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 THE GREATEST MAN OF 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
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 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
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 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO.. Limited 
 
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 MELBOURNE 
 
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 TORONTO 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 THE GREATEST MAN OF 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN 
 
 DEAN OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL, YALE UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1922 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
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 Copyright, 1922, 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and printed. Published February, 1922, 
 
 Press of 
 
 J. J. Little & Ives Company 
 
 New York, U. S. A. 
 
 ^ FEB -B 1922 
 ©CU654542 
 
 '^xC 
 
LINCOLN 
 
 THE GREATEST MAN OF THE 
 NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 YOU may possibly be interested in 
 knowing how this study of a great 
 man's life originally came about. 
 When the new century was ushered in the 
 event was celebrated in San Francisco 
 at a large banquet for men at the Mer- 
 chants' Club. The Committee of Ar- 
 rangements provided four addresses on 
 'The Achievements of the Nineteenth 
 Century." Dr. David Starr Jordan, 
 President of Stanford University, was 
 asked to speak on 'The Greatest Scien- 
 tific Discovery of the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury." He very naturally named "The 
 Principle of Organic Evolution" and de- 
 5 
 
6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 voted his address to indicating the bear- 
 ing of that principle upon scientific 
 thought during the closing decades of the 
 century. Professor Charles M. Gayley, 
 the head of the English Department in 
 the University of California, was asked to 
 speak on "The Greatest Book of the Nine- 
 teenth Century." He at once excluded all 
 scientific works as not belonging to pure 
 literature. After discussing the merits of 
 various authors he named Goethe's 
 "Faust" as the greatest literary produc- 
 tion of the hundred years. Mr. Fairfax 
 H. Whelan, a business man in San Fran- 
 cisco, was asked to speak on "The Great- 
 est Mechanical Invention of the Nine- 
 teenth Century." He surprised us all — 
 and no one knew in advance what choice 
 any one of the four speakers had made. 
 We expected something of an electrical 
 nature, but he named "Bessemer Steel," 
 the cheaper process of converting pig iron 
 into steel, on the ground of its wider util- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 7 
 
 ity. He maintained that the greatest in- 
 vention was the one which served the in- 
 terests of the largest number of people. I 
 was asked to speak that evening on "The 
 Greatest Man of the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury"; and the after-dinner speech that 
 night has by that same process of '^organic 
 evolution" gradually shaped itself into the 
 longer address contained in this little 
 book. 
 
 It might seem a futile task to seek 
 to narne the greatest man in any century. 
 It is not easy to compare one great man 
 with another. And ''Comparisons are 
 odorous," Dogberry said. His English 
 was a trifle lame, but he had a show of 
 facts on his side. Those earnest debates 
 which we used to have thirty or forty 
 years ago in the country lyceums as to 
 which was the greater man, Columbus 
 who discovered this country or Washing- 
 ton who fathered it, did not really get us 
 anywhere. They gave the young budding 
 
8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 orators a chance to get on their legs and 
 try their powers, but the purpose of the 
 discussion was defeated by the difficulty 
 of reducing the various fractions of the 
 total human achievement to a common dey 
 nominator so that they might be com- 
 pared. It is not easy to compare a great 
 military commander with a man who is 
 great in literature; or a great statesman 
 with a great scientist. Yet straight in the 
 face of all of these difficulties I am un- 
 dertaking to name to you the greatest 
 man of the Nineteenth Century and to 
 justify my choice, if I may, at the bar of 
 your own judgment. 
 
 We live in an age of analysis and com- 
 parison. The heavens declared the glory 
 of God to our remote ancestors who knew 
 very little about them except that they 
 were beautiful. In these days we have 
 learned to map out the paths the planets 
 take. We know how to weigh accurately 
 their huge bulk. We can measure the dis- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 9 
 
 tances of those heavenly bodies from us 
 and from each other. By our spectrum 
 analysis we can even determine the very 
 fuel they burn. And because of this more 
 competent knowledge which we possess 
 the heavens declare the glory of God to us 
 yet more effectively. In like manner our 
 appreciation of human excellence is 
 heightened by the application of analysis 
 and comparison to the essential elements 
 in personal greatness. 
 
 In entering upon this discussion I would 
 offer these considerations as furnishing us 
 a valid principle of selection. We may 
 say that a great man is a man who makes 
 some significant period of history different 
 from what it would have been apparently 
 but for his influence. Then when we 
 come to measure the size of that section of 
 history, the value of the interests involved 
 and the permanence of the work accom- 
 plished, we may readily determine the de- 
 gree of his greatness. If in all those three 
 
10 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 regards he stands higher than any other 
 man of his time, he may justly be re- 
 garded as the greatest man of the period. 
 Now we find in the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury a certain historic event which in my 
 judgment was the most significant and 
 influential occurrence of the hundred 
 years. I refer to the Civil War fought 
 out here in our own land in 1861-65. You 
 may measure that war any way you 
 please — by the extent and value of the 
 territory at stake; or by the number of 
 men in the field, exceeding that of any 
 modern war until the recent Great War 
 in Europe; or by the conscientiousness 
 and enlightenment of the opposing hosts 
 — it was a war fought not by paid mer- 
 cenaries, but by citizens who knew why 
 they were there and for what they were 
 fighting; or by the far-reach of the prin- 
 ciples involved in their bearing upon the 
 fate of a great nation threatened with dis- 
 ruption, upon the interest of human free- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN ii 
 
 dom and upon the cause of democracy 
 touching as it does the development of 
 the rank and file of the race — you may 
 measure that war any way you please and 
 I believe you will regard it as the most 
 significant occurrence of the century. 
 
 Now, in bringing the various issues in 
 that war to a successful conclusion — in 
 freeing four millions of our fellow-beings 
 from slavery; in preserving a government 
 which stands perhaps as the nearest ap- 
 proach to a successful democracy on a 
 large scale thus far in history; and in 
 closing the debate upon certain questions 
 which had troubled this Republic for dec- 
 ades and now trouble it no more — in 
 bringing those issues to a conclusion many 
 great men wrought together and the credit 
 for the outcome does not belong solely to 
 any one man of the group. 
 
 It was a gigantic task to bring a free, 
 prosperous and resolute people, intelli- 
 gently and conscientiously divided in their 
 
12 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 political judgment, to submit to the will 
 of the majority as expressed on the field 
 of battle and then to go on together. To 
 go on in what has proved to be not slum- 
 bering hatred nor smoldering rebellion, 
 but in actual, growing, joyous unity — it 
 was a gigantic task! Seward and Chase 
 and Stanton did their appointed work 
 and they did it well. Grant and Sherman 
 and Farragut accomplished their terrible 
 task with thoroughness. Henry Ward 
 Beecher, William Lloyd Garrison and 
 Harriet Beecher Stowe, to each one of 
 these belongs a place of honor! And to 
 a great unnumbered host of plain men 
 and women who fought and thought, who 
 gave and prayed for the Union, to each 
 one of these our gratitude is due! But 
 to one man more than all the rest belongs 
 the highest place in that struggle and I 
 named him that night as the greatest man 
 of the Nineteenth Century, the first mar- 
 tyred President, Abraham Lincoln. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 13 
 
 Now I hope that this choice did not 
 proceed simply from the fact that I am 
 an American myself and love my own 
 country and its people as I could love 
 no other. And I feel that I am a good 
 deal of an American. My family has 
 been here a long time. My ancestors 
 landed at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. 
 They had their trunks all unpacked and 
 their household arrangements all in good 
 running order when those Pilgrim Fathers 
 finally got around in 1620. We were 
 glad to see them when they came. They 
 were good people and were destined to 
 make an important contribution to the life 
 of the Nation. But we were here first. 
 And we have not been moving away 
 nor dying out. I do not know how 
 it may be with other family stocks, 
 but I feel thoroughly sure that when 
 Gabriel blows his trumpet, in every 
 telephone book and city directory from 
 Eastport, Maine, to San Diego, Califor- 
 
14 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 nia, there will still be pages and pages of 
 "Browns." 
 
