■■te§^^"^f^%^^l 
 
 ** . ■ ■ ■ 
 
 ^i ^ KMC lIWTOIlfllllPS 
 
 "-aJtaJSs^tgjgsal 
 

 ClfarncU Iniuetattg Slihrarg 
 
 THE JAMES VERNER SCAIFE 
 
 COLLECTION 
 
 CIVIL WAR LITERATURE 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 JAMES VERNER SCAIFE 
 
 CLASS OF 1889 
 
 1919 
 
Cornell University Library 
 E457 .P55 
 
 Lincoln 
 
 olln 
 
 "3""T924 032 763 827 
 
B Cornell University 
 y Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032763827 
 
LINCOLN 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 (From photograph of an ambrotype taken at Monmouth, Illinois, 
 four days after the Lincoln-Douglas debate in that city. Said to be 
 one of the most perfect likenesses of Lincoln in existence.) 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 BY 
 ISAAC NEWTON PHILLIPS 
 
 REPORTER OF DECISIONS OF 
 THE ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT 
 
 CHICAGO 
 C. McCLURG & CO. 
 
 1910 
 
A.2?'+23Q 
 
 Copyright, 1901, by Isaac N. Phillipi 
 
 Copyright, 1910 
 A. C, McClurg & Co. 
 Published Feb. 12, 1910 
 
 FCBLISHERS PRESS 
 CHICAGO 
 
"Let us have faith that right makes 
 might, and in that faith let us, to the end, 
 dare to do our duty as we understand it." 
 — Lincoln's Speech at Cooper Institute, New YorTc. 
 
EXPLANATORY 
 
 TT is proper, I think, to say to the reader 
 -■• that what is here printed is, with slight 
 corrections and enlargements, identical with 
 an address which I prepared ten years or 
 more ago. The address was delivered before 
 several Illinois audiences— among others, be- 
 fore the faculty and students of the Uni- 
 versity of Illinois at Urbana. The language 
 used is, therefore, less impersonal than would 
 be proper in a monograph written for publi- 
 cation. I have, however, thought best not to 
 change the form of its presentation, but let 
 it go into print substantially as delivered. 
 
 I KT P 
 
 Bloomington, III., ' 
 
 January 15, 1910. 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 WHEN Abraham Lincoln, 
 after having been 
 named for President, 
 was questioned by a 
 campaign biographer as to his early 
 life, he very pathetically said the 
 whole story might be told in a 
 single line of Gray's "Elegy," — 
 " The short and simple annals of the poor." 
 
 All the world has now learned that 
 the man who spoke thus modestly 
 of himself was born in the State of 
 Kentucky on the twelfth day of 
 February, 1809. His cradle, if he 
 ever had one, stood upon the dirt 
 floor of a rude log hut; above it was 
 a clap-board roof; about it was that 
 kind of superstition which an iso- 
 
 [1] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 lated people, full of rude elemental 
 force, is apt to manifest, and that 
 kind of poverty which, in a new 
 and free country, casts no shadow 
 of degradation, for it is not the ab- 
 sence of goods but the invidious 
 and blighting contrast of conditions 
 which constitutes real poverty. This 
 boy, too, was surrounded by people 
 who were profoundly ignorant of 
 the world and of the ways of men, 
 and almost as profoundly ignorant 
 of all bookish learning. It is cer- 
 tain that the humblest child in the 
 whole country might now, within 
 the limits of a single year, have the 
 benefit of a far better schooling 
 than was accessible to Lincoln in 
 the time covering all the years of 
 his minority. His surroundings 
 
 [2] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 from birth to manhood remained 
 practically unchanged, and, al- 
 though his roving father made in 
 that time something more than the 
 number of removes which Poor 
 Richard deemed "equal to one 
 fire," there is no evidence that in 
 the first twenty -one years of his 
 life Abraham Lincoln met with any 
 personal example, or fell under 
 any social influence, which would 
 ordinarily be expected to quicken 
 his mind, arouse his hope, or in- 
 spire his ambition. 
 
 rri H h] rise of one of the greatest 
 statesmen of history from an 
 environment apparently so luck- 
 less, naturally awakens intense in- 
 terest and even enthusiasm. But 
 
 [3] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 the phenomenon is less wonderful 
 than it seems. Had Lincoln arisen 
 from out the slums of a great city, 
 or even from the social opulence 
 and pampered ease of a palace at 
 Newport, to the intellectual and 
 moral plane where the assassin's 
 bullet found him, the case would 
 be more truly wonderful than it 
 is. Though of obscure parentage, 
 Abraham Lincoln was, in breeding, 
 no mongrel. In spite of the indus- 
 trious muck-rakes of shameless so- 
 called biographers, it is now known 
 that, both through his father and 
 his mother, this boy received rich 
 strains of honest English blood — 
 blood which had been strengthened 
 and sweetened on its course 
 through the veins of generations of 
 [4] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 sturdy American pioneers. He 
 lived with Nature and learned of 
 her. He toiled, but his toil was 
 never hopeless and degrading. His 
 feet were upon the earth, but the 
 stars, shining in perennial beauty, 
 were ever above him to inspire con- 
 templation. He heard the song of 
 the thrush and the carol of the lark. 
 He watched the sun in its course. 
 He knew the dim paths of the 
 forest, and his soul was awed by 
 the power of the storm. Out from 
 the heart of Nature's solitudes he 
 brought all the elements of high 
 success: namely, a good heart, a 
 clear head, and a strong body; and 
 these factors, under the stimulating 
 influence of free institutions, at 
 length wrought in the rude back- 
 
 [5] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 woodsman a wonderful personal 
 transfiguration, the successive 
 stages of which my plan does not 
 permit me to trace. 
 
 At the day of his death Lincoln's 
 reputation had already filled the 
 world, and the intense popular af- 
 fection for his memory, which still 
 constantly grows, although its sub- 
 ject has been for nearly half a cen- 
 tury in his tomb, may be regarded 
 as the sure sign of one of those 
 transcendent fames such as popular 
 favor confers scarcely once in a 
 century. 
 
 A S a politician Abraham Lincoln 
 
 was in breadth and sincerity 
 
 the superior, and in shrewdness 
 
 and success the fuU equal, of 
 
 [6] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 Thomas Jefferson; yet he was much 
 more than a politician. No man of 
 his age wrote more effective Eng- 
 lish than he; yet it is not as a 
 rhetorician that Americans revere 
 him. His keenness of humor and 
 aptness of anecdote were never sur- 
 passed by any public man; yet 
 history sternly refuses to regard 
 Abraham Lincoln as a jester. He 
 was a patriot, high and true; but 
 patriotism does not distinguish 
 him, for in his day many others 
 were also patriots, giving even life 
 to the cause. He was a statesman 
 of prodigious breadth and grasp 
 — fearless, imperturbable, self-re- 
 liant — and when he judged prin- 
 ciple to be at stake, absolutely 
 immovable; yet even the high term 
 
 [7] 
 
L. I N C O t N 
 
 ■■statesman" does not express 
 quite the full measure of Lincoln, 
 or of Lincoln "s fame. To all these 
 elements he united a personality 
 the most striking, the most singu- 
 lar, and the most original which is 
 met with in historr, and beneath 
 it all lay the unfathomable mystery 
 of a human souL In the depths of 
 that rugged and pathetic face were 
 the signs of a spirit that in its 
 highest moments communed with 
 itself and walked alone, — 
 "TTis soul was like a star, and dwelt apart."' 
 
 ■pUBLIC life has its illusions and 
 fame has its counterfeits. The 
 relative importance of contempo- 
 rary historic characters, like the 
 relative height and size of adjacent 
 
 [8] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 mountains, is not fully known until 
 the whole group is seen from a dis- 
 tance. The vain and noisy little 
 man of each period ** struts and 
 frets his hour upon the stage" with 
 such a deal of pomposity and show, 
 that he appears to his undiscrimi- 
 nating contemporaries quite as im- 
 portant as the real makers of 
 history. Like the ''mother frog" 
 in the fable, he tries with breath 
 alone to puff himself up to a colos- 
 sal stature, and not unfrequently, 
 like the frog, collapses in the 
 process. 
 
 True greatness is the consecra- 
 tion of either great talents or great 
 character to the service of man- 
 kind. When we read the story of 
 a tndy great life we learn of 
 
 [9] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 high purposes pursued by effective 
 methods; we learn of a lofty devo- 
 tion to truth, of supreme faith in 
 the right, of heroic self-sacrifice; in 
 short, we learn of a supreme strug- 
 gle of genius in the service of man- 
 kind. Then, too, a great cause is 
 necessary to a great public career. 
 Mere feats of intellectual agility 
 send no man's name to the Pan- 
 theon. There may, for aught I 
 know, be "mute, inglorious Mil- 
 tons" in this world, but so long as 
 they are mute they are inefficient. 
 During several years Lincoln filled 
 the public eye. He had a cause, 
 and directly in proportion to the 
 greatness of that cause was his ca- 
 reer great. That cause measures 
 Lincoln's public career, but it does 
 [10] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 not completely measure Lincoln. 
 After the voluminous biographies 
 have all been read; after the gar- 
 rulous "old settler," who never so 
 much as suspected the greatness of 
 the man in his lifetime, has related 
 his apochryphal "recollections," 
 and told his mythical anecdotes — 
 always exaggerating his own famil- 
 iar relations with Lincoln — we feel 
 that there is a Lincoln still unre- 
 vealed who is now beginning to 
 fade away. It is this Lincoln whom 
 I shall endeavor to make known in 
 this brief study. I shall speak of 
 Lincoln in his great character as 
 a statesman, and not as a gawk, a 
 buffoon, or a yarn -spinner. 
 
 [11] 
 
L I N C O L N 
 
 T T is necessary, however, that in 
 an appreciative study of Lin- 
 coln we take a comprehensive view 
 of his work. We must note that 
 which had preceded him as well as 
 that which immediately surrounded 
 him. I must ask you to bear with 
 me, therefore, while I go back a 
 little to find the historic back- 
 ground of our picture. 
 
 There was in the last century a 
 "critical period" of American his- 
 tory, which ]Mr. Piske places be- 
 tween the surrender of Cornwallis 
 and the adoption of the Federal 
 Constitution. This period was 
 "critical" for the reason that in 
 that time it was painfully uncertain 
 whether a permanent union could 
 ever be formed of the American 
 [12] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 States. The upheaval of the Revo- 
 lution had unsettled the conserva- 
 tive force of the American mind, 
 and more follies than would have 
 re-filled Pandora's box a hundred 
 times had broken out in all the 
 American colonies — follies which 
 in their consequences threatened to 
 become even worse than "taxation 
 without representation." 
 
