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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: Mr. Lincoln that after a month's trial the Administration was
without a policy, domestic or foreign, and that this must be
remedied at once. It advised shifting the issue at home from
slavery to the question of Union or disunion; and counseled the
adoption of an attitude toward Europe which could not have failed
to rouse the anger of the principal foreign nations. It added
that the President or some member of his cabinet must make it his
constant duty to pursue and direct whatever policy should be
adopted, and hinted very plainly that although he, Mr. Seward,
did not seek such responsibility, he was willing to assume it.
The interest of this remarkable paper for us lies in the way Mr.
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