 I feel, therefore, that because I belong 
 to a large family and to a family which 
 has been here a long time, I am a good 
 deal of an American. But nothing 
 splendidly human is ever foreign to any 
 lover of his race. I have tried to 
 study the work of great men in other 
 lands. 
 
 I hope the choice of Lincoln did not 
 spring simply from the fact that he 
 wrought with certain issues which interest 
 my own mind and heart more than other 
 issues might. I have tried to study the 
 work of great men in other fields of en- 
 deavor. From that excursion into other 
 lands and other lines of effort I came back 
 all the more firmly persuaded that the 
 highest place of honor in the Nineteenth 
 Century belongs to that President of the 
 United States. 
 
 The very title was his in a distinctive 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 15 
 
 way. No man before his time had ever 
 been ''President of the United States" in 
 the sense that Lincoln was, nor has any 
 man been since. ''United States" they 
 were up to i860! "United States" they 
 were in his determined and insistent mind 
 during all those troubled years of '61-5, 
 for he maintained that the Southern States 
 had not gone out of the Union and that 
 they could not by any act of theirs go out. 
 And "United States" they are to-day, 
 thanks to him and to those who wrought 
 with him — "United" as we trust for all 
 time! He was, in a very distinctive way, 
 President of the United States. 
 
 Now, before I enter upon the discussion 
 of what I regard as the four main ele- 
 ments in Lincoln's greatness, it may be 
 profitable to recall some of the difficulties 
 which confronted him at the beginning of 
 his administration. In my judgment no 
 President from the immortal Washington 
 down to Woodrow Wilson has ever been 
 
i6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 confronted by a crisis more grave. Take 
 into consideration these six important 
 facts ! 
 
 1. He found an empty treasury, the 
 public credit sadly impaired by the seces- 
 sion of eleven prosperous States, and he 
 had upon his hands one of the costliest 
 wars of modern times to be fought through 
 and paid for in honest money. 
 
 2. He found himself at the head of an 
 inexperienced party. The Republican 
 Party or the Whig Party had been out of 
 power. The Democratic Party had been 
 in control of the National Government. 
 It is one thing to stand off and criticize 
 and find fault with the manner in which 
 some other party or some other man is 
 doing a certain thing. Almost anyone can 
 criticize the other fellow, whether the per- 
 formance is making a speech, or running 
 a newspaper, or poking the fire. But to 
 get in and do the thing better than the 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 17 
 
 other man was doing it is quite another 
 matter. The Republican Party suddenly 
 found itself taken out of the attitude of 
 opposition and criticism to be placed in 
 the responsible control of the National 
 Government at a great crisis in our his- 
 tory. And it was for the most part with- 
 out experience. 
 
 3. Lincoln found himself supported or 
 burdened, according to one^s point of 
 view, by a set of counselors in his Cab- 
 inet who were all suspicious of his ability. 
 His Secretaries felt at the outset that Lin- 
 coln did not know enough to be President 
 of the United States. They said that he 
 was "a raw western man" who had come 
 East. They insisted that his manners 
 were awkward and that his clothes did not 
 fit him. They maintained that he told 
 too many stories and cracked too many 
 jokes for a man in public life. And they 
 were all profoundly sure at the start that 
 he would be humbly grateful to them if 
 
i8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 they would only tell him what to do. If 
 Lincoln had not been so genuinely great 
 he would have been advised to death in 
 the first year of his administration. 
 
 4. He found the public opinion of 
 Europe on the whole unfriendly to the 
 North. The European bankers were hesi- 
 tating over our bonds and the European 
 governments, many of them, were on the 
 very edge of acknowledging the Southern 
 Confederacy as a sovereign nation. There 
 seemed to be an ill-disguised feeling of 
 satisfaction over what they regarded as 
 "the collapse of the American experiment 
 in popular government." Even in Eng- 
 land, our long-time friend, up to the day 
 when Henry Ward Beecher went abroad 
 to give his great addresses in Manchester 
 and Birmingham, in Liverpool and Lon- 
 don, the general feeling was more friendly 
 to the South than to the North. The Eng- 
 lish aristocracy sympathized with the aris- 
 tocrats of the South. The cotton opera- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 19 
 
 tives in Manchester were angry because 
 the supply of raw cotton had been cut 
 off by our blockading the southern ports. 
 The prevailing temper of Europe was hos- 
 tile to the Union. 
 
 5. He found here at the North a pow- 
 erful, influential section of the people who 
 were thoroughly despondent. They were 
 tired of the debate and the struggle over 
 slavery and states' rights. They said, 'Tf 
 those southern states do not want to stay 
 in the Union, let them take their slaves 
 and go out, rather than fight about it. Let 
 us have peace." The confusion and dis- 
 couragement in the northern mind was a 
 serious obstacle in Lincoln's pathway. 
 
 6. He found a powerful, resolute sec- 
 tion of the Union up in armed revolt 
 against the government which he had 
 sworn to protect and to preserve. 
 
 Now, take those six facts together — 
 the empty treasury, the inexperienced 
 
20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 party, the distrustful cabinet, the un- 
 friendliness in Europe, the despondency 
 in the North, and the armed rebellion at 
 the South — they present a combination of 
 difficulties sufficiently grave to test the 
 title to greatness of any man who might 
 be called upon to meet them. 
 
 Now, with those facts clearly in mind, 
 let me name what I would regard as the 
 four main elements in Lincoln's great- 
 ness. 
 
 First, his combination of lofty idealism 
 with practical sagacity in bringing things 
 to pass. He had his ideals. They hung 
 in his sky as definite and as illuminating 
 as the visions of a seer. The abolition 
 of slavery, the preservation of the Union, 
 the healing of the breach between the 
 North and the South, the welfare of the 
 entire American people! Toward those 
 ideals he steadfastly set his face. But he 
 was always a concrete rather than an ab- 
 stract idealist. He had a way of seeing 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 21 
 
 what ought to be and of seeing how it 
 could be. Then he showed himself able 
 to get in and do it. This combination 
 of lofty idealism which gave him the moral 
 passion of a saint or a reformer, together 
 with the well-seasoned sagacity of a prac- 
 ticed diplomat, made him a statesman of 
 the first order. 
 
 He was a great man and he was a good 
 man. If we were starting out to canonize 
 some of our American Protestant saints 
 I should be in favor of beginning with 
 Abraham Lincoln. But his goodness was 
 always of the homely, useful type. It was 
 not the abstract, doctrinaire, John the 
 Baptist sort of goodness which demands 
 for its exercise that it be taken off into 
 the desert to live on locusts and wild 
 honey without wife or child, without citi- 
 zenship or business connection or any of 
 the normal relationships of life. Like the 
 Son of Man, Abraham Lincoln "came eat- 
 ing and drinking." He came building his 
 
22 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 high ideals into an e very-day order of 
 plain fact. 
 
 He was just as desirous as Emerson 
 ever was of hitching his wagon to a star. 
 His Gettysburg Address and his Second 
 Inaugural, classics they are in political ut- 
 terance, show that he could hitch his 
 wagon nowhere else than to the highest 
 star in sight. But he was always willing 
 to have all four wheels of the wagon on 
 the ground. He was ready to get down 
 and grease the axles so that his own par- 
 ticular wagon-load of effort might run 
 with the least possible friction. He was 
 there encouraging the team by such home- 
 ly words of cheer as made him one of the 
 plainest of men. He was, throughout his 
 illustrious career, a concrete idealist. 
 
