP OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.
Mr.Lincoln saw, moreover, that war between a divided North and a united South would be a remediless calamity.

If, after all efforts at peace, war should be found unavoidable, the Administration had determined so to shape its policy, so to conduct its affairs, that when the shock came it should leave the South entirely in the wrong, and the government of the Union entirely in the right.