 Revolutions are not often well- 
 adapted to the training of states- 
 men. A very good revolutionary 
 patriot may be only a destruction- 
 ist, and destructionists are always 
 plenty and cheap. The hand that 
 wrote the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence was not the hand to frame 
 the Federal Constitution. Samuel 
 Adams knew far better how to 
 
 [13] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 knock down King George than how 
 to set up George "Washington, first 
 President of a great nation. Pat- 
 rick Henry could shout in a tem- 
 pest of eloquence, ' ' Give me liberty 
 or give me death!" but he was 
 scarcely less eloquent in resist- 
 ing the formation of the Federal 
 Union; while James Monroe, the 
 reputed author of the "Monroe 
 Doctrine," was very sure the adop- 
 tion of the Federal Constitution 
 would endanger, if not entirely de- 
 stroy, the people's liberties. 
 
 In this critical period two con- 
 flicting theories of government 
 contended for mastery in the Amer- 
 ican colonies. One side, led by 
 Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, 
 Madison, Jay, Marshall, and their 
 
 [14] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 co-workers, realized the supreme 
 importance of a strong central au- 
 thority — a firm union of the States 
 under one stable government. 
 With the true national instinct 
 they appealed earnestly to the pa- 
 triotism and good sense of their 
 fellow-citizens. By bitter experi- 
 ence they knew the evils of a many- 
 headed confederacy of weak and 
 discordant States, which, if not 
 fused together, they knew would 
 waste all their energies in jealous 
 bickerings with each other, pre- 
 senting to the nations of the world 
 no broad frontage of sovereignty 
 and power. They knew a weak 
 government would produce confu- 
 sion at home and breed contempt 
 abroad, and, worse than all, would 
 
 [15] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 constantly invite foreign alliance 
 and intervention, to the final de- 
 struction of that independence 
 which had been purchased with so 
 much treasure and blood. The old 
 Federalists garnered and preserved 
 the fruits of the American Revolu- 
 tion, They believed that so long as 
 a government is "of the people" 
 and "by the people" it will not 
 cease to be also "/or the people." 
 The outcry of that day against 
 "consolidated government," with 
 which ambitious demagogues were 
 frightening the ignorant, did not 
 alarm the old Federalists, who 
 were the true friends of the people 
 and the real Republicans of their 
 day. 
 
 Such was the character of the 
 [16] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 party whicli bore us through the 
 critical period of our early history, 
 leaving us as a legacy the Federal 
 Union, which Lincoln, with the 
 help of the Union army, saved. 
 
 Opposed to the Federalists, how- 
 ever, was another party of polit- 
 ical philosophers, who, in their 
 dread of centralization, opposed 
 the adoption of the Federal Con- 
 stitution. In the days of war they 
 had been good destroyers, but they 
 were not equally good as builders. 
 The wrongs they had suffered un- 
 der King George not unnaturally 
 led them to distrust aU forms of 
 government, hence centralization 
 meant to them only a renewal of 
 despotism. They thought the peo- 
 ple's only safeguard lay in the 
 
 [17] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 weakness of the central govern- 
 ment. 
 
 That was an age in which the in- 
 fection of "red republicanism" was 
 abroad in the world. Rousseau 
 had dreamed intoxicating and 
 contagious dreams. Voltaire had 
 philosophized and sneered. The 
 mad re -action against long -abused 
 power had come, and in France the 
 chasm was already opening to en- 
 gulf the monstrosities of ages. 
 Alexander Hamilton's wise saying 
 that ''the vigor of government is 
 essential to the security of liberty," 
 was then, as a consequence, far less 
 appreciated than it is to-day. 
 
 In 1787, however, the country 
 was prostrate and the tottering old 
 Confederation was powerless to 
 
 [18] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 give relief. Riot, repudiation, and 
 anarchy were in the very air. As 
 a choice of evils the people at last, 
 with many misgivings, accepted the 
 Union. But it was power grudg- 
 ingly given, and repented by many 
 of the rampant revolutionists of 
 that day almost as quickly as 
 bestowed. 
 
 The heresy of 1787, that the best 
 government is the weakest govern- 
 ment, and that whatever govern- 
 ment we have should be distrusted 
 by the people and hampered as 
 much as possible in its action, in 
 order to insure the liberty of the 
 individual, survived in the form of 
 "State sovereignty" to produce in- 
 finite mischief during fuU three- 
 quarters of a century of our sub- 
 
 [19] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 sequent history. Attempts were 
 made, after the Constitution was 
 adopted, to practically nullify it by 
 what was called "strict construc- 
 tion." The theory was held, that 
 each State of the Union had the 
 right to judge for itself what pow- 
 ers were conferred by the Constitu- 
 tion upon the national government. 
 Such was, in effect, the doctrine of 
 the "Virginia and Kentucky Reso- 
 lutions," and it was a doctrine sin- 
 cerely advocated in that day by 
 many men who were really at- 
 tached to the cause of civil liberty, 
 but who seemed not to know the 
 means by which, alone, can liberty 
 be insured.* 
 
 * Thomas Jefferson lived and died in the be- 
 lief that each State of the Union was a sovereign 
 nation, and that these several nations had, hj 
 
 [20] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 Later, the motives of the foes of 
 nationality changed. The slavery 
 question arose, and ** strict con- 
 struction" and "State rights" — 
 at first largely speculative political 
 doctrines — became the pretext for 
 the slave power's frantic effort to 
 fortify and intrench slavery. Ac- 
 cordingly, in 1861, the old slavoc- 
 racy of the South, after long 
 threats, resolved to trample down 
 
 adopting the Constitution, formed a compact — a 
 sort of treaty — which each of the States had a 
 right to construe for itself, there being no com- 
 mon judicial power over them. On April 8, 1826, 
 less than three months before he died, Jeffer- 
 son wrote a letter — being the last but four of 
 those preserved in his Works — in which letter he 
 said: " I think with you, also, that the Consti- 
 tution of the United States is a compact of inde- 
 pendent nations, subject to the rules acknowledged 
 in similar cases, as well that of amendment pro- 
 vided within itself, as, in case of abuse, the justly 
 dreaded but unavoidable ultimo ratio gentium." 
 — Jefferson's Works (Putnam), col, 10, p. 385, 
 
 [21] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 the government of George Wash- 
 ington and the grand old Federal- 
 ists, and upon its ruins to erect a 
 slave confederacy. And then it was 
 that the Union army, called into 
 being by Abraham Lincoln and act- 
 ing under his sagacious policy, met 
 and slew together both slavery and 
 State sovereignty. In the fierce 
 arbitrament of war, and through 
 the terrific adjudication of force 
 and blood, the Federal Constitu- 
 tion at length received its final and 
 authoritative construction. 
 
 T THUS recapitulate facts well 
 known merely to show that in 
 the constitutional development of 
 the nation Abraham Lincoln stands 
 in line of direct succession from 
 
 [22] 
 
I. I N C O L IV 
 
 those great constructive statesmen 
 who formed and set in operation 
 the government of the United 
 States. He finished their great 
 work. In the highest sense he was 
 himself a constructive statesman. 
 He was a conservative, a saviour 
 — not a destroyer. He stands pre- 
 eminently for law and order, for 
 the conservation of popular insti- 
 tutions, for human rights secured 
 and enforced — not by somebody's 
 uncertain impulse, but guaranteed 
 by inexorable public law. 
 
 Back of Lincoln we see, among 
 many others, Washington, Madi- 
 son, Franklin, Gouverneur Morris, 
 John Jay, Robert Morris, and that 
 other colossus of American states- 
 manship, Alexander Hamilton. But 
 
 [23] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 between these men and Lincoln 
 were many others conspicuous for 
 great services rendered to the same 
 great cause. John Marshall, of 
 Virginia, statesman and judge — 
 belonging in a degree to both pe- 
 riods — who for thirty-four years, 
 as head of the Federal judiciary, 
 read ''between the lines" of the 
 Constitution, and found there the 
 "implied powers" by the exercise 
 of which Lincoln was at length able 
 to save the Union; Andrew Jack- 
 son, who laid low beneath the man- 
 date of his imperious wiU the first 
 outbreak against national sover- 
 eignty, arousing by his appeal to 
 the people of South Carolina a na- 
 tional enthusiasm which had not 
 yet spent itself when Lincoln de- 
 
 [24] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 livered his First Inaugural; Henry 
 Clay, the greatest of parliamentary 
 leaders, who applied his rare pow- 
 ers to the healing expedient of com- 
 promise, thus relieving the strain 
 until the cement of the Union had 
 time to set and become firm; Daniel 
 Webster, the invincible defender 
 of the Constitution, who in debate 
 combined the strength of Goliath 
 and the skill of David, overwhelm- 
 ing the enemies of the Union with 
 torrents of logic and eloquence; 
 Thomas H. Benton, the sturdy and 
 truculent old patriot, himself rep- 
 resenting a slave State, whose 
 every heart-throb was true to the 
 nation he served — all these great 
 nationalists, and many others 
 equally devoted though perhaps 
 
 [25] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 less conspicuous, had consecrated 
 themselves to the maintenance of 
 the union of the States. But to 
 Abraham Lincoln, among them all, 
 it was given to act and suffer in the 
 fierce heat and light of terrific and 
 final conflict. From the cross of 
 national redemption whereon he 
 agonized, was at length borne away 
 forever the great sin of disunion, 
 which like a malignant spirit had 
 so long rent our fair land. 
 
 "D UT the field of Lincoln's states- 
 manship embraced more than 
 a mere constitutional doctrine. The 
 destruction of the Union as a polit- 
 ical end, without an ulterior object 
 in view, would, in 1861, have been 
 sheer madness, however doubtful 
 
 [26] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 the policy of its original formation 
 might have seemed to some of the 
 colonists. In 1860 the nation had 
 demonstrated its right to live, and 
 but for the slave interest the doc- 
 trine of State sovereignty would 
 have died with the generation that 
 wrote and adopted the "Virginia 
 and Kentucky Resolutions." It 
 was because the Union had proved 
 less subservient to the slave inter- 
 est than was desired, that the 
 South, by a convenient application 
 of this doctrine of State rights, 
 sought to disrupt the Union and 
 set up a distinctive slave confed- 
 eracy. The constitutional question 
 and the slavery question were thus 
 thrown together into the crucible 
 of war. • 
 
 [27] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 The Republicans, in 1860, had 
 no purpose to abolish slavery, nor 
 was it the then -avowed principles 
 of that party which slaveholders 
 feared. Far more ominous than the 
 platform of any political party was 
 the moral sentiment of the civilized 
 world which the South saw every- 
 where rising against her favorite 
 institution. The fact that "Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin" found millions of 
 eager readers, both in Europe and 
 America, was to Southern states- 
 men far more disquieting than any 
 party declaration. Adverse public 
 opinion — that universal solvent of 
 modem democracy — threatened to 
 dissolve the very rock upon which 
 the industrial and social institu- 
 tions of the South had been built. 
 