 He was accustomed to say to his cab- 
 inet, ^'The question, gentlemen, is not, 
 ^Can anyone imagine anything better than 
 this?^ I have no doubt but that any one 
 of you can. The question before us is, 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 23 
 
 'Can we do anything better at this time?' " 
 The ideal, as he saw it, must be a prac- 
 ticable, a feasible ideal. He was never 
 disposed to sit down and cry for the moon. 
 He wrought in the spirit of his own 
 century's greatest poet. You will remem- 
 ber how Browning puts it: 
 
 "The common problem, yours, mine, 
 
 everyone's. 
 Is not to fancy what were fair in life 
 Provided it could be, but finding first what 
 
 may be 
 Then find how to make that fair, up to 
 
 This quality of genius, not dwelling 
 apart in the isolation of seeing visions and 
 of dreaming dreams, but engaged steadily 
 in the accomplishment of certain useful 
 ends, seems to me to rank Lincoln above 
 all such men as Darwin, Spencer, Emer- 
 son, Goethe. These men were free to go 
 
24 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 into their studies or their laboratories 
 or into the fields to think and observe, to 
 study and to write as they chose. There 
 was no hurry. The ''Origin of Species'^ 
 did not have to be issued by a certain day. 
 The fine chapters in "The Conduct of 
 Life/' or the noblest passages of 'Taust," 
 were not suddenly called out by a hostile, 
 insistent line of bayonets. 
 
 But upon Lincoln during all the years 
 of his public career there rested the pres- 
 sure of the necessity for the immediate 
 accomplishment of certain definite ends. 
 The war must be carried along, with 
 money, millions of it, and with hundreds 
 of thousands of men. The men and the 
 money must be forthcoming without de- 
 lay. The men had to be fed, clothed, 
 armed, transported, and made effective in 
 the field. The public opinion of Europe 
 must either be changed or held back un- 
 til we had settled our difficulties here at 
 home. The public opinion of this coun- 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 25 
 
 try, flickering like a candle in the wind, 
 now blazing up into some promise of use- 
 fulness and now threatening to go out all 
 together, must be fed and sustained and 
 thus made equal to the terrible demands 
 which were being made upon it. 
 
 Now to meet successfully a situation 
 like that would seem to be a harder task 
 than to write a book, or to announce an 
 idea, or to sing a song. And the com- 
 bination of administrative with intellec- 
 tual ability in Lincoln may well serve to 
 give him a higher place in the world's 
 esteem than that held by any of the great 
 men whose names I have mentioned, 
 above. 
 
 I referred in passing to the difficulties 
 confronting him at the beginning of his 
 administration. It is enough to say, in 
 a word, that he met and mastered them 
 all. He did it not by a few shrewd ex- 
 ploits which would put the enemy of our 
 country's peace in a hole, only to come 
 
26 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 out again all the more determined because 
 of that temporary check in his plans. He 
 did it by years of patient, far-seeing 
 statesmanlike effort which laid the foun- 
 dation for converting the enemy of our 
 country's peace into an abiding and an 
 essential friend. 
 
 Before Lincoln died he had the joy of 
 seeing the slaves all freed by his Emanci- 
 pation Proclamation. He saw the Union 
 preserved without the loss of a single 
 state. He saw the armed rebellion brought 
 practically to an end. He saw the great 
 volunteer armies of Grant and Sherman 
 ready to be mustered out and to be re- 
 turned to their homes and to peaceful 
 industry. And he must have known that 
 to this magnificent result he, more than 
 any other one man, had contributed. 
 
 It had told tremendously upon his 
 strength; body, brain and heart had all 
 been taxed to the utmost. If we were to 
 measure his term in the White House, not 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 27 
 
 by the lapse of days, but by the con- 
 sumption of vitaHty, it would be drawn 
 out into a considerable portion of the al- 
 lotted three score years and ten. And I 
 feel confident that I am correct in assert- 
 ing that the assassin's bullet only antici- 
 pated an event which would not have been 
 long postponed when once the reaction 
 from the terrible stress of war times had 
 set in. 
 
 And if Lincoln could have looked ahead 
 and could have foreseen the speedy end 
 of his career, he might have said, as did 
 the prophet of old, ^'It is enough! Now 
 let thy servant depart in peace, for mine 
 eyes have seen the salvation of my people 
 Israel." His great ideals had all become 
 accomplished facts. I would name, there- 
 fore, as the first element in his greatness 
 the combination of lofty idealism with 
 practical sagacityin bringing things to pass. 
 
 The second element I would name 
 
28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 would be his power of comprehending men 
 of extreme views. It was Frederick W. 
 Robertson who used to maintain that the 
 truth, as a rule, does not lie with either 
 extreme. Nor does it lie (as many soft- 
 hearted and soft-headed people like to 
 think) with the golden mean, the half- 
 way position, the compromise which 
 misses the strength of both extremes. The 
 truth, Robertson maintained, lies rather 
 in the recognition of certain deeper un- 
 derlying principles which make possible 
 the strength of both the extremes. 
 
 Now in that quality of insight Abraham 
 Lincoln was a past master. He had come 
 into prominence chiefly by his anti-slavery 
 speeches in the Douglas debates. He had 
 been elected to the Presidency by the 
 votes of tens of thousands of men who 
 knew very little about him, except that 
 he was a man who hated slavery. But 
 the moment he was elected he refused to 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 29 
 
 be regarded as the advance agent or the 
 general manager of the abolition move- 
 ment. He refused to wear the tag of any 
 section or of any party or of any par- 
 ticular school of political opinion. He 
 insisted that now he was President of the 
 whole United States, North and South, 
 loyal and rebellious, bond and free. He 
 was their President and he was there to 
 serve their interests as best he might. 
 
 He was roundly scolded for taking this 
 broad view of the matter by the extrem- 
 ists of both types. Wendell Phillips, a 
 finished Harvard scholar, a polished Bos- 
 ton gentleman, a wonderful orator — in 
 my judgment almost the finest we have 
 produced in this land — but a man sin- 
 gularly defective in good judgment, 
 scolded away at Lincoln in most abusive 
 fashion. He called him "a mere huck- 
 ster in politics." He called him "the 
 slave-hound from Illinois" because in the 
 
30 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 early years of his administration Lincoln 
 allowed fugitive slaves to be returned to 
 their masters in the border states. 
 
 And Horace Greeley, an earnest, warm- 
 hearted, forcible, blundering man up to 
 the day of his death, scolded away at Lin- 
 coln in the columns of the New York 
 Tribune, making that paper a great hin- 
 drance when it could have been a mighty 
 help. The New York Tribune at that 
 time was the political Four Gospels, and 
 Acts, and Epistles all bound into one, for 
 a great many people here at the North. 
 The old farmer out here at the Four Cor- 
 ners did not know exactly what he did 
 think about things until he got his ' Veekly 
 Trybune!' as he called it, and sat down 
 to read what Horace Greeley had to say 
 about it all. 
 
 Lincoln listened to them all and was 
 unmoved by them all. He also had the 
 abolition of slavery a good deal at heart, 
 but he also had a responsibility which 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 31 
 
 those gentleman did not share, and which 
 they were not always able to see. He 
 had the Emancipation Proclamation in his 
 heart a long, long time before his wise 
 head approved its issuance or before his 
 right hand wrote it out in firm lines. He 
 knew that its hour had not yet come and 
 so he calmly waited for the fullness of 
 time. 
 
 Away over at the other extreme in those 
 days were the War Democrats and other 
 men of their way of thinking. They be- 
 lieved in the Union, but they had no 
 money to spend and no blood to spill in 
 freeing slaves. They insisted that Lincoln 
 was saying altogether too much about 
 abolition and was moving altogether too 
 fast in that direction. Their scolding was 
 ofttimes only second to that of the extreme 
 abolitionists like Wendell Phillips and 
 Horace Greeley. 
 
 It is rather trying to human flesh to be 
 censured at one and the same time for 
 
32 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 being "ultra" and '^radical," and for be- 
 ing "lukewarm" and "hesitating." It is 
 as confusing as the conduct of those peo- 
 ple in the New Testament of whom it is 
 said, "We piped unto you and ye did not 
 dance. We wailed unto you and ye did 
 not mourn." It required a good deal of 
 insight in those days to know what kind 
 of music would bring all the loyal people 
 of this country into line. It stands to the 
 undying credit of Abraham Lincoln that 
 he knew. He comprehended men of ex- 
 treme views and in the end was able to 
 draw them together and utilize them by 
 keeping to the front the deeper underlying 
 principles. 
 
