The dignitary selected in 1866 to give the memorial address on the life of Abraham Lincoln before the joint Houses of Congress was the Honorable George Bancroft of New York. Speaking on Lincoln's birthday nearly a year after the assassination, Bancroft needed to assure congressmen that John Wilkes Booth's bullet had been no hideous, inexplicable accident: “nothing is done by chance, though men, in their ignorance of causes, may think so.” The Providential view of history, to which Bancroft remains fully committed, permeates his very first sentence, “That God rules in the affairs of men is as certain as any truth of physical science” (3). Although God's rule made slavery's end inevitable, regional jealousies had prolonged and deepened the crisis, so it was best not to mention them. The words “New England” do not occur in Bancroft's address; he resorts to “the North” and “the South” only when absolutely necessary. Abolitionist courage is traced back, not to Garrison and Phillips, but to those Virginians of the late eighteenth century who were opposed to slavery and presumably fought to eliminate it. Sectionalism, Bancroft believes, must henceforward be buried in Union: “the American people was the hero of the war; and therefore the result is a new era of republicanism” (50). Lincoln's genius was to lead slightly in advance of the popular will while being beholden to no regional economic or religious interest. Although Bancroft never directly says so, he no longer has faith in the value of sectional diversity.