 [28] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 The high falsetto which a few abo- 
 litionists were singing would have 
 excited only contempt in the South 
 but for the contagion which, in 
 spite of all Northern assurances, 
 was known to be in that cry. The 
 South knew abolition fire was fall- 
 ing upon tinder, not only all over 
 the North but aU over the world; 
 and, morals aside, there was real 
 wisdom in the plan of forming a 
 new government, of which slavery 
 should be the corner stone. An in- 
 stitution like slavery must be the 
 corner stone or nothing, 
 
 Lincoln was not less opposed to 
 slavery on moral grounds than any 
 man in the nation, but when he de- 
 clared he had no constitutional 
 power, and therefore no purpose, to 
 
 [29] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 interfere with slavery in the South- 
 ern States, he was perfectly con- 
 scientious. When the War came 
 on, Lincoln ceased to speak of slav- 
 ery and spoke only of the Union. 
 He always seized upon the largest 
 fact. He knew, if the old abolition- 
 ists did not, that national preserva- 
 tion was the real stake in that con- 
 test. As Chief Executive he right- 
 ly disclaimed jurisdiction over slav- 
 ery in time of peace, but I think he 
 never doubted his right, as Com- 
 mander-in-chief of the Army and 
 Navy, to save the Union by any 
 means fitting and necessary to ac- 
 complish that end — even to the de- 
 struction of slavery by an execu- 
 tive proclamation. 
 
 The idea of emancipation seemed 
 
 [30] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 to grow upon Lincoln through the 
 early months of 1862, and by mid- 
 summer of that year his course was 
 determined. Starting out only to 
 preserve the Union, Lincoln, by 
 force of circumstances and through 
 the inexorable logic of events, be- 
 came the liberator of a race. He 
 was the most modest of men, and 
 distinctly disclaimed any personal 
 credit for emancipation. He wrote, 
 in AprU, 1864, "I claim not to have 
 controlled events, but confess plain- 
 ly that events have controlled me." 
 This was honest and it was true, for 
 in the stress of war, events, under 
 a popular government, must to a 
 large extent control everybody. Li 
 the same letter, further discussing 
 the credit for emancipation, he rev- 
 
 [31] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 erently said, "God alone can claim 
 it." 
 
 Exactly one month before the 
 preliminary Proclamation was is- 
 sued, Lincoln had written to Hor- 
 ace Greeley these ever-memorable 
 words : 
 
 " If there be those who would not save the 
 Union unless they could at the same time 
 save slavery, I do not agree with them. If 
 there be those who would not save the Union 
 unless they could at the same time destroy 
 slavery, I do not agree with them. My para- 
 mount object is to save the Union, and not 
 either to save or destroy slavery." 
 
 It argues nothing against Lin- 
 coln's sincerity that when he wrote 
 the words above quoted, the draft 
 of the great Proclamation was ly- 
 ing in his desk awaiting only a 
 Union victory to precede its issu- 
 
 [32] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 ance, in order that it might not 
 seem to the public to be a mere des- 
 perate expedient. Indeed, the stu- 
 dent of Lincohi's writings cannot 
 fail to see that at least as early as 
 March, 1862 — fully five months be- 
 fore he wrote this letter to Grreeley 
 — Lincoln had come to the conclu- 
 sion that the War must in the end 
 be given a turn that would destroy 
 slavery, not merely to gratify his 
 personal wish in the matter, much 
 as he hated slavery, but because of 
 the inexorable logic of events. 
 
 On April 4, 1864, he wrote to A. 
 Gr. Hodges these words, "I aver 
 that, to this day, I have done no 
 official act in mere deference to my 
 abstract judgment and feeling on 
 slavery." 
 
 [33] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 Lincoln was not an idealist. He 
 was not one of those moral egotists 
 who are wont to set their own scru- 
 ples of conscience above statutes. 
 By nature a conservative, he would 
 not resort to revolutionary meas- 
 ures under guise of law. He was, in 
 fact, the highest example of a con- 
 stitutional ruler. When the hour 
 came that emancipation might fair- 
 ly be judged a military necessity, 
 and when the public opinion of the 
 loyal States was ready to accept it 
 as such, then, and not before, Lin- 
 coln meant to strike slavery down. 
 The time at length came, and Lin- 
 coln struck the blow which has re- 
 sounded many times round the 
 world; and thus what seems one of 
 the most radical measures of Amer- 
 
 [34] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 lean history came, in fact, from one 
 of the most conservative and cau- 
 tious minds which ever ruled in our 
 councils. 
 
 "DELIEVING firmly the time 
 would soon come when eman- 
 cipation must be proclaimed, Lin- 
 coln had long been earnestly — al- 
 most pathetically — urging the bor- 
 der States to themselves adopt 
 gradual emancipation and take 
 compensation for their slaves. He 
 procured the passage of an Act or 
 Eesolution by Congress under 
 which they could have done this; 
 and, in a Proclamation upon the 
 subject, issued May 19, 1862, he elo- 
 quently said: 
 
 "To tlie people of these [border] States 
 I now earnestly appeal. I do not argue — 
 
 [35] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 I beseech you to make the argument for 
 yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be 
 blind to the signs of the times. . . . 
 This proposal makes common cause for a 
 common object. ... It acts not the 
 Pharisee. ... So much good has not 
 been done by one effort in all past time as 
 in the providence of God it is now your high 
 privilege to do. May the vast future not 
 have to lament that you have neglected it." 
 
 Again, to the Senators and Rep- 
 resentatives of the border States, 
 in July, 1862, he addressed a letter, 
 in which, among other things, he 
 told them the War would soon de- 
 stroy slavery in their States ''by 
 mere friction and abrasion." He 
 told them much of the value of 
 slave property was already gone, 
 and urged them to favor compen- 
 sated emancipation; and then, with 
 that terseness and force of which 
 
 [36] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 he was so great a master, he added, 
 "How much better for you, as 
 seller, and the nation, as buyer, to 
 sell out and buy out that without 
 which the War never could have 
 been, than to sink both the thing 
 to be sold, and the price of it, in 
 cutting one another's throats." 
 
 It seems iacredible, in the light 
 of events, that such appeals to the 
 good sense and the true interests 
 of the border States could have 
 fallen upon deaf ears, and the fact 
 that Lincoln's border State policy 
 was scoffed at alike by those it was 
 intended to benefit and by those 
 Northern idealists — such as Hor- 
 ace G-reeley and Wendell Phillips, 
 who were always ready to burn 
 other people upon the pyre of their 
 
 [37] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 immolating goodness — only serves 
 to illustrate the deep intrenehment 
 of slavery in the popular interest 
 and prejudice. If Lincoln could, 
 in the Spring of 1862, have wrested 
 from all future sympathy with the 
 Rebellion, those slave States which 
 remained in the Union, by inducing 
 them to voluntarily adopt emanci- 
 pation, by that very act the great 
 game would have been won. Had 
 the one State of Kentucky heeded 
 Lincoln's appeal and voluntarily 
 abolished slavery, it would have 
 been a moral blow more decisive 
 than many military victories, 
 which would indeed have shaken 
 the Southern Confederacy to its 
 very foundations. Lincoln saw this 
 clearly, but his critics among the 
 
 [38] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 Northern radicals seemed utterly 
 incapable of appreciating Ms "bor- 
 der State policy." Greeley, about 
 this time, said in the Tribune, that 
 when Lincoln prayed he said, "0 
 Lord, I would like to have You on 
 my side, but, Lord, I just must 
 have Kentucky." Lincoln's great 
 anxiety that citizens of the loyal 
 slave States should receive pay for 
 their slaves gave rise to Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson's celebrated epi- 
 gram, — 
 
 " Pay the owner for the slave, 
 And fill the bag to the brim ; 
 Who is the owner? The slave is the owner 
 And ever was ; pay him ! " 
 
 Lincoln had always realized that 
 to check the spread of slavery was 
 a long step toward its abolition. In 
 
 [39] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 1858 he wisely said the country 
 must ultimately become **aU one 
 thing or all the other." The wise 
 men of the South clearly saw this 
 was true, and acted upon it. Had 
 slavery from the first been freely 
 admitted to aU our new Territories, 
 it would soon have become na- 
 tional, and Robert Toombs might 
 have fulfilled a threat he is said to 
 have made, that he would some day 
 call the roll of his slaves at the foot 
 of Bunker Hill monument. On the 
 other hand, had slavery been strict- 
 ly confined to the area it occupied 
 prior to 1820, emancipation would 
 probably have come long before 
 this time, even had there been no 
 war. 
 
 [40] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 TN proclaiming freedom Lincoln 
 is commonly thought to have 
 reached the summit of his moral 
 grandeur. The act was certainly 
 great in itself, and equally great in 
 the manner of its accomplishment. 
 It was natural, however, that ad- 
 mirers of the great anti-slavery 
 agitators should dispute Lincoln's 
 title to the historic credit for eman- 
 cipation. Many thought Lincoln's 
 Proclamation lost its moral grand- 
 eur in the fact that it was issued 
 under the force of military neces- 
 sity, and thus became a mere inci- 
 dent in the preservation of the 
 Union. I must, however, dissent 
 from this view, and insist that 
 Abraham Lincoln's abolitionism 
 did not lose its ethical quality in its 
 
 [41] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 respect for established law and in 
 its well-tempered expediency. Any- 
 fool could shout and say slavery 
 must be abolished, but it took a 
 statesman to find a way to abolish 
 it. The old abolitionists blew the 
 reckless clarion blast which 
 alarmed the Northern conscience 
 and precipitated the conflict. The 
 flashlight of their audacious and 
 consuming eloquence fell upon 
 slavery and revealed its enormity. 
 But the man who marshalled and 
 led the material and moral forces 
 which finally crushed the Rebellion 
 and destroyed slavery had need to 
 be something more than a reckless 
 agitator. 
 