 He knew that the underlying principle 
 in that great struggle was the preserva- 
 tion of the Union, the maintenance of the 
 integrity of our country. He was accus- 
 tomed to say, "If I could save the Union 
 by freeing all of the slaves, I would do 
 that. If I could save the Union without 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 33 
 
 freeing any of the slaves, I would do that. 
 If I could save the Union by freeing part 
 of the slaves and leaving the rest alone, I 
 would do that. What I do, I do because 
 I believe it serves the cause of the Union. 
 And what I leave undone, I leave undone 
 because I believe that serves the cause of 
 the Union.'' 
 
 He knew full well that the Union would 
 not "continue to exist half -slave and half- 
 free." But he knew also that the only 
 principle upon which he could draw to- 
 gether those men of extreme views was the 
 preservation of the Union, the mainte- 
 nance of the integrity of our common 
 country. 
 
 There are people in every community 
 who can see the flies on a barn door with- 
 out ever seeing the barn door. Certain 
 lively, buzzing details out in the fore- 
 ground take up their entire attention and 
 they miss the main fact. Lincoln could 
 always see the barn door! He could see 
 
34 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the main fact in any situation! He could 
 recognize the deeper underlying principles 
 which were at stake and when he saw 
 them he anchored to them. 
 
 The wisdom of his course is perfectly 
 apparent to us now. It began to be ap- 
 parent in the later years of the Civil War. 
 In the Republican Convention of 1864, 
 which renominated Lincoln, they very 
 shrewdly put in as temporary Chairman, 
 Mr. Robert C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky. 
 He was a Southerner. He was an orator 
 of the old school. He was an aristocrat 
 and his social affihations were almost en- 
 tirely with the slaveholders. But he be- 
 lieved in the Union and because of that 
 faith he was there at that Convention. 
 
 On taking the Chair he said, "Gentle- 
 men of the Convention, as a Whig Party, 
 or a Republican Party, or an Abolition 
 Party, or an American Party, I would not 
 go with you one step. But as a Union 
 Party, I will go with you, if need be, to 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 35 
 
 the ends of the earth or to the gates of 
 death." And he represented a very con- 
 siderable element in this country at that 
 time who were ready to go all lengths in 
 the preservation of the Union. 
 
 Lincoln labored steadily to keep before 
 the minds of the people the idea that the 
 Southern States had not in any sense sev- 
 ered their connection with the Union. 
 General McClellan reported to him on one 
 occasion that in blocking the way so that 
 the army of Northern Virginia could not 
 make any aggressive effort at that time 
 he had, ''made safe Pennsylvania and 
 Maryland and all our soil.'^ General 
 Meade, after the victory at Gettysburg, 
 delayed action and allowed Lee to get 
 back safely across the Potomac. He then 
 telegraphed to the President that at least 
 "he had driven the invader from our soil." 
 
 "Our soil ! " exclaimed Lincoln. "When 
 will our Generals ever get that idea out of 
 their heads! The whole country is our 
 
36 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 soiL" His great main interest was in keep- 
 ing to the front that fundamental prin- 
 ciple in the struggle which was being made 
 to preserve the integrity of the Nation. 
 
 There was another political convention 
 held that same year in Cleveland, Ohio. 
 It was made up of those who desired to 
 nominate some northern man who would 
 be able to defeat Lincoln at the polls. It 
 was a mixed assemblage. The John C. 
 Fremont men were all there. The Peace- 
 at-any-price Party was well represented. 
 The German radicals from St. Louis, un- 
 der the leadership of B. Gratz Brown, 
 were on hand. The Convention made a 
 great deal of noise and the Democratic 
 papers of the time affected to treat it with 
 the utmost seriousness and dignity. 
 
 The delegates had a great deal to say 
 about ''the tyrant Lincoln. '^ They de- 
 nounced him for his unconstitutional acts. 
 They adopted a good many strenuous 
 resolutions. During the Convention this 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 37 
 
 resolution was introduced, — "Resolved, 
 That we insist upon putting down the Re- 
 bellion at once." One pious delegate 
 moved to amend it by inserting these 
 words, "with God's assistance." This, 
 however, was voted down with boisterous 
 demonstrations of disapproval. They 
 wanted no help from any quarter whatso- 
 ever. Then, after having denounced Lin- 
 coln repeatedly for being unconstitutional, 
 they proceeded to nominate for President 
 John C. Fremont and for Vice-President 
 a man who came from the same state, ap- 
 parently forgetting that the Constitution 
 of the United States expressly prohibits 
 the electors of any state from casting their 
 votes for a President and a Vice-Presi- 
 dent, both of whom shall come from the 
 same state as themselves. Then having 
 done this unconstitutional thing they ad- 
 journed. 
 
 The people saw at once the futility of it 
 all. Fremoiit had the good sense to with- 
 
38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 draw his name. And very speedily the 
 whole force of the opposition there ex- 
 pressed faded out. But if Lincoln had 
 allowed himself to be side-tracked by 
 some minor issue; if he had anchored to 
 anything less than the great main fact in 
 that heart-breaking struggle, his first four 
 years in the White House might have re- 
 sulted in failure. He might not have been 
 renominated or reelected in 1864. And 
 the whole history of our country for the 
 last fifty years might have been a story 
 of tragic disappointment. 
 
 His political sagacity had in it the qual- 
 ity of the X-ray. He could see all the 
 way in and all the way through, and all 
 the way down. Deep underneath the ruf- 
 fling and the millinery which rested upon 
 the surface of society in those days; deep 
 within the warm throbbing flesh of popu- 
 lar feeling, he saw the solid backbone, the 
 skeleton of political principle which alone 
 would hold the Republic upright. And 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 39 
 
 with that he cast in his lot. I would name, 
 therefore, as the second element in his 
 greatness his power of comprehending and 
 in the end of utilizing men of extreme 
 views by keeping to the front the deeper 
 underlying principles. 
 
 The third element I would name would 
 be his ability to keep close to the hearts 
 of the people in sympathetic fashion and 
 yet lead them steadily in those lines of ac- 
 tion which he desired them to take. It 
 was James Russell Lowell, in his essay on 
 Lincoln, who said that there was "a cer- 
 tain tone of familiar dignity, a kind of 
 fireside plainness" about the man not only 
 in his conversation and in his speeches but 
 even in his state papers. He did not have 
 the air of a man who was laying down the 
 law to the country. He showed, rather, 
 the attitude of one who was taking the 
 whole country into his confidence and 
 talking matters over with it as one neigh- 
 
40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 bor might discuss the questions of the day 
 over the back fence with his neighbor. 
 His word was ever ''Come, now, let us 
 reason together about this matter." 
 
 He respected the people too much to 
 bully them. He respected the people too 
 much to flatter them. There was in him 
 nothing of the demagogue. He reasoned 
 with them in serious fashion and in con- 
 fident expectation that the same considera- 
 tions which had persuaded his mind would 
 persuade theirs. In that way he gathered 
 to himself their consent and approval. 
 On the day that he died I suppose he was 
 the most absolute ruler in Christendom. 
 Never a Czar of all the Russias had such 
 power over his people as Abraham Lin- 
 coln had over the loyal people of this 
 land. 
 
