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 Hessons from tfje iLtfe of JLtucoln 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE 
 
 CITY OF NEW YORK ON FEBRUARY 12, 1909, 
 
 ON INVITATION OF THE BOARD OF 
 
 EDUCATION 
 
 BY 
 ISAAC FRANKLIN RUSSELL, LL.D. 
 
 Professor of Law in New York University 
 
'1^ 
 
 
Herons from tfje life of Lincoln 
 
 Tf INCOLN has passed into history. His apoth- 
 >^ eosis has been accomplished. He is num- 
 bered among the immortals. He is one of the few 
 among the sons of earth on whose name the poppy 
 of oblivion can never scatter its dust. His true 
 place is not only in the Hall of Fame, built to com- 
 memorate the glory of his countrymen, but high up 
 in the Pantheon of Humanity. Let me paraphrase 
 the language of another: "It matters very little 
 what particular spot may have been the birthplace 
 of such a man as Lincoln. No people can claim 
 him, no country can appropriate him; the boon of 
 Providence to the human race, his fame is eternity, 
 his residence creation." This was the language of 
 Sir Charles Phillips and was spoken of Washing- 
 ton. Phillips is not with us to-night and I use his 
 words to express my own tribute to Lincoln. 
 
 Gladstone once said that if he were taken into 
 some grand gallery where heroic figures of the 
 world's great men, soldiers, statesmen, patriots, and 
 philanthropists stood on lofty pedestals, and lo there 
 was one pedestal loftier by far than any other in 
 the collection and no statue yet stood thereon, and 
 he were asked, out of all the long list of the world's 
 great and greatest, to name the man whose figure, 
 
more colossal than any other, should adorn that 
 highest place, he would not hesitate one moment to 
 name the man George Washington. This may be 
 true and just. Here, at least, at the Lincoln Cen- 
 tenary Celebration we'll never tear the purple from 
 his shoulder. 
 
 Lincoln believed in the plain people and was one 
 of them. He was no doctrinarian or dreamer, but 
 an adroit politician and consistent spoilsman. A 
 man from Chicago once called at the White House 
 and asked the President to appoint him postmaster. 
 Lincoln could not, he felt, remove the officer then 
 in service; but, wishing to do what he could, he 
 looked over a list of vacant places then before him, 
 and, finding one which carried the same salary as 
 the postmastership, boldly wrote down the appli- 
 cant's name, and then looked further and noticed 
 that the place was that of Secretary of Legation at 
 the Court of St. James's. This appointment was 
 unexpected and unsolicited, and eventually proved 
 very annoying to Mr. Charles Francis Adams, our 
 Minister, who found the appointee wholly ignorant 
 of international law. 
 
 Lincoln introduced into his cabinet his most pow- 
 erful rivals for the Presidential nomination; and 
 later appointed Chase to be head of the Supreme 
 Court in order to remove him as a factor in the can- 
 vass for the chief magistracy. 
 
 Lincoln was not nominated as an unknown man 
 — what we now call a "dark horse." He had served 
 in Congress, and had twice been a candidate for 
 
 2 
 
the United States Senatorship in Illinois. He 
 made a strong bid for the Presidential nomination 
 and had stumped the Eastern States before the 
 national convention in the interest of his candidacy, 
 and had secured wide recognition as one of the 
 ablest orators in the land. 
 
 He believed in himself and eagerly sought the 
 highest office. Napoleon no more desperately fol- 
 lowed the star of his destiny, than Lincoln believed 
 in his own divine call to the service of his country 
 in a task which he reckoned to be greater than 
 Washington's and which we now recognize as such. 
 
 He was powerless to control events; but events 
 controlled him, and he felt that he was an instru- 
 ment in the hands of God in one of the greatest 
 revolutions in human history. He lived among 
 epoch-making scenes, where justice was receiving a 
 new definition, written by the sword; and liberty, 
 freedom and equality were being expounded not 
 only in the Senate and the forum, but on the field 
 of arms. In the presence of slavery the Declaration 
 of Independence had become a lie, and our states- 
 men a band of hypocrites. It cost blood and treas- 
 ure for four long years for us to prove our faith in 
 the eternal principles which our fathers professed 
 in 1776. 
 