 Prominent in our War period, 
 upon the Northern side, were many 
 
 [42] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 idealists, among whom some of the 
 old "higher law" abolitionists were 
 the pm-est types. An idealist (to 
 depart somewhat from the lexi- 
 cons) is one who counts his chick- 
 ens before the eggs have been laid. 
 He is lacking in a sense of the pro- 
 portion and relation of things, and 
 takes himself so seriously that he 
 loses the power of seeing the actual 
 situation. In the last analysis he 
 lacks humor. In the rapturous con- 
 templation of the end he forgets aU 
 about means. The Northern ideal- 
 ists, or radicals, thought that if 
 Lincoln would only sound a great 
 blast upon a ram's horn all the 
 walls of the Jericho of Rebellion 
 would fall flat. Acknowledging no 
 responsibility, these men could talk 
 
 [43] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 much nonsense without having to 
 account for the folly of their 
 speech. 
 
 Lincoln, however, was President, 
 and as such he felt gravely respon- 
 sible to the country for his every 
 act and word. He did not fly 
 through the air with the theorists, 
 but walked slowly and painfully 
 upon the ground — and rough, in- 
 deed, was his footing. He walked 
 among the "plain people," and 
 communed with them day by day; 
 and as he walked he took note of 
 all the rocks and chasms and quag- 
 mires which lay in his pathway — 
 little matters, for which the mere 
 theorists felt only contempt. 
 
 The truth is, the old abolitionists 
 had so long combated a majority 
 
 [44] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 upon the slavery issue that they 
 could not appreciate the wisdom of 
 a President who waited for the con- 
 currence of a majority before act- 
 ing. To Wendell Phillips the agi- 
 tator, delivering a philippic against 
 slavery, the approval of a majority 
 was not necessary. His tempera- 
 ment was such that the violent 
 opposition of numbers acted upon 
 him as a stimulant. But to Lincoln 
 the President, formulating and en- 
 forcing practical measures of gov- 
 ernment for a sovereign people, the 
 moral support of public opinion 
 was an absolute necessity. Those 
 who, almost before Lincoln's right 
 hand was lowered, insisted that he 
 should abandon the Constitution he 
 had sworn to support, and resort 
 
 [45] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 to that vague delusion called the 
 "higher law" — without any then 
 apparent military necessity — had 
 little appreciation of the man or 
 the occasion. In the days of war 
 most of these men went their own 
 wild, unreasoning way, and heaped 
 obloquy upon the man who was 
 completing their work in the only 
 possible way it could then have 
 been completed. 
 
 The distinct issue on which Lin- 
 coln won the presidency was the 
 prevention of the spread of slavery 
 — not its abolition — and on that 
 issue he received less than one-half 
 of the popular vote, excluding from 
 the calculation the votes of the 
 States that afterwards seceded. 
 However great may be the wonder 
 
 [46] 
 
JL I N C O L N 
 
 of it in the light of events, the fact 
 is that a large majority of the 
 whole American people stood, in 
 1861, against Lincoln's moderate 
 personal views on the slavery ques- 
 tion. Out of twenty-three Chris- 
 tian ministers residing in Spring- 
 field, Illinois, in 1860, twenty were 
 opposed to the election of Lincoln.* 
 A quarrel between two factions of 
 the Democratic party as to the par- 
 ticular degree of legal encourage- 
 ment slavery should receive in its 
 struggle for territory and suprem- 
 acy had resulted in Lincoln's elec- 
 tion. No wonder he refused to at 
 
 * This statement is based on the language of 
 Lincoln himself, as Hon. Newton Bateman, then 
 Superintendent of Public Instruction in Illinois, 
 reported to Dr. J. G. Holland. — Holland's " Life 
 of Lincoln," page 236. 
 
 [47] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 once launch an emancipation policy 
 when even his own moderate prin- 
 ciple of slavery- restriction could 
 scarcely be sustained. 
 
 Lincoln was acquainted, perhaps 
 better than any other public man, 
 with that prejudice whigh in those 
 days often led even good Union 
 men, in the Western States, to de- 
 clare they would not support an 
 "abolition war." He knew many 
 good friends of the Union believed 
 that emancipation would be fol- 
 lowed by a horrible war of races, or 
 by a still more horrible amalgama- 
 tion of whites and blacks. To such 
 he held out his zealous but imprac- 
 ticable scheme of colonizing the 
 negroes in South America or 
 Africa. It was exactly because Lin- 
 
 [48] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 coin's early associations had so 
 thoroughly familiarized him with 
 the prejudice which used to fairly 
 shudder at sound of the then -cur- 
 rent phrase "nigger equality" — 
 nay, because he even partook in a 
 degree of that prejudice himself — 
 that he proved the fittest man to 
 stand at the helm. 
 
 Lincoln thrust forward the 
 Union issue because he knew there 
 were at least twenty men in the 
 North for the Union where there 
 was one for emancipation. The 
 boast, early made, that a united 
 South would be hurled against a 
 divided North, was, upon the slav- 
 ery question, fully realized. Lin- 
 coln's party was distinctly pledged 
 not to disturb slavery in the States 
 
 [49] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 where it existed, and the pro-slav- 
 ery Unionist was as vehement in 
 urging the sanctity of this promise 
 as the Eastern radical was in de- 
 claring that treason had put slav- 
 ery beyond constitutional protec- 
 tion. 
 
 When the Emancipation Procla- 
 mation was at length issued it was 
 bitterly assailed as a revolutionary 
 subversion of the Constitution, and 
 yet it is a remarkable fact, that 
 none of his critics ever stated the 
 legal case against emancipation so 
 strongly or so well as Lincoln once 
 stated it himself. To 0. H. Brown- 
 ing, who scolded him for revoking 
 Fremont's Emancipation Procla- 
 mation, on September 22, 1861, he 
 wrote : 
 
 [50] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 "If the general needs them [the slaves] 
 he can seize them and use them, but when 
 the need is past it is not for him to fix their 
 permanent future condition. That must be 
 settled according to the laws made by law- 
 makers, and not by military proclamations. 
 The proclamation on the point in question is 
 simply dictatorship. It assumes that the 
 general may do anything he pleases: con- 
 fiscate the lands and free the slaves of loyal 
 people as well as of disloyal ones. And going 
 the whole figure, I have no doubt, would be 
 more popular with some thoughtless people 
 than that which has been done. But I can- 
 not assume this reckless position nor allow 
 others to assume it on my responsibility. 
 You speak of it as being the only means 
 of saving the government. On the contrary, 
 it is, itself, a surrender of the government. 
 Can it be pretended that it is any longer the 
 government of the United States — any gov- 
 ernment of Constitution and laws — wherein 
 a general or President may make permanent 
 rules of property by proclamation? . . . 
 What I object to is, that I, as President, 
 shall expressly or impliedly seize and exercise 
 the permanent legislative functions of the 
 government." 
 
 [51] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 This whole letter to Browning is 
 most interesting in a study of the 
 development of the emancipation 
 policy, and should be compared 
 with his Proclamation annulling 
 the emancipation edict of Gen. 
 Hunter, eight months later. May 
 19, 1862. In the latter he says: 
 
 "Whether it be competent for me, as 
 Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy, 
 to declare the slaves of any State or States 
 free, and whether at any time, in any case, 
 it shall have become a necessity indispensable 
 to the maintenance of the government to 
 exercise such supposed power, are questions 
 which, under my responsibility, I reserve to 
 myself and which I cannot feel justified in 
 leaving to the decision of commanders in the 
 field." 
 
 Here was a distinct advance upon 
 the position annoimced in the 
 Browning letter. He had found 
 
 [52] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 the true basis for his emancipation 
 policy, and only awaited the devel- 
 opment of public opinion and the 
 march of events. 
 
 T INCOLN had the sense to keep 
 his eye upon great facts and 
 to reckon with large causes. He 
 was sagacious enough to perceive 
 that the supreme issue of the strug- 
 gle was national preservation, and 
 that this issue embraced the slav- 
 ery question and all others. Gree- 
 ley's silly advice to let the South- 
 ern States " go in peace, ' ' and Wen- 
 dell Phillips' still more pictur- 
 esque folly that we would "build a 
 bridge of gold and pay their toll 
 over it," could meet no favor in a 
 mind so sane as Lincoln's. He 
 
 [53] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 knew if the government proved 
 strong enough to cope with the Re- 
 bellion it would, in the end, prove 
 strong enough to deal with slavery 
 and ultimately abolish it by peace- 
 ful means. He said in his Peoria 
 speech, in 1854, "Much as I hate 
 slavery, I would consent to the ex- 
 tension of it rather than see the 
 Union dissolved, just as I would 
 consent to any great evil to avoid a 
 greater one. ' ' From this sentiment 
 he never receded. 
 
 Had the Southern people ac- 
 quiesced in Lincoln's election and 
 in the supremacy of his doctrines 
 they would certainly have pro- 
 longed slavery, and in the end, per- 
 haps, have insured a liberal com- 
 pensation for their slaves. But 
 
 [54] 
 
L I N C O IL 3N 
 
 ultimately either slavery or the 
 TJBion had to go down. 
 
 T HAVE sometimes thought that 
 Lincoln, with prophetic eye, 
 saw the destruction of slavery from 
 the very beginning, but with a pa- 
 tience and self-control which find 
 no parallel awaited the slow turn- 
 ing of the mills of the gods. He had 
 the large sense to perceive that the 
 spirit of the times would in the end 
 abolish slavery, and that to force 
 the issue would only insure the suc- 
 cess of the Confederacy. He rec- 
 ognized a plan higher than human 
 plans. He knew when he wrote 
 the Greeley letter that the march 
 of events had put it past human 
 power to save slavery with the 
 
 [55] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 Union. He felt that a hand might- 
 ier than his own was writing the 
 doom of slavery upon the fiery war- 
 cloud, and so believing, and so 
 praying, too, he patiently accepted 
 criticism, and even calumny — first 
 from the extreme abolitionists and 
 afterwards from the pro-slavery 
 Unionists. He knew a premature 
 expression, officially, of his belief 
 that the War was destined to de- 
 stroy slavery would probably take 
 from the Union army a hundred 
 thousand bayonets, and that this 
 might turn the tide against the 
 Union. Had the border slave 
 States been repelled by the least 
 rudeness of treatment from the ad- 
 ministration, the Union would 
 probably never have been saved. 
 
 [56] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 Lincoln himself put the case tersely 
 when he said of the border States, 
 "With them against us, the job is 
 too big for us." Realizing that 
 public opinion was the only effect- 
 ive abolitionist, Lincoln stayed his 
 pen, and allowed the Union volun- 
 teers to write with their bayonets, 
 in the blood of angry battles, the 
 real proclamation of freedom. He 
 knew well that a proclamation so 
 written would never need to be 
 recanted. 
 
 T N the Spring of 1861 there were 
 many persons in the North who 
 saw in Lincoln only a well-mean- 
 ing, shrewd, but inexperienced per- 
 son, whose redeeming trait, they 
 hoped, would prove to be docility. 
 