 Now that is leadership of the highest 
 type. The finest quality of leadership, 
 whether it be in ward politics, or in a 
 Woman's Club, or in a baseball nine, is 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 41 
 
 not the leadership which goes about fussy 
 and bossy insisting constantly on having 
 its own way. It is the leadership which 
 offers its suggestions and policies so quiet- 
 ly, unobtrusively, and winsomely that the 
 people accept them and act upon them 
 without realizing that they are being led. 
 They see the whole matter so clearly that 
 they feel as if they were merely following 
 the wise dictates of their own judgment. 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte was a great leader 
 of men, but he depended for his power of 
 leadership upon his personal magnetism, 
 upon the brute strength of his own dom- 
 inant will, and upon a rapid succession of 
 victories. When the victories ceased, his 
 power of leadership was gone. Lincoln 
 knew that in a democracy public senti- 
 ment would rule. He knew also that pub- 
 lic sentiment to be reliable must be in- 
 formed and persuaded. He, therefore, 
 proceeded in that cautious, sure-footed 
 way which was characteristic of him. He 
 
42 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was like a pillar of cloud by day and of 
 fire by night. He was never in such a 
 hurry as to run off and get out of sight 
 of his Israelites. He did not, on the other 
 hand, allow them to lag back. He kept 
 himself in sympathetic relations with the 
 people, but kept them moving steadily 
 toward the goal he had in view. 
 
 The influence of this habit of mind had 
 even penetrated the South. The fact that 
 Lincoln was not the agent of any par- 
 ticular party or section, but the President 
 of the whole United States, had come to 
 be felt all over the land. A certain appre- 
 ciation of his justice, fairness, wisdom and 
 mercy had begun to weaken the morale of 
 General Lee's army long before it reached 
 Appomattox. 
 
 In the Fall of 1864 the southern sol- 
 diers in the trenches around Richmond 
 and Petersburg heard cheering over in the 
 northern lines. They knew what the 
 Union soldiers were cheering about — they 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 43 
 
 knew that they were cheering over the re- 
 election of Abraham Lincoln. And they 
 knew also that this meant the speedy 
 downfall of the Confederacy. The lead- 
 ers were still defiant but the common peo- 
 ple were making ready to give up the un- 
 profitable struggle. Their mood was re- 
 flected in the price of Confederate money. 
 During the war it had taken thirty-five 
 dollars of Confederate paper to purchase 
 a dollar in gold. After the reelection of 
 Lincoln it took fifty, then sixty, then sev- 
 enty, and then nobody wanted it. This 
 registered the sober judgment of the busi- 
 ness men of the South as to the effect of 
 the reelection of Lincoln upon the fate of 
 the Confederacy. 
 
 His leadership was much less showy 
 and dramatic than the movements of Na- 
 poleon, but wherever Lincoln went he took 
 the country with him. When he died the 
 soul of the movement to which he had 
 given his life went marching on. It had 
 
44 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 already become incarnate in that whole 
 body of political sentiment and conviction 
 which now ruled the North. 
 
 His successful maintenance of this sym- 
 pathetic touch with the people was due, 
 in large measure, to these three qualities: 
 His integrity, high and holy enough for 
 all its tasks, yet sufficiently simple to walk 
 upon the ground! His common sense! 
 We call it ^'common," I do not know why; 
 it is anything but common. I mean the 
 plain straightforward way of looking at 
 things and of saying things. When Lin- 
 coln talked, the people knew exactly what 
 he was driving at. They did not have to 
 have an English translation of it. He 
 never used those long words which would 
 not go into a suitcase without being folded 
 twice. He used the short, terse, expres- 
 sive words of the King James Bible and 
 of Shakespeare, the two volumes which he 
 read most. He was a man of great com- 
 mon sense. And in the third place, his 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 45 
 
 sense of humor, of which he had a 
 very abundant store! It sometimes be- 
 came a source of irritation to serious- 
 minded men like Seward and Stanton in 
 the stress of war times. It was one of the 
 ways in which Lincoln sought a momen- 
 tary relief from the severe mental strain 
 of his high office. 
 
 There is something about the psy- 
 chology of an average American which 
 warms up to a combination like that. 
 Give a man integrity, common sense, and 
 a sense of humor, and he has in him the 
 main essentials necessary for leadership. 
 
 This combination enabled Lincoln to 
 put things in a terse, meaty, sententious 
 way which the common people would hear 
 gladly and carry away readily in their 
 minds. I will venture to recall a few strik- 
 ing instances of this quality of mind. 
 
 During the years preceding the Civil 
 War much was said about "the natural 
 inferiority of the colored race." The peo- 
 
46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 pie were also sensitive about the idea of 
 "negro equality'' and the possibility of 
 intermarriage between the negroes and 
 the whites. A very common way to chal- 
 lenge the position of an abolitionist in 
 New England was to say to him, ''How 
 would you like to have a negro woman for 
 your wife? How would you like to have 
 a negro marry your daughter?" In the 
 famous Illinois debates Stephen A. Doug- 
 las had harped upon the natural and per- 
 manent inferiority of the colored race. 
 
 At one of their meetings Lincoln replied 
 to these arguments against abolition in 
 these words: ''I agree with my friend 
 Judge Douglas that the negro is not in all 
 respects my equal — certainly not in color 
 and perhaps not at this time in intellec- 
 tual or in moral endowment. But in his 
 right to eat the bread which his own 
 right hand earns without asking the leave 
 of any other man, he is my equal and the 
 equal of Judge Douglas and the equal of 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 47 
 
 every living man. As to intermarriage, 
 I do not understand that because I do not 
 want a negro woman for a slave, I must 
 necessarily want her for a wife. My un- 
 derstanding is that I can just let her alone. 
 And I have no fears that I or that any of 
 my friends would marry negro women 
 even though there was no law to prevent 
 it. But as Judge Douglas and his friends 
 seem to have apprehensions that they 
 might, I give him my word that I will 
 stand to the last by the law of the State 
 of IlHnois which forbids the marriage of 
 blacks and whites." These words were 
 widely quoted in the North and after that 
 we did not hear so much about the nat- 
 ural inferiority of the colored race, or 
 about the possible social consequences of 
 abolition. 
 
 The same quality of mind appeared in 
 his treatment of the Mason and Slidell 
 Affair. You will remember that Mason 
 and SHdell, two Southern gentlemen on 
 
48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 their way to Europe, were forcibly taken 
 from the British ship Trent by one of 
 our northern cruisers. Great Britain in- 
 sisted that her rights as a neutral had been 
 invaded and demanded that the men 
 should be given up. This was done and 
 it was altogether right. But the people 
 were sensitive and many felt that Great 
 Britain had taken advantage of our un- 
 happy civil strife to inflict upon this coun- 
 try an open insult. 
 
 When Lincoln came to a certain 
 Cabinet meeting he found his Secretaries 
 angrily discussing the incident. They 
 were in a mood to make an immediate de- 
 mand upon Great Britain for reparation 
 or at least for an apology. If this should 
 not be forthcoming, they insisted that war 
 should be declared upon England at once. 
 Lincoln listened to the discussion for a 
 time and then remarked quietly, ^'Gentle- 
 men, doesn't it seem to you that one war 
 at a time is enough?'' One war at a time! 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 49 
 
 This was the headline in all the morning 
 papers at the North next day and it did 
 more to cool the country off and to bring 
 it to its senses than a state document as 
 long as the book of Jeremiah would have 
 done. The people decided that "one war 
 at a time" was quite enough — and that 
 was the last of that incident. 
 
 The President used great tact through- 
 out in keeping the border states, Mary- 
 land, Kentucky, and Missouri, in the 
 Union. Their sympathies, in large part, 
 were with the South, but it was much 
 easier to bring the struggle to a success- 
 ful conclusion with those three states in 
 the Union than it would have been had 
 they joined the Confederacy. Now and 
 then their slaves ran off and the question 
 of returning or of not returning fugitive 
 slaves to their masters held tremendous 
 possibilities of trouble. Lincoln once re- 
 plied to an angry inquiry, touching some 
 fugitive slaves who had escaped across the 
 
50 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 border, in these homely words: ''You peo- 
 ple are slowly finding out that two-legged 
 property is a very poor sort of property 
 to own." 
 
