It is not in my especial province.
But I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility.]
A month has elapsed, and the administration has neither a domestic nor a
foreign policy. The administration must at once adopt and carry out a
novel, radical, and aggressive policy. It must cease saying a word about
slavery, and raise a great outcry about Union. It must declare war
against France and Spain, and combine and organize all the governments
of North and South America in a crusade to enforce the Monroe Doctrine.
This policy once adopted, it must be the business of some one
incessantly to pursue it. "It is not in my especial province," wrote Mr.
Seward; "but I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility." This
phrase, which is a key to the whole memorandum, enables the reader
easily to translate its meaning into something like the following:
After a month's trial, you, Mr. Lincoln, are a failure as President. The
country is in desperate straits, and must use a desperate remedy. That
remedy is to submerge the South Carolina insurrection in a continental
war. Some new man must take the executive helm, and wield the undivided
presidential authority. I should have been nominated at Chicago, and
elected in November, but am willing to take your place and perform your
duties.
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