 [57] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 Each of these persons felt sure 
 Lincoln would need much sage ad- 
 vice, and expected to supply it, 
 and even to largely control his 
 administration. These self-ap- 
 pointed guardians were unprepared 
 to receive a national saviour from 
 the Nazareth of the prairies. They 
 at once began teUing Lincoln what 
 to do, and it has been aptly said 
 he received worse advice, and more 
 of it, than any statesman that ever 
 lived. 
 
 This wiU not seem wonderful 
 when we remember how utterly 
 the sudden rending of the Union 
 had dazed the American people. 
 In the confusion of that awful crisis 
 even wise men said and did silly 
 things. William H. Seward — cer- 
 [58] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 tainly a wise statesman , under 
 ordinary conditions — in the face 
 of threatened civil war lost both 
 heart and judgment, and gave Lia- 
 cohi some very bad and startling 
 advice. Chase marred his other- 
 wise splendid record with queru- 
 lous carpings, all through the War, 
 against a chief he did not in any 
 degree understand and whose su- 
 perior he felt he was. 
 
 That Lincoln, inexperienced as 
 he was, "kept his head" through 
 the panic of timidity, distrust, and 
 hysteria which marked the early 
 months of his administration, gent- 
 ly but firmly resisting the bad 
 advice which came to him from so 
 many high sources, is one of the 
 r^trongest proofs of the firm texture 
 
 [59] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 of his mind. To keep on good 
 terms with advisers of assumed su- 
 periority and at the same time not 
 take their advice, requires great 
 shrewdness and tact, and no states- 
 man ever knew better how to do 
 this than Lincoln. He was too 
 great to stand for a moment upon 
 mere pride of opinion. He was al- 
 ways ready to hear advice, but his 
 ultimate monitor was within. He 
 said, "It is my duty to hear all, but 
 at last I must, within my sphere, 
 judge what to do and what to for- 
 bear." This self-reliance, in prac- 
 tice, gave mortal offense to many 
 prominent Republicans, who could 
 never bring themselves to admit 
 that the basis of it was real su- 
 periority, and not arrogance. 
 
 [60] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 Lincoln was ruling a democracy, 
 and to rule a real democracy in- 
 volves problems never thought of 
 by such rulers as Caesar, Cromwell, 
 and Napoleon. He had a great 
 military problem, and this was 
 complicated with a still more per- 
 plexing political problem, to say 
 nothing of the other problems that 
 were presented by our foreign re- 
 lations. An early blow at slavery, 
 it was thought, would assist us 
 with foreign countries, but Lin- 
 coln knew such a move would set 
 our domestic politics awry. His 
 first wise thought was to keep the 
 peace among all the adherents of 
 the Union, and the wise desire to 
 do this furnishes the key to his 
 whole policy. He recognized no 
 
 [61] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 line of political cleavage save that 
 between the loyal and the disloyal. 
 He often spoke of ** balancing mat- 
 ters," and no man ever knew bet- 
 ter than he how to strike the pru- 
 dent average. 
 
 If any man in this world ever 
 understood that capricious thing 
 called "public opinion" that man 
 was Abraham Lincoln. He watch- 
 ed the current of public thought 
 and prejudice as intently as a cau- 
 tious pilot watches the face of a 
 river for evidence of bars and 
 snags. It has been well said that 
 he possessed a wonderful sixth 
 sense for the feeling of the average 
 American, He caught the faintest 
 sound which presaged a storm of 
 popular passion, and the sagacity 
 
 [62] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 and skill with which he avoided 
 the numberless eddies and whirl- 
 pools of the slavery question, while 
 steering on to the great end of na- 
 tional preservation, have, in my 
 judgment, never been equalled in 
 the field of statesmanship. Lin- 
 coln's exquisite sense of humor 
 played an important part in saving 
 the Union. It kept him from doing 
 foolish things. He told a delega- 
 tion of Chicago ministers who came 
 to inform him that it was "God's 
 will" that he should at once launch 
 an emancipation proclamation, that 
 such a measure would be like the 
 Pope's Bull against the Comet, be- 
 cause it would have no force be- 
 yond the military lines, and it 
 would remain to enforce it by put- 
 
 [63] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 ting down the Rebellion just as he 
 was striving to do. He thus antici- 
 pated the very criticism that was, 
 in fact, made in the English news- 
 papers when the Proclamation was 
 issued: namely, that the President 
 had assumed to abolish slavery 
 everywhere except in the territory 
 where he could have abolished it, 
 and had let it alone in the territory 
 subject to his jurisdiction. 
 
 The great Proclamation was 
 wisely withheld untU the extreme 
 anti-slavery element in New Eng- 
 land was ready to break from the 
 vanguard of the Union column, and 
 thus it came late enough in the evo- 
 lution of public opinion barely to 
 save to the cause the still more im- 
 portant rear- guard in the border 
 and Western States. 
 
 [64] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 T^HUS we see that it was a main 
 feature of Lincoln's states- 
 manship that he distinctly compre- 
 hended his problem; and not only 
 his one great problem, but all its 
 minor related problems. Such was 
 the clearness of his vision, such 
 the breadth of his views, such the 
 grasp and sanity of his judgment, 
 that within his policy all things 
 found their proper place and rela- 
 tion, and all the din and smoke of 
 terrific conflict could not confuse 
 him or put him from his purpose. 
 To use an illustration of his own 
 kind, he never went snipe-shooting 
 when there were bear in sight. 
 
 Lincoln succeeded in holding the 
 border slave States in line upon the 
 paramoimt Union issue even while 
 
 [65] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 the institution of slavery, which 
 they wished to save, was being 
 trampled to death beneath the feet 
 of the Union army. He played the 
 eager Union sentiment of the West 
 against the institution of slavery, 
 which had caused the War, until 
 the West finally came to agree with 
 New England that slavery must be 
 struck down. In other words, Lin- 
 coln bridged with his policy the 
 vast stretch of opinion which lay 
 between the rabid abolitionism of 
 the East and the pro-slavery 
 Unionism of the Western and bor- 
 der States, and thus he was at last 
 able to hurl the whole force of 
 Union sentiment on this side of the 
 battle line against the armies of 
 the Confederacy. 
 
 [66] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 A task so complex called for a 
 statesman of broad views, great 
 self-poise, iron endurance, and sub- 
 lime courage — courage to act, and, 
 even in a greater degree, courage 
 to forbear. Struggling, like Lao- 
 coon, in the serpent-coUs of the 
 slavery complication, stung by the 
 wasps of incontinent radicalism, 
 hectored by swarms of Northern 
 men who set the letter of the Con- 
 stitution above the nation's life, 
 Lincoln yet had the monumental 
 patience and foresight nearly al- 
 ways to do and say the wise thing. 
 "The occasion is piled high with 
 difficulty," said he, "and we must 
 rise with the occasion." 
 
 [67] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 T INCOLN'S search for a gen- 
 eral was long and painful and 
 at first quite as fruitless as that of 
 Diogenes for an honest man — and 
 he carried a better lantern, too. A 
 few military victories would have 
 cleared the atmosphere, but when 
 Lincoln asked his generals for vic- 
 tories they tried to swap jobs with 
 him, and gave him advice on the 
 slavery question. McClellan, just 
 after fleeing in panic from the 
 Chickahominy with a magnificent 
 army, which under another com- 
 mander might have bivouacked in 
 the Confederate capital, found time 
 to write Lincoln a lengthy letter of 
 general advice, in which, among 
 many other impertinences, he said 
 "the abolition of slavery must not 
 be thought of," 
 
 [68] 
 
I. I N G O L N 
 
 On the other hand, two or three 
 of the lesser generals in the field, 
 who, it must he said, were not par- 
 ticularly formidable to the com- 
 mon enemy, sought the cheap ap- 
 plause of the unthinking by issu- 
 ing proclamations of emancipation 
 in their military districts, thus 
 adding to the embarrassments of 
 the one great, patient man who 
 saw aU the phases of the Union 
 problem. 
 
 T T is quite the fashion to say that 
 previous to 1860 Lincoln had 
 not shown the qualities of politi- 
 cal leadership, and that his nomi- 
 nation for President was merely a 
 happy accident of politics. Pro- 
 fessor Von Hoist, in his "Consti- 
 
 [69] 
 
I. I N C O L N 
 
 tutional History of the United 
 States," has refuted this error. 
 Lincohi's nomination was no acci- 
 dental honor, won by superior man- 
 agement over the real leaders of 
 the party. In the great revolt of 
 1854 against the conspiracy to 
 open up new territory to slavery, 
 though less officially conspicuous 
 than Seward, Lincoln soon proved 
 himself the most sagacious leader 
 of the new party. Lincoln's action 
 in one conspicuous party crisis re- 
 futes, once for all, the notion that 
 he drifted helplessly with the tide 
 and was not a party leader. 
 
 When Senator Douglas, at the 
 Winter session of 1857-8, broke 
 with President Buchanan, and 
 made his brilliant fight in the 
 
 [70] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 Senate against the admission of 
 Kansas as a slave State imder the 
 fraudulent Lecompton Constitu- 
 tion, many prominent anti-slavery 
 men were dazzled by the political 
 pyrotechnics of the "Little Criant." 
 Douglas actually hypnotized some 
 of his former antagonists into the 
 belief that he was fighting their 
 battles for them. Horace Greeley 
 accepted him as a new Moses, and 
 advised the Illinois Republicans to 
 support him for reelection to the 
 Senate. Seward prudently said 
 nothing publicly, but he was well 
 known to be ready to acquiesce in 
 the leadership of Douglas and in 
 his reelection. He, indeed, made a 
 speech in the Senate virtually 
 waiving the vital Republican prin- 
 
 [71] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 eiple, ''lifo more slave territory." 
 Politics never made stranger bed- 
 fellows than when the "Free- 
 soilers" of New England were 
 found sympathizing with Douglas 
 in his contest for reelection. 
 
 It was Lincoln who saw clearly 
 that for the Republicans to sup- 
 port Douglas for the Senate would 
 be a practical surrender upon the 
 slavery question. He declared that 
 the issue was deeper than "the 
 mere question of fact", whether or 
 not a particular Constitution for 
 Kansas had been legally adopted 
 by the voters. He showed the Re- 
 publicans that the man who had 
 repeatedly declared he did not care 
 "whether slavery was voted down 
 or voted up" in Kansas, just so the 
 
 [72] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 vote was fair, could not be safely 
 entrusted with the ark of the Ee- 
 publican covenant; and when 
 Douglas returned to Illinois in tri- 
 mnph to receive the plaudits of his 
 admirers, Lincoln promptly chal- 
 lenged him to mortal political 
 combat. 
 