 In the early days of the war the in- 
 activity of General McClellan became a 
 thorn in the flesh for all zealous Northern- 
 ers. He was in command of the Army 
 of the Potomac. He was a splendid drill 
 master, a fine disciplinarian. He took 
 good care of his men and improved the 
 morale of the army from month to month. 
 But he was forever calling for "more 
 troops" and was not doing anything ag- 
 gressive. "All quiet on the Potomac" — 
 this was the report Which came back 
 and kept on coming back, until the peo- 
 ple were thoroughly sick of it. It was not 
 "quiet on the Potomac" which they de- 
 sired. They had sent their husbands and 
 their sons, their brothers and their lovers 
 to the front and they desired to hear about 
 some decisive action against the army of 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 51 
 
 General Robert E. Lee in northern Vir- 
 ginia. 
 
 The patience of Lincoln was finally ex- 
 hausted — and I suppose since the time 
 of Job he might be written down as the 
 most patient man in history. He sent 
 out in very informal fashion this mes- 
 sage to General McClellan: ''If General 
 McClellan is not going to use the Army 
 of the Potomac for a while, I would like 
 to borrow it for a day or two and see 
 what I could do with it." This was not 
 exactly a plan of campaign or an official 
 order from the Commander-in-chief of the 
 Northern Forces, but it was a very sug- 
 gestive message, very stimulating. And 
 from that time on General McClellan 
 found it in his heart to do something more 
 aggressive against the army of Lee. 
 
 I will only relate one more — I have 
 never seen this story in print. I would 
 not undertake to say that it has not ap- 
 peared in some form, because so many 
 
52 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Lincoln stories are printed every year 
 during the month of February in the 
 newspapers and in the magazines of the 
 country. I have read nearly all of the 
 "Lives of Lincoln" which have appeared 
 in book form and I have never seen this 
 story published. 
 
 It was my good fortune once to make 
 a long sea- voyage on the same vessel with 
 Mr. Frederick W. Seward. He was the 
 son. of William H. Seward, our Secretary 
 of State during the Civil War. He was 
 acting Secretary of State during his fa- 
 ther's illness. One day in the Captain's 
 room Mr. Frederick Seward related to a 
 small group of us who had become ac- 
 quainted with him a number of interesting 
 stories about the closing months of Lin- 
 coln's administration. 
 
 There was a certain measure in which 
 the President believed strongly. He 
 brought it one afternoon into a Cabinet 
 meeting. He found that his Secretaries, 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 53 
 
 to the last man, were all strongly op- 
 posed to it. He spent considerable time 
 explaining it and seeking to bring them to 
 his way of thinking, but apparently with- 
 out much effect. The time came, how- 
 ever, when a vote must be taken as other 
 business had to be transacted. Lincoln 
 put the motion: ^'All those in favor of this 
 measure will say, Aye." The Secretaries 
 sat there as silent and as well-behaved 
 as a company of nuns at Vespers. ''All 
 those who are opposed will say, No." 
 Every man instantly voted a stout, loud, 
 "No." There came a look of disappoint- 
 ment in the President's face and then a 
 twinkle in his eye. After a significant 
 pause he remarked, ''The Ayes seem, to 
 have it. The motion is carried." 
 
 The very audacity of the man! The 
 undaunted strength of his own conviction 
 awed them rather than offended them. 
 They looked at him, leaned back in their 
 chairs and laughed and allowed the mo- 
 
54 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 tion to be put down in the minutes as hav- 
 ing been '^carried." It proved to be a 
 wise measure and before the month had 
 passed it won the hearty support of e very- 
 man in the Cabinet. But I suppose Abra- 
 ham Lincoln was the only man on earth 
 who could have gotten that measure 
 through that Cabinet that afternoon as 
 having been carried. 
 
 He knew what was in man and needed 
 not that others should tell him. He knew 
 where the cords of the human heart are 
 and how he could play upon them to pro- 
 duce the music he desired to hear. He 
 knew how to phrase a statement in such 
 a way as to make it carry. I suppose 
 outside of the Scriptures and Shakespeare 
 no writer or speaker has ever been so 
 widely quoted here in the United States 
 as Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 As a leader of men he moved slowly, 
 feeling his way at times rather than rush- 
 ing ahead in pellmell fashion after the 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 55 
 
 manner of ill-advised reformers. He kept 
 ahead of the people, but not too far ahead. 
 His method at this point has been finely 
 indicated by Ralph Waldo Emerson: 
 
 "Here was place for no fair weather 
 sailor — the new pilot was called to the 
 helm in a tornado. In four stormy years 
 his endurance, his fertility of resource, 
 his magnanimity were sorely tried and 
 never found wanting. By his courage, his 
 justice, his even temper, his fertile coun- 
 sel, his humanity, he stood a heroic figure 
 in the center of a heroic epoch. He is the 
 true history of the American people in his 
 time. Step ^by step he walked before 
 them, slow with their slowness, quicken- 
 ing his march by theirs, the true represen- 
 tative of this continent, an entirely public 
 man, the father of his country, the pulse 
 of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, 
 the thought of their minds articulated by 
 his tongue." 
 
56 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 It requires study and reflection to ap- 
 preciate adequately the true value of that 
 type of leadership. History often ap- 
 pears simple and easy to those who read 
 it from some safe distance. We can see 
 exactly what the great men ought to have 
 done at every juncture and we can draw 
 the appropriate moral. I fancy, however, 
 that to the men who were making that his- 
 tory the issues were not always so clear. 
 For them it was not like steering one^s 
 boat in broad daylight through a well- 
 charted stream. 
 
 We can turn back to-day and read the 
 history of the Civil War with great peace 
 of mind. Even in the darkest days we 
 know that Appomattox, reconstruction 
 and a reunited country are just ahead. 
 We can come out into the open at any 
 time by simply turning over a handful of 
 leaves. But to Abraham Lincoln, who 
 did not know of a surety that Appomattox 
 and a reunited country were on the way, 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 57 
 
 the making of all that history a day at a 
 time, an hour at a time, an act at a time, 
 and the acceptance of the full responsi- 
 bility for his course, was quite another 
 matter. I name, therefore, as the third 
 element in his greatness, his power of 
 holding himself close to the hearts of the 
 people, whom he trusted and served, 
 and of guiding them steadily in those 
 lines of action which he desired them to 
 take. 
 
 The final element in his greatness which 
 I would name was his political unselfish- 
 ness and moral integrity. He was both 
 great and good. The main issues with 
 him were the preservation of the Union, 
 the abolition of slavery, the welfare of the 
 whole American people, rather than the 
 success or the fame or the political ad- 
 vancement of Abraham Lincoln. He de- 
 sired not that he might save the country 
 but that the country might be saved, let 
 
58 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the credit for the achievement go where 
 it would. 
 
 He felt the full sense of his responsibil- 
 ity in that tenure of office. The South 
 had said in i860, ^'The election of Lincoln 
 means secession." When Lincoln became 
 President the Southern States, according 
 to their threat, began to pass their Acts 
 of Secession. Lincoln must have asked 
 himself: ''Am I to end the line of Presi- 
 dents of the United States? If so, what 
 will be the verdict of history upon me? 
 Or, on the other hand, am I to be that 
 pivotal man upon whose wisdom and 
 strength may turn the possibility of such 
 a Union as we have never enjoyed to this 
 hour?" It was enough to make any man 
 self-conscious and to fill him with an un- 
 due sense of his own importance. 
 
 It was a time of political selfishness. 
 Even the gravity of the situation did not 
 shame the petty ambitions of smaller men. 
 When we take up the account of some of 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 59 
 
 the military heartburnings and squabbles 
 of that day they make sorry reading for 
 a patriot. There were men who seemed 
 to be thinking more about the amount 
 of gold on their shoulder straps than of 
 the service they might render in the field, 
 or the victories they might win for the 
 flag. It is a mood which has not entirely 
 passed. It only required two hours to 
 fight the Battle of Santiago de Cuba in our 
 Spanish War, but it took more than two 
 years to settle the question as to whom 
 the credit should be given, to Sampson 
 or Schley. And the question has not been 
 settled yet to everybody's satisfaction. 
 
