In 1860, having concluded that it was too late to save the Union peacefully, Abraham Lincoln unwisely chose to reply frankly to a request for a statement of his views from the editor of the Louisville Journal, George D. Prentice who contended that such a statement would "assure all the good citizens of the South and ... take from the disunionists every excuse or pretext for treason".

A House DividedIt would not be the first time that he had said too much and inflamed southern secessionists. For in his "House Divided Speech" he had stated unambigously that the Union was in the grip of a slaveholder's plot. His partner in his Springfield Law Firm, William Herndon had it right when he said "It is true, but is it wise or politic to say so?".

Lincoln was to learn that it was one thing to make an explosively controversial statement as an outside senatorial candidate, quite another when heading inexorably towards the White House. And yet with John Brown striking slaveholdings seemingly with impunity, and leading free African-Americans over the border into Canada, dodging Prentice's question might appear a fatal weakness in national leadership. "It seemed as if he suddently bore the whole world upon his shoulders, and could not shake it off" - William HerndonAnd after all, it was that frightful absence of national leadership that had inspired Lincoln to seek the highest office as he had told Herndon just two short years before.

That America might really be in the throes of a slaveholder's plot was in all reality, improbable. Yet whilst slavery had been terminated in the north for three decades, events surely appeared to show that some time very soon that might not be the case. It would be hard to interpret the drift of events otherwise since Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) and the Dred Scott ruling (1858) which confirmed that the General Government had no right to interfer in the state's rights to legalise slavery.

Very soon Lincoln would discover that his unwise choice of words had triggered a general secession prior to his inauguration And worse his judgement as to whether Northerners would fight for the Union, or rather bid the Southern States good riddance, would prove to be faulty. For the time being at least, the Union would be split into two nations, one free, one slave, precisely as Lincoln had warned.

Of course Herndon knew something that few others outside his inside circule knew in the late fall of 1860; the drive behind Lincoln's ambition was his deeply flawed character. Because Abraham Lincoln was a life-long manic depressive now gripped by a mid-life crisis, ingesting more than nine thousand times the recommended daily dose of mercury. "Gloom and sadness were his predominant state" concluded Herndon. On the day of his election Herndon remarked that "It seemed as if he suddently bore the whole world upon his shoulders, and could not shake it off". And so, Abraham Lincoln would lead a truly unqiue Presidency; for he was the first man to suicide in the White House, by shooting himself in the head whilst sitting in apparent peace, as if calmy watching the Theatre, perhaps.