 In the great debate which fol- 
 lowed, Lincoln exhumed from out 
 the clap-trap and rubbish in which 
 sophistry sought to envelop it, the 
 essential moral question of that 
 great controversy. In his speech 
 at Springfield, June 16, 1858 — the 
 greatest political speech ever de- 
 livered in this country— he boldly 
 proclaimed the startling truth that 
 we had come to the crisis where 
 the country must choose, once for 
 
 [73] 
 
L I N C O L J^ 
 
 all, between freedom and slavery 
 as a permanent national policy, or 
 else see the "divided house" topple 
 down. This was more than four 
 months before Seward proclaimed 
 the "irrepressible conflict" in his 
 Rochester speech. The master 
 feats by which the "Little Giant" 
 hoped to save his popularity in the 
 North, without quite ruining his 
 political prospects in the South, 
 came to a speedy end before the 
 keen and searching logic of his 
 antagonist. 
 
 When Lincoln was defeated for 
 the Senate, as his friends warned 
 him would be the case upon so radi- 
 cal a platform as he had made for 
 himself, he accepted the result with 
 the complacency of a true philoso- 
 
 [74] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 pher. He knew that while he had 
 lost his battle he had not lost his 
 principles. Nay, he knew he had 
 laid the foundations of ultimate 
 success for the cause of freedom. 
 He had done more than this; he 
 had proved himself the most saga- 
 cious and fearless leader of the new 
 party, by true merit and service 
 raised to that great eminence. 
 
 Equally absurd is it, in my judg- 
 ment, to say that after this great 
 debate with Douglas, in 1858, Lin- 
 coln was an ' ' unknown man. ' ' His 
 antagonist was the most noted man 
 in the politics of that day. It was 
 not without reason that he was 
 called a "giant," for a giant, in- 
 deed, he was in point of political 
 shrewdness, force, and audacity. 
 
 [75] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 The newspapers took note of every 
 move of the great Illinois Senator, 
 and Lincoln's temerity in challeng- 
 ing him. excited wonder. The de- 
 bate was, of course, followed in- 
 tently by every man who paid any 
 attention whatever to political af- 
 fairs. However obscure Lincoln 
 may previously have been, his con- 
 flict with Douglas brought him into 
 the very focus of public attention, 
 Lincoln's great plainness and 
 simplicity of speech and argument 
 won upon all who heard or read 
 what he said. He never talked 
 "over the heads" of his hearers. 
 His were the arguments against 
 slavery which found lodgment in 
 the minds and hearts of the com- 
 mon people. His speech at Peoria, 
 
 [76] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 October 16, 1854; his speecli at 
 Springfield, June 16, 1858; his de- 
 bates with Douglas, and his speech 
 at Cooper Institute, New York, 
 February 27, 1860, are easily the 
 masterpieces of all the anti-slavery 
 literature preceding the War. In 
 them are the body and the blood of 
 the republicanism of that day. In 
 them Lincoln made the platform 
 whereon he won the battle for 
 slavery - restriction. * 
 
 Furthermore, Lincoln was not, 
 at any period of his career, of that 
 easy-going temper which runs with 
 
 * I do not include the celebrated ' ' lost speech ' ' 
 delivered by Lincoln at the Bloomington Conven- 
 tion, May 29, 1856, because, while we know that 
 speech' greatly moved his auditors, we do not know 
 what he said. I have never believed Whitney's 
 alleged reproduction of that speech to be genuine. 
 
 [77] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 the tide. While he was President 
 some thought he drifted aimlessly, 
 but in fact he sailed the ship. His 
 strong hand was always upon the 
 helm, but he had sense enough to 
 know that the ship could not be 
 sailed against wind and tide. 
 When he met baffling weather he 
 knew how to tack. He could even 
 seek a temporary haven and wait 
 for fair winds, but he never turned 
 back or abandoned the journey. 
 He knew there was time for all 
 things, and he never acted under 
 the influence of panic. He bided 
 his time, and with a patience as 
 deep as nature, as unfaUing as des- 
 tiny, he awaited events. 
 
 [78] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 T^HE most conspicuous personal 
 quality of Lincoln, as I see 
 him, is manly strength — a self- 
 confidence, heroic but unexpressed. 
 To me, Lincoln seems on great oc- 
 casions a solitary man, communing 
 with himself — never, indeed, arro- 
 gant; not by any means always see- 
 ing his way through to the end, but 
 believing, with much confidence, 
 that he saw as far as any, and yet 
 prudently concealing, in large de- 
 gree, the confidence he felt in the 
 correctness of his own views. I am 
 aware few took this view of Lin- 
 coln in his lifetime. The extreme 
 good-fellowship of his lighter hours 
 seems to disprove it; and so many 
 incidents are current showing his 
 tenderness of heart — such as his 
 
 [79] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 strangely intense and emotional 
 letters to Joshua Speed, and the 
 alacrity with which he is said to 
 have pardoned condemned soldiers 
 against the protests of his gener- 
 als — that the world is in danger 
 of concluding that Lincoln's chief 
 side was his emotional side and 
 that there was in him no iron. 
 
 That he was gentle, merciful, 
 kind, and tolerant, that he was 
 above petty resentments, and al- 
 ways ready to cover the faults of 
 his fellows with the mantle of 
 charity, no one will deny. But 
 these qualities were not incom- 
 patible with strength of character. 
 To be firm and enforce one's pur- 
 pose it is not necessary to be a 
 tyrant, and what seemed weakness 
 
 [80] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 in some of Lincoln's public acts was 
 often the result of prudence and 
 sound judgment. For instance, I 
 doubt whether Lincoln ever set 
 aside a death sentence when it was 
 not good policy to do it. We have, 
 I hope, gotten far past the barbar- 
 ism of shooting a soldier boy to 
 death for sleeping at his post, and 
 Lincoln had too much sense to ap- 
 prove such a sentence though his 
 heart had been harder than stone. 
 Convictions for offences which in- 
 volved a betrayal of the cause, or 
 those evincing great moral turpi- 
 tude, he could approve without a 
 quahn, and he did approve many 
 sentences — the conviction of Mtz 
 John Porter being the most con- 
 spicuous, 
 
 [81] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 T NOW go a step further, and say- 
 that Lincohi was a great ruler 
 of men; and the man who has 
 learned to rule others must have 
 begun by learning to rule himself. 
 Lincoln, contrary to current belief, 
 was capable of great, righteous 
 wrath, and sometimes of terrific 
 anger, but his wonderful self-con- 
 trol ordinarily enabled him to con- 
 ceal the storms of passion that 
 must often have rent his soul 
 throughout the trying days of the 
 War. He never blustered; his 
 method of ruling was not so crude. 
 Nor was he one of Gratiano's men, 
 whose visages — 
 
 "Do eream and mantle like a standing pond, 
 And do a willful stillness entertain 
 With purpose to be dressed in an opinion 
 Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit. 
 As who should say, 'I am Sir Oracle. ' " 
 
 [82] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 On the contrary, Lincoln was al- 
 ways simple, natural — almost boy- 
 ish. He disdained aU owlish shows 
 of superior wisdom. He was per- 
 fectly willing that the men he ruled 
 should believe they were ruling 
 him. He did not fear that some 
 upstart would cheat history and 
 wear his laurels. Referring to the 
 capital way in which he got along 
 with Senator Sumner, he said, with 
 a sly twinkle in his eye, "He thinks 
 he manages me." I think Lincoln 
 knew that he was building for eter- 
 nity, but with a serene confidence 
 he committed to time the keeping 
 of his matchless fame. Secretary 
 Stanton, according to one account, 
 raised his hand above the Presi- 
 dent 's body a moment after he had 
 
 [83] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 breathed his last, and said, "There 
 lies the greatest ruler of men that 
 has ever lived." Great testimony 
 is this, coming from Stanton. 
 
 A VERY great man is elemental. 
 He is, so to speak, a grand di- 
 vision of nature. We now see that 
 Lincoln's purpose and policy 
 moved through the War with aU 
 the steadiness and certainty of a 
 cosmic force. His patience under 
 vast discouragements assumes the 
 character of the patience of nature 
 itself. His spirit was never ruffled 
 by enmity or elated by vanity. 
 When a little man is permitted to 
 step suddenly from a puncheon 
 floor to velvet he is apt to become 
 giddy. The political "beggar-on- 
 
 [84] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 horseback," often met with under 
 a popular government, generally 
 thinks, with Jack Cade, that aU the 
 sewers are going to run red with 
 claret because he is "king." 
 Though coming from a lowly es- 
 tate, Lincoln seemed unconscious 
 of his position as the first man of 
 the nation. True to the class which 
 produced him, he left no degrading 
 apology for his breeding or the 
 meagreness of his early conditions. 
 His manliness was in his blood, and 
 we now see that there was never 
 taken to the White House a truer 
 dignity of character, a more firmly- 
 poised intellect, or a more intelli- 
 gent self-reliance, than went there 
 from the prairies of Illinois with 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 [85] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 "l^TE have seen that Lincoln 
 stands in American history 
 first for national unity. We have 
 seen that he stands also for liberty 
 and the rights of man in subordi- 
 nation to established law. We have 
 seen him, strong as the "unwedge- 
 able and knarled oak," bending 
 others to his purpose. We have 
 also seen him exercising a wisdom 
 and tact rarely found among the 
 endowments of man. To all this I 
 now add that he was the greatest 
 popular leader that has appeared 
 in our country. Out of the jungles 
 of practical politics have grown but 
 few oaks of statesmanship, but 
 Lincoln was one of these oaks ; and 
 it is proper, I think, to call him a 
 practical politician in the highest 
 
 [86] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 and best sense of that term. In 
 this field, with the sole exception 
 of Thomas Jefferson, he finds in 
 our history no rival. He was pre- 
 eminently the "man of the people" 
 — not the demagogue who used the 
 people for his purpose, but the 
 statesman who served them and 
 whom they recognized as their 
 own. He led the people for the 
 people's good, and not for his 
 own personal aggrandizement. In 
 Abraham Lincoln the spirit of de- 
 mocracy was incarnate. What he 
 called "the plain people" loved 
 him in life and have canonized him 
 in death, for it is only the common 
 people^who can confer enduring 
 fame. 
 