 It was not only in military and in naval 
 life, but in political action as well, that 
 men sometimes betrayed the quality of sel- 
 fishness. Seward, Chase, Stanton, Gideon 
 Welles, and almost every other man of the 
 period seemed at times to have his own 
 little ax to grind whenever the public 
 grindstone was not otherwise engaged — 
 
6o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 and sometimes, alas, when it was. Among 
 them all Lincoln bore himself steadily in 
 the spirit of absolute disinterestedness. 
 
 He was a man of great simplicity and 
 humility of mind. When some Secretary 
 would resign in a fit of resentment, Lin- 
 coln would take the letter, put on his hat 
 and go down to the Secretary's home. 
 He would say to him in friendly fashion: 
 "The public interest does not admit of my 
 accepting your resignation at this time. I 
 have come to beg you to retain your port- 
 folio." 
 
 When I think of this quality of his 
 character I am always reminded of a 
 certain story. It is a story which I enjoy 
 all the more because it was told originally 
 by a brother minister whose face was as 
 black as my Sunday coat. I refer to the 
 Rev. John Jasper, who for many years 
 was pastor of a large colored Baptist 
 Church in the city of Richmond, Vir- 
 ginia. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 6i 
 
 John Jasper had not enjoyed many edu- 
 cational advantages in his early life, but 
 he was a shrewd negro. He saw that the 
 colored men in Richmond were being used 
 by the designing politicians in their own 
 interests. Before the election the candi- 
 dates for office would go about addressing 
 their '^colored constituents" and making 
 all manner of promises as to what would 
 be done for the negro race if only these 
 particular gentlemen were chosen to office. 
 But when they were once safely elected 
 not one of them could see a colored man 
 across the street. 
 
 On the Sunday night before the city 
 election, Mr. Jasper preached a sermon 
 on the political outlook and in the course 
 of that sermon he told this story: 
 
 "Brethren, the other night I had a 
 dream. I dreamed that I was dead. I 
 went to heaven, but I found it a long way 
 from Richmond, Virginia, to heaven. I 
 toiled along through the brush and the 
 
62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 briers and over the rocks until at last, 
 through much tribulation, I reached the 
 Gate of Heaven. 
 
 ^'I knocked and St. Peter said, 'Who's 
 theah?' 
 
 '' 'The Rev. John Jasper, Richmond, 
 Virginia.' 
 
 '' 'Is you a-horseback or a- foot?' 
 
 " 'I'se a-foot, Sah.' 
 
 " 'Then you cahn't come in heah — no 
 man can come in heah except he's a'horse- 
 back.' " 
 
 Mr. Jasper said that he felt profoundly 
 disappointed. He had been striving to 
 live a consistent, Christian life for many 
 years. He had been preaching the Gospel 
 of his blessed Lord with such ability as he 
 possessed and now to be told that he could 
 not be admitted to heaven because he had 
 come on foot seemed harsh. He believed, 
 however, in the perseverance of the saints 
 and he started back to earth to get a 
 horse that he might come up properly. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 63 
 
 Again he toiled along through the brush 
 and the briers and over the rocks until, 
 about half way down to the earth, he met 
 General Mahone. 
 
 "Why, Gineral," he said, "is you dead, 
 too? Whar you gwine?" 
 
 The General informed him that he was 
 on the way to heaven. Then John Jasper 
 explained that he would not be admitted 
 because he was on foot. The two men 
 stood there on the path discussing the 
 matter until presently General Mahone 
 said: "Now John, I'll tell you what we 
 will do. You get down on your hands 
 and knees and I'll get on your back. Then 
 I'll ride you up to the Gate of Heaven. 
 When St. Peter asks me if I am on horse- 
 back or on foot, I'll tell him I am on 
 horseback. Then I'll ride you in and 
 there we'll be." 
 
 This seemed like an admirable arrange- 
 ment, and John Jasper, according to his 
 dream, meekly got down on his hands and 
 
64 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 knees and took General Mahone on his 
 back. Then once more he toiled along 
 through the brush and the briers and over 
 the rocks until again he was at the Gate 
 of Heaven. 
 
 General Mahone knocked and St. Peter 
 said: "Who's there?" 
 
 "General Mahone, Richmond, Vir- 
 ginia." 
 
 "Is you a-horseback or a-foot?" 
 
 "I'se a-horseback, Sir." 
 
 "All right, General," replied St. Peter, 
 "hitch your horse outside and walk right 
 in." 
 
 I do not need to make the application 
 as John Jasper made it that night to his 
 colored congregation. I tell the story as 
 illustrating a quality which I fear has not 
 entirely disappeared from some of our 
 present-day politicians. There are still 
 men in every community who like to have 
 the public get down on all fours that these 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 65 
 
 aspirants for office may ride them for their 
 own advantage. 
 
 I tell this story as illustrating a quality 
 of which not one shred can be found in 
 the make-up of Abraham Lincoln. He 
 had no desire that the American people 
 should get down on all fours that he might 
 ride them for his own advantage. He 
 desired rather than he might take upon 
 himself the form of a servant and stoop 
 down in patient fashion to minister to 
 their welfare. He lived in the spirit of 
 that Book which John Hay, his Secretary, 
 tells us lay always on his desk — a book 
 in which he was accustomed to read every 
 day. The Book says: ''He that saveth his 
 life shall lose it. But he that loseth his 
 Hfe for my sake shall find it." Lincoln 
 found himself; he found his place in the 
 hearts of his countrymen; and he found 
 his secure niche in the Temple of Fame 
 because he lived and died to serve. He 
 
66 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was a man of moral integrity and of sub- 
 lime unselfishness. 
 
 How warm were his sympathies with 
 the suffering and how delicately he could 
 phrase them upon occasion! Read this 
 letter written to Mrs. Byxbee, the mother 
 of the five sons who had given their lives 
 to the cause of the Union: 
 
 "I have been shown in the files of the 
 War Department a statement that you 
 are the mother of five sons who have died 
 gloriously on the field of battle. I feel 
 how weak and fruitless must be any words 
 of mine which should attempt to beguile 
 you from your grief for a loss so over- 
 whelming. But I cannot refrain from ten- 
 dering to you the consolation which may 
 be found in the thanks of the Republic 
 they died to save. I pray that our Heav- 
 enly Father may assuage the anguish of 
 your bereavement and leave you only the 
 cherished memory of the loved and the 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 67 
 
 lost, and the solemn pride that must be 
 yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice 
 upon the altar of freedom." 
 
 How deeply religious the man was in 
 all the essential attitudes of his spirit! 
 His closing words in the Second Inaugural 
 might, in their sweep and finish, in their 
 moral tone and their spiritual insight, 
 have come from one of the greatest of 
 the old Hebrew prophets. 
 
 'Tondly do we hope, fervently do we 
 pray, that this mighty scourge of war may 
 speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that 
 it continue until all the wealth piled by 
 the bondsmen's two hundred and fifty 
 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, 
 and until every drop of blood drawn with 
 the lash shall be paid with another drawn 
 by the sword, as was said three thousand 
 years ago, so still it must be said, 'the 
 judgments of the Lord are true and righte- 
 ous altogether.' 
 
68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ^With malice toward none, with charity 
 for all, with firmness in the right as God 
 gives us to see the right — let us strive on 
 to finish the work we are in; to bind up 
 the nation's wounds; to care for him who 
 shall have borne the battle and for his 
 widow and his orphan; to do all which 
 may achieve and cherish a just and lasting 
 peace among ourselves, and with all i na- 
 tions." 
 