 Poetry, eloquence, and art will proclaim Lincoln 
 as the great emancipator of four million slaves. As 
 such he will always be remembered. But, in truth, 
 he never was an abolitionist of the type of Wendell 
 Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison. His para- 
 
mount object was to save the Union and be a faith- 
 ful exponent of the popular will. 
 
 The constitutionality of the Emancipation Proc- 
 lamation was bitterly disputed. It was justified 
 as a war measure. Lincoln at one time doubted its 
 usefulness. It could have no operation save in those 
 sections which were held by the enemy in armed 
 rebellion. It had no effect in the border States and 
 elsewhere in loyal territory where the Union arms 
 were triumphant. By its very terms its application 
 was restricted to localities where its enforcement 
 was impossible. Lincoln had compared the procla- 
 mation to the "Pope's Bull against the Comet." 
 
 He told the story of a boy who was asked how 
 many legs a dog had, calling a tail a leg. The boy 
 promptly answered, "Five," only to be rebuked by 
 the warning that calling a tail a leg did not make 
 it a leg. 
 
 It is not true, as we often hear, that Lincoln con- 
 sulted with no member of his cabinet about this 
 Proclamation. He stated seriously that he had 
 promised God he would issue it. Nor is it wholly 
 in Lincoln's own words. Chase had urged that 
 there should be some reference to Deity in such a 
 document, likely to have high historic rank, and at 
 the request of the President penned the concluding 
 words: "And upon this act, sincerely believed to 
 be an act of justice warranted by the Constitution 
 upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate 
 judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of 
 Almighty God." 
 
Lincoln felt that traditional views of the Consti- 
 tution should not hinder the work which he had 
 been called upon to do and finish, namely, to pre- 
 serve the Union and extirpate slavery. A constitu- 
 tional amendment abolishing slavery was needed, 
 and Lincoln secured its adoption by the requisite 
 vote of three-quarters of the States. The conven- 
 tions which ratified the war amendments were tur- 
 bulent and disorderly, and some of them were no 
 more representative bodies than was the Rump Par- 
 liament of Cromwell. Just one more State was 
 needed to carry out this patriotic purpose and it was 
 found on the map in Nevada, then as now 
 a mere mining camp, unequal to the bur- 
 dens of Statehood, and later disgraced by 
 the sale of Senatorships to bonanza kings 
 and a welcome to prize-fighters who had been exiled 
 from other law-abiding commonwealths. But the 
 glory of Nevada's initial work obscures the infamy 
 of these later days and makes us hail her with pride 
 as a member of the Union and welcome her warmly 
 to the blue field of the flag and the bright constella- 
 tion there. 
 
 Lincoln's rank as a popular orator is the highest 
 in the annals of American eloquence. His second 
 inaugural address and his oration on the battlefield 
 of Gettysburg reach the sublimest elevation of hu- 
 man speech. He was not the only Northern leader 
 who had moral earnestness and eloquence, and the 
 spirit of a hero and martyr. Charles Sumner had 
 all these in large measure. But Sumner's rhetoric, 
 
like Edward Everett's, was classic, scholarly and 
 pedantic. It had the flavor of the university and 
 the library, instead of the odor of the mountains, 
 the plains, the market-places and the haunts of the 
 humbler sons of the Republic. Lincoln spoke the 
 simple language of the poor, without affectation, 
 pedantry, classic embellishment, or platitudinous 
 ponderosity. And to this divine art of speech he 
 owed the opportunity of his life. It enabled him to 
 win verdicts from the jury in a time when he was 
 an acknowledged leader of the bar of his State ; for 
 he represented the Illinois Central Railway, and 
 had cases on the calendar in almost every county, 
 riding around the circuit in accordance with the 
 practice in his day. It made him bold to cross 
 swords in a duel of words with Judge Douglas, the 
 most illustrious orator of his age, and win a national 
 reputation as a master of debate. 
 
 The following is the concluding paragraph of the 
 first inaugural: "I am loath to close. We are not 
 enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. 
 Though passion may have strained, it must not 
 break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of 
 memory, stretching from every battlefield and pa- 
 triot grave to every living heart and hearthstone 
 all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus 
 of the Union, when again touched, as surely they 
 will be, by the better angels of our nature." 
 
 "The oration at Gettysburg," says Boutwell, 
 "ranks with the noblest productions of antiquity, 
 with the works of Pericles, of Demosthenes, of 
 
 6 
 
Cicero; and rivals the finest passages of Grattan, 
 Burke or Webster." 
 
 