 So complete was Lincoln's belief 
 
 [87] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 in the intelligence and honesty 
 of the American people that he 
 never found it expedient to flatter 
 them, but gave them always his 
 honest thoughts. He did not reach 
 the people secondarily, through the 
 medium of local politicians, as is 
 now too much the fashion, but 
 established his political relations 
 directly with every citizen of the 
 Republic. He had no use for the 
 political "machine" of later days. 
 The standard of Lincoln's judg- 
 ment and feeling was level with 
 every condition of American life. 
 His communion with the masses 
 was no condescending patronage 
 but a genuine fellowship. He was 
 at home everywhere; he perfectly 
 understood ignorance and preju- 
 [88] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 dice; he had charity for them, but 
 he never played the demagogue by 
 appealing to them. The coarse- 
 ness of the vulgar and ignorant did 
 not shock him as it does many good 
 men who have not had Lincoln's 
 experience. The truth is that the 
 life of this wonderful man meas- 
 ures the whole vast distance be- 
 tween the top and the bottom lay- 
 ers of American society. He grew 
 through all the strata, and at last 
 flowered and bore fruit at the top. 
 It has been well said that he lived 
 all there was of American life, felt 
 aU there was of American experi- 
 ence, and therefore in his character 
 and life and work he fairly repre- 
 sented and expressed the American 
 people. 
 
 [89] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 T INCOLN was great enough to 
 sink himself completely in his 
 cause. The fact that Stanton had 
 once treated him with professional 
 discourtesy and had then lately 
 criticised him in his own bitter 
 fashion, was to Lincoln's mind no 
 reason why Stanton should not be 
 made Secretary of War, when it 
 was deemed that his appointment 
 would most aid the cause. It was 
 the coimtry Lincoln wanted served, 
 not himself. The friends of Chase 
 were surprised to learn, in that 
 eminent man's appointment as 
 Chief Justice, that his resignation 
 of the Treasury, though petulant 
 and iU- judged, had left no iron in 
 the soul of the great President. It 
 is now known that Lincoln said, 
 
 [90] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 with the resignation of Chase still 
 in his hands unaccepted, that Chase 
 should be Chief Justice if a vacan- 
 cy arose.* 
 
 A little earlier, when, through 
 the publication of the "Pomeroy 
 Circular," the fact came to light 
 that Chase was scheming against 
 his chief for the presidential nomi- 
 nation in 1864, and Chase, in some 
 confusion at the disclosure, offered 
 his resignation, Lincoln wrote him 
 these most wonderful words, 
 "Whether you shall remain at the 
 head of the Treasury department 
 is a question which I will not per- 
 mit myself to consider from any 
 standpoint other than my judg- 
 
 * Chittenden 's ' ' EecoUeetions of Lincoln and 
 his Administration," page 380. 
 
 [91 J 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 ment of the public service, and in 
 that view I do not perceive occa- 
 sion for a change." Certainly this 
 was not the letter of a mere poli- 
 tician. 
 
 Only a President of great 
 breadth could have written to 
 Grant after the fall of Vicksburg, 
 "I now wish to make a personal 
 acknowledgment that you were 
 right and I was wrong"; and it was 
 Lincoln alone who, in the face of 
 much bitter detraction, saved Gen- 
 eral Grant to the cause and gave 
 him the opportunity to finally 
 crush the rebellion. He expressed 
 the matter tersely, "I can't spare 
 that man; he fights." 
 
 lincoln's magnanimous treat- 
 ment of Seward after that gentle- 
 
 [92] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 man had suggested Lincoln's prac- 
 tical abdication in his favor, is now 
 weU known; and a still better illus- 
 tration of the same spirit has come 
 to light since the voluminous bi- 
 ography by Nicolay and Hay was 
 published. Just after the battle 
 of Gettysburg, Lincoln thought 
 that prompt pursuit and battle by 
 Meade would destroy Lee's army 
 before it coidd re-cross the swollen 
 Potomac. Meade's delay and fail- 
 ure to seize his great opportunity 
 deeply grieved and annoyed the 
 President, who finally sent a per- 
 emptory order to forthwith attack 
 Lee — which order was accompa- 
 nied by perhaps the most remark- 
 able note ever sent by a com- 
 mander to his subordinate. It ran 
 
 [93] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 substantially thus: "This order is 
 not of record. If you are success- 
 ful you may destroy it, together 
 with this note; if you fail, publish 
 the order, and I wiU take the 
 responsibility. ' ' * 
 
 But why recount such minor in- 
 cidents to prove Lincoln's unselfish 
 
 * An autograph letter of the late James Har- 
 lan, of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, once Secretary of the 
 Interior under Lincoln, written to the author, April 
 17, 1897, la conclusive authority for the statement 
 in the text. He writes: " The President sent 
 an order, privately, directing Gen. Meade to fol- 
 low up his victory by an immediate attack on 
 Lee's retreating army, and thus, if possible, pre- 
 vent the re-crossing of the Potomac by the Con- 
 federate forces, accompanied by a confidential 
 letter authorizing him to make the order public in 
 case of disaster and in case of success to destroy 
 both the order and confidential letter. This much 
 you may rely upon as historically true. Whether 
 or not these papers ever reached Gen. Meade I 
 am not able to say. I had supposed, prior to the 
 receipt of your letter, that this incident had re- 
 mained unknown for twenty years after the close 
 of the War of the Kebellion to everybody except 
 Gen. Meade, Eobert T. Lincoln, and myself." 
 
 [94] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 spirit, when it is well known he 
 refused to take to himself the least 
 credit for the act of emancipation? 
 He knew that the entire colored 
 race, those living and those yet to 
 come, grateful for the boon of free- 
 dom at his hands, were ready to 
 place his name among the immor- 
 tals. He knew that the civilized 
 world stood ready with a laurel 
 crown for the emancipator of a 
 race, and yet he could put that 
 crown aside and say, "I have not 
 controlled events ; events have con- 
 trolled me ; God alone can claim it. ' ' 
 
 T EsTCOLN had read in all chari- 
 ty the secrets of the wonderful 
 book of human nature, and had 
 there learned to allow for the short- 
 
 [95] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 comings of even enemies. He had 
 too much breadth for bitterness. 
 Passion never blew out the lamp of 
 his reason, and from no lips ever 
 came more gracefully the soft an- 
 swer which turneth away wrath. 
 He had the charity to say, "The 
 Southern people are just what we 
 should be in their situation." 
 Though this man of mercy and 
 gentleness was called by destiny 
 to conduct a gigantic and cruel 
 civil war; though he stood for years 
 at the very storm-centre of an era 
 of passion and hate; though all the 
 pent-up fury and rage of fifty years 
 of bitter contention beat upon him, 
 he left behind not a single bitter 
 memory, and malice itself was 
 disarmed before his great heart 
 
 [96] 
 
JL I N G O L N 
 
 was cold. His utterances will be 
 searched in vain for one harsh 
 word against any of the Southern 
 people, and it is as appropriate as 
 it is touching that Confederate 
 soldiers now come forward as his 
 most eloquent and appreciative 
 eulogists. 
 
 T INCOLN was not schooled or 
 learned, but he was educated. 
 He had endured all the agonies of 
 complete mental discipline. The 
 process of his education never 
 ceased, but he spent no time learn- 
 ing the wrong things. His mind 
 was not clogged with useless lum- 
 ber. His knowledge was all corre- 
 lated, and his intellectual weapons 
 were as keen as blades of Damas- 
 
 [97] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 cus. His facts were not numerous, 
 but they were always ready for use. 
 He had read men more than books, 
 and it was with men — not books — 
 he had to deal. He studied other 
 men and he also studied himself. 
 He cross-examined his own soul. 
 His growth was evolution rather 
 than acquisition. Botanists teU. of 
 a class of plants called the ''exoge- 
 nous," which grow by taking on 
 layers from the outside, and of 
 another class called the "endoge- 
 nous," which grow from within — 
 from the heart. Lincoln, like the 
 endogenous plant, grew from with- 
 in. He expanded by the action of 
 subjective moral and intellectual 
 forces. His mind literally ' ' worked 
 itself clear," In all classifications 
 
 [98] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 of humankind Lincoln will stand 
 as an individual, akin to all classes 
 but belonging exclusively to none. 
 
 Lincoln had the best of legal 
 minds, but fortunately he never de- 
 generated into what Seward called 
 a ' * mere lawyer. ' ' He took the ker- 
 nel and rejected the husk. Those 
 who would appreciate his great 
 grasp of constitutional questions 
 must read his State papers and his 
 letters wherein he discusses the 
 war-power of the Executive over 
 slavery and over the right of habeas 
 corpus* 
 
 This man had no extensive ac- 
 quaintance with general literature. 
 He told the artist Carpenter, who 
 
 * It will pay well also to read Frederick Tre- 
 vor Hill's book, " Lincoln the Lawyer," which 
 was published since this paper was written. 
 
 [99] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 spent six montlis at the White 
 House painting the Emancipation 
 Group, that he never read a novel 
 clear through, Scott, Thackeray, 
 and Hawthorne wrote all their nov- 
 els within the limits of Lincoln's 
 lifetime, and in the same period 
 Dickens wrote all but two of his; 
 yet Lincoln appears to have known 
 no more of these authors than he 
 did of ^schylus or Homer. 
 
 To a mind like Lincoln's, that 
 which has actually happened in 
 this world is far more interesting 
 and far more dramatic than the 
 mere dreams of fiction. In poetry 
 he is known to have read Burns 
 and Byron, and Shakespeare in 
 part, and of the plays that he read 
 he judged that ** Macbeth" was 
 
 [100] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 greatest. Mournful verses seemed 
 to strike a chord in Ms heart, and 
 he was not over -critical as to liter- 
 ary quality. He had read and 
 studied the Bible in the translation 
 of King James, and the influence 
 of its pure and simple style is 
 everywhere apparent in what he 
 wrote. Doubtless Lincoln knew, 
 in outhne at least, the history of 
 other countries besides his own, 
 but evidence of the fact is not pre- 
 served in his writings. 
 