 In discussing these elements of Lin- 
 coln's greatness I have not paused at each 
 point to make comparison between him 
 and the other great men of that period. 
 He would easily bear comparison with the 
 greatest men of the century. Napoleon 
 was a great man and a large part of his 
 life came in the Nineteenth Century. But 
 the growing verdict upon him is that he 
 was selfish, cruel, and in his domestic re- 
 lations absolutely heartless. Lincoln was 
 as 1 tender-hearted as a woman. Goethe 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 69 
 
 was a great writer, — I believe the greatest 
 writer of the Nineteenth Century, — but 
 his private life was not clean. His warm- 
 est admirers are compelled to » apologize 
 for certain phases of his conduct and char- 
 acter. Lincoln's life was clean — the 
 American people will never have to blush 
 for Abraham Lincoln. Darwin and Spen- 
 cer were great men, but great chiefly be- 
 cause of their association with a certain 
 idea, the idea of organic evolution which 
 was about to be announced by another 
 investigator, Wallace. The greatness lay 
 in the idea rather than in the personali- 
 ties of these two men. Somehow Lincoln 
 combined the intellectual, .the administra- 
 tive, and the moral in such a degree that 
 nowhere in the Nineteenth Century do I 
 find any other man so truly great. 
 
 His combination of lofty idealism with 
 practical sagacity in bringing things to 
 pass; his ability to comprehend and in 
 the end to utilize men of extreme views 
 
70 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 by keeping to the front the deeper under- 
 lying principles and the main issues; his 
 power of holding himself close to the 
 hearts of the people in sympathetic fash- 
 ion and yet of guiding them steadily and 
 wisely in those lines of action he desired 
 them to take; his political unselfishness 
 and moral integrity — he invested these 
 fine qualities in a momentous period of 
 our nation's history and in the light of 
 what he was and of what he did I am led 
 to ascribe to him more of personal great- 
 ness and of abiding usefulness than be- 
 longs to any other man of the Nineteenth 
 Century. 
 
 In this discussion I have tried to free 
 my mind altogether from any partisan 
 feeling or sectional prejudice or personal 
 bias. I ought to be able to do this very 
 readily. I come from the other side of 
 Mason and Dixon's line — I was born in 
 the old state of Virginia. My father be-* 
 lieved in the Union, but his father, my 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 71 
 
 grandfather, sympathized fully with the 
 slaveholders and believed in the principles 
 of the Confederacy as long as he lived. 
 Some of my earliest recollections as a 
 child are of seeing that aged grandfather 
 as he sat reading Pollard's ''Lost Cause," 
 one of the favorite Southern histories of 
 the Confederacy in that day. I have seen 
 the tears stream down his cheeks over 
 what had been to him the greatest disap- 
 pointment of his life, the failure of the 
 Southern Confederacy. I remember how 
 there hung in his bedroom up to the day 
 of his death that picture which is so well 
 known throughout the South, the picture 
 of General Robert E. Lee at the grave of 
 "Stonewall" Jackson. 
 
 It was into that family and into the 
 midst of those sentiments and traditions 
 that I was born. In the family gather- 
 ings during my childhood I heard the 
 events of recent history discussed froni 
 a point of view far removed from that 
 
72 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 held by anyone who may read this book. 
 But when I became old enough to read 
 history for myself and to think and to 
 compare, I came gradually to believe that 
 the greatest man in the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury, and one of the greatest men in all 
 the centuries, was that same Abraham 
 Lincoln who defeated the desires of my 
 Southern ancestors and kept all our stars 
 together in one common field of blue. 
 
 The great humanity of the man! How 
 it has touched the heart of the whole 
 world. North, South, East, and West! I 
 have given this address in Tennessee, 
 meeting with the same response there that 
 I have enjoyed in Massachusetts, in Iowa, 
 or in California. The great humanity of 
 the man had begun to touch the heart of 
 the whole world at the time of his death. 
 In those strange sad days of April, 1865, 
 wherever men had learned to read, the 
 feeling was that the human race had lost a 
 friend. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 73 
 
 Queen Victoria, departing from the 
 stately etiquette of her English Court, 
 wrote out with her own right hand a mes- 
 sage of condolence to Mrs. Lincoln: ^'As 
 a widow to a widow, I write," she said, 
 thinking of her own bereavement in the 
 death of the good Prince Albert. This 
 was the feeling at one end of the social 
 scale. And away down at the other end 
 there grew up among some of the sim- 
 ple, untutored, superstitious people who 
 lived in a certain community not far from 
 Springfield, Illinois, this tradition which 
 persisted for decades — they said that the 
 brown thrushes in the hedges out there 
 did not sing for a whole year after Lin- 
 coln was shot. The great humanity of the 
 man was touching the heart of the whole 
 world. 
 
 Now in closing may I suggest a certain 
 parallel! I do it with the utmost rever- 
 ence, and I trust, without the slightest 
 offense to the religious sentiments of any- 
 
74 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 one who may read these lines. I am not 
 instituting a comparison, but I would sug- 
 gest a certain parallel between the life of 
 the greatest man of the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury and the life of the Greatest of all 
 the Centuries, the Son of Man. 
 
 Both were of humble birth. God makes 
 his great ones from the dust of the ground, 
 breathing into their nostrils the breath of 
 his own mighty life as they become living 
 souls. 
 
 Lincoln's birthplace was a log cabin 
 and Jesus was born in the manger of a 
 stable. 
 
 Lincoln's father was a carpenter by 
 trade and Jesus is referred to in the Gos- 
 pels as ''the son of the carpenter." 
 
 The words which Jesus used in his 
 opening address there in the synagogue 
 at Nazareth might have been incorporated 
 bodily into Lincoln's First Inaugural. 
 "The spirit of the Lord is upon me be- 
 cause He has anointed me to preach good 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 75 
 
 tidings to the poor. He has sent me to 
 bind up the broken-hearted, to preach de- 
 liverance to the captives, and to set at 
 liberty them that are bruised." 
 
 Both Lincoln and Jesus were lovers and 
 users of the story, the parable, the homely 
 saying which the common people would 
 hear gladly and readily carry away in 
 their minds. 
 
 Both Lincoln and Jesus were hindered 
 in their work by the moral extremists and 
 bigots on the one hand and by the moral 
 dullards and slow of heart to believe the 
 good things God had in store for the peo- 
 ple, on the other. 
 
 Of Lincoln's personal appearance it 
 might have been said as it was said of 
 the promised Messiah: ^'There is no form 
 nor comeliness in him that we should de- 
 sire him." 
 
 The characteristic gravity of Lincoln's 
 face and the sadness which sat upon him 
 almost overpoweringly during his years in 
 
76 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the White House, how it reminds us inces- 
 santly of the One who was called "A Man 
 of Sorrows and acquainted with grief." 
 
 And to complete that significant paral- 
 lel, you will all remember that it was on 
 Good Friday, the anniversary of the 
 Crucifixion of the Savior of Mankind, that 
 Lincoln met his death. It would seem 
 as if somehow in the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury as in the First, there could be no re- 
 mission of the dreadful sin of slavery 
 without the shedding of blood and the 
 most precious blood we had. 
 
 What a strange suggestive parallel! It 
 seems no accident that the American Lin- 
 coln bore the Hebrew name of Abraham, 
 Father of the Faithful in whose work for 
 righteousness all the nations of the earth 
 have been blessed. It seems no accident 
 that when Lincoln entered the city of 
 Richmond near the close of his life, as 
 Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem in the 
 last week of his earthly life, the colored 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 77 
 
 people of Richmond were almost ready 
 to fall down and hail him as a kind of 
 second Messiah to their race. He surely 
 marks one of the highest reaches of that 
 Christian civilization which the coming of 
 the Son of Man made possible. 
 
 In that Convention of 1864 which re- 
 nominated Lincoln the long nominating 
 speeches which we know to-day had not 
 come into vogue. When the time came 
 for the presentation of the names of can- 
 didates, the Chairman of the Illinois 
 Delegation stood up and without coming 
 forward, said this: 'The people of the 
 State of Illinois present to the people of 
 the United States as candidate for the 
 Presidency the name of Abraham Lincoln 
 — God bless him!'' Then he sat down. 
 I would present to you as candidate for 
 the place of highest honor in the Nine- 
 teenth Century, the name of Abraham 
 Lincoln — God bless him! 
 
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