 T N aU the writings of Lincoln 
 there are not to be found more 
 than two or three allusions to the 
 classic myths, nor did he often, 
 if at all, point a moral by refer- 
 ence to the history of Greece or 
 
 [101] 
 
J. I N C O L J^ 
 
 Rome. In an early sophomoric 
 production he barely mentioned 
 the names of Cassar and Alexan- 
 der. Once in a letter he referred 
 to Procrustes and his fabled bed- 
 stead, and sometimes he jocu- 
 larly spoke of Stanton, his Sec- 
 retary of War, as "Mars." Be- 
 tween his nomination and election 
 he read Plutarch's "Lives," in or- 
 der to justify a statement made by 
 Scripps in a campaign biography. 
 If he ever read the rich mythology 
 of Greece and Rome it made little 
 impression upon him. Mercury, 
 with winged feet, seems to have 
 brought him no message from the 
 gods of old. He heard not the 
 thunders of Jove, the sobs of Mobe, 
 nor the entrancing strains of Or- 
 
 [102] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 phens' harp; and yet this man, 
 unschooled and unlearned, grasped 
 and solved the political problem of 
 his country and his time. Joseph 
 Jefferson, the actor, in his "Auto- 
 biography" (page 30) makes Lin- 
 coln, in what he terms a " har- 
 angue" to the City Council of 
 Springfield, Illinois, made in 1839, 
 "trace the history of the drama 
 from the time when Thespis acted 
 in a cart, to the stage of to-day." 
 Those who have studied the style 
 of Lincoln and know the range of 
 his illustrations wiU be somewhat 
 surprised to know that, in 1839, he 
 took Athens, B. C. 600, as his start- 
 ing point in persuading the city 
 fathers of an obscure western town 
 to repeal an unjust tax against 
 
 [103] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 players! Mr. Jefferson probably in- 
 troduced Thespis into this account 
 through some substitution of the 
 memory. Jefferson seems not to 
 have known that Lincoln was him- 
 self at the time in question (1839) 
 a member of the Board of Trustees 
 of the old town of Springfield. 
 Whatever he did, therefore, must 
 have been done in pursuance of his 
 duties as such member and not as 
 the attorney of Jefferson's father. 
 But if Lincoln did not read wide- 
 ly, neither did he read anything 
 lightly. He never contracted men- 
 tal indigestion by gorging his mind 
 with literary sweetmeats. He read 
 sound, strong things, and his men- 
 tal grasp was wonderful. He never 
 stopped until he had bounded a 
 
 [104] 
 
L I N G- O I. N 
 
 subject on all sides. He took noth- 
 ing upon faith but would know the 
 real truth, though he must, like 
 doubting Thomas, thrust his own 
 hand into the wound. The political 
 history of the United States he 
 knew in its minutest details, par- 
 ticularly those portions relating to 
 slavery, and his ability to interpret 
 historic facts and events in a philo- 
 sophic way has never been sur- 
 passed. 
 
 Lincoln's logic was the joint 
 product of honesty and common 
 sense. He had the courage to know 
 and to face the truth. He was will- 
 ing to go whithersoever his best 
 thought led him. He shared with 
 all great and noble minds that high, 
 unfaltering faith that the right 
 
 [105] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 must, in the end, triumph. The 
 closing sentence of his speech at 
 Cooper Institute is the key to his 
 whole life — "Let us have faith 
 that right makes might, and in that 
 faith let us, to the end, dare to do 
 our duty as we understand it." 
 
 TN point of literary merit Lin- 
 coln's writings will bear com- 
 parison with the best in the Eng- 
 lish language. His literary style 
 was as unique as his personality— 
 as characteristic of him as the great 
 nose on his face. He wrote Saxon, 
 and demonstrated that a large vo- 
 cabulary and an ornate style are 
 not necessary to the forceful ex- 
 pression of thought. He addressed 
 himself first to the understanding 
 [106] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 and next to the heart. He was one 
 of the greatest masters of the art 
 of statement that has ever writ- 
 ten the English tongue. He knew 
 the soiu-Ces of prejudice and the 
 springs of action. Pathos and hu- 
 mor are judiciously mingled in 
 whatever he said and wrote. He 
 it was who, with the hand of a mas- 
 ter, at last lovingly touched the 
 chords which again swelled "the 
 chorus of the Union." He could 
 put a chapter of argument into ten 
 words of speech. 
 
 A respectable volume could be 
 filled with passages illustrating the 
 strong, quaint style, apt illustra- 
 tions, rare ^sopian wisdom, and 
 — upon proper occasion — the pa- 
 thos and eloquence, which abound 
 
 [107] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 throughout the sayings and writ- 
 ings of Lincoln. 
 
 No illustration was too homely 
 to be used if it fitted the case. To 
 Hooker, who had proposed to cross 
 the Rappahannock at an inoppor- 
 tune time, Lincoln wrote, "I would 
 not take any risk of being entan- 
 gled upon the river like an ox 
 jumped half over a fence, and li- 
 able to be torn by dogs front and 
 rear, without a fair chance to gore 
 one way or kick the other." 
 
 Again, discussing a plan of cam- 
 paign — with an apt but inimitable 
 homeliness — he said, that if a cer- 
 tain general could not "skin" he 
 could "hold a leg" for somebody 
 else; and his pithy saying that 
 "You can fool all of the people 
 
 [108] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 some of the time, and some of the 
 people all the time, but you can't 
 fool all the people all the time," 
 has become an aphorism of Ameri- 
 can politics.* 
 
 In denying the broad charge 
 made by Douglas that he was in 
 favor of negro equality, Lincoln 
 pronounced, and on several occa- 
 sions repeated, his great definition 
 of the negro's rights. "In the 
 right," said he, "to eat the bread, 
 without leave of anybody, which 
 his own hand earns, the negro is 
 the equal of myself, of Judge Doug- 
 
 * An effort has been made to claim this saying 
 for P. T. Barnum. Mr. Barnum 's authorship has 
 not been proved, and there is at least one man of 
 my acquaintance living, ' ' of sound mind and 
 memory," who heard Lincoln use that language 
 in a speech at Bloomington, 111., as early as 1856. 
 
 [109] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 las, or of any other man." Again, 
 speaking upon the same subject, 
 he said, "I protest against the 
 counterfeit logic which concludes, 
 because I do not want a black 
 woman for a slave I must neces- 
 sarily want her for a wife." 
 
 When Douglas proposed to set- 
 tle the vexed question of slavery 
 extension by "popular sovereign- 
 ty," Lincoln quaintly said this 
 meant, that "if any man chooses to 
 enslave another no third man shall 
 be allowed to object"; and the ef- 
 fort to maintain both the Dred 
 Scott decision and "popular sov- 
 ereignty" at the same time he said 
 meant, "that a thing may be law- 
 fully driven away from a place 
 where it has a lawful right to go." 
 
 [110] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 To a number of persons who 
 called to remonstrate against his 
 :nethod of conducting the War, he, 
 with some impatience, said : ' ' Sup- 
 pose aE jou are worth was in gold 
 and you had put it into the hands of 
 Blondin to carry across Niagara — 
 would you shake the cable, or keep 
 shouting to him, 'Blondin, stand 
 up a little straighter! Blondin, 
 stoop a little more! Go a little 
 faster! Lean a little more to the 
 north! Lean a little more to the 
 south!' No — you would hold your 
 breath as well as your tongue, and 
 keep your hands off until he was 
 safe over. ' ' To another faultfinder, 
 who thought Lincoln's measures 
 too severe, he wrote, "Would you 
 drop the War where it is, or would 
 
 [111] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 you prosecute it with elder-stock 
 squirts charged with rose water?" 
 
 In reprimanding a young officer 
 for quarrelling, he said, "Quarrel 
 not at all. . . . Yield larger 
 things to which you can show no 
 more than equal right, and yield 
 lesser ones though clearly your 
 own. Better give your path to a 
 dog than be bitten by him in con- 
 testing for the right. Even killing 
 the dog would not cure the bite." 
 
 To his friend, Joshua Speed, he 
 once said, "Speed, die when I may, 
 I want it said of me by those 
 who knew me best, that I always 
 plucked a thistle and planted a 
 flower when I thought a flower 
 would grow." 
 
 He could be terribly severe witb- 
 
 [112] 
 
L I N C O L N 
 
 out descending to scurrility. Al- 
 luding to Douglas' "don't care" 
 policy on slavery he said, "I sup- 
 pose the institution of slavery 
 really looks small to him. He is so 
 put up by nature that a lash upon 
 his back would hurt him, but a lash 
 on anybody else's back does not 
 hurt him." 
 
 Eeplying to a committee of la- 
 boring men who waited upon him 
 with an address in 1864, he closed 
 with these words, than which I 
 know of nothing wiser or better in 
 the EngKsh language : 
 
 " That some should be rich shows that 
 others may become rich, and hence is just 
 encouragement to industry and enterprise. 
 Let not him who is houseless pull down the 
 house of another, but let him labor diligently 
 and build one for himself, thus by example 
 
 [113] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 assuring that his own shall be safe from 
 violence when built." 
 
 T IlSrCOLN was certainly not 
 without personal ambition, 
 and yet with only his own advance- 
 ment as an object he would have 
 lived and died in comparative ob- 
 scurity. Had he been called to the 
 bench he would have made a great 
 and just judge, like John Marshall. 
 It praises him to say that he could 
 never have made himself famous 
 except in a noble cause. Some have 
 indulged in fruitless speculations 
 as to what Lincoln would have been 
 had he been differently educated, 
 and as to whether or not, in later 
 years, he would have added to or 
 taken from his fame had not the 
 
 [114] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 cruel assassin struck him down. 
 Putting aside such idle thoughts, 
 we may well bow in devout thank- 
 fulness that in the tide of time 
 Lincoln came as a boon to our 
 country; and our hearts may swell 
 with a just pride that his career, 
 from birth to final martyrdom, fur- 
 nishes a most conclusive testimony 
 to the value of our free institutions. 
 What "Washington had once been 
 to the American Colonies, Lincoln 
 proved himself to the American 
 Nation. It has been said that the 
 tears a good man staimches are 
 shed upon his grave, and on Lin- 
 coln's was certainly poured out a 
 flood of the keenest popular grief 
 which political history has known. 
 Even as one revered as the Saviour 
 
 [115] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 of a lost world was born in a stable 
 and cradled in a manger, so this 
 Liberator of a race — this saviour 
 of organized democracy in the 
 Western world — first heard the 
 lullaby of love in a rude frontier 
 cabin, and, with the earth of a 
 common humanity still clinging 
 upon him, went forth to the agonies 
 of martyrdom and fame. And there 
 upon the sacred mount of service 
 and suffering — behold, he, too, was 
 transfigured before the nations! 
 All the dross and contaminations of 
 early environment at length fell 
 away and left this lowly man of the 
 people standing lofty, and serene, 
 and spotless in the white light of 
 history; and when that murderous 
 pistol-shot at last stilled his tired 
 
 [116] 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 heart and sped his weary soul to 
 its reward, the sounds of bitter 
 lamentation, coming in commingled 
 strains alike from the palace and 
 from the hovel, proclaimed but too 
 truly that "our common manhood 
 had lost a kinsman. ' ' 
 
 [117] 
 
I 
 
 m 
 
 m 
 
 I i"i ill 
 Jii'VI 
 li !><!|g 
 
 Mia 
 
 • 
 
 III 
 
 1 
 i 
 
 ";s; ii 
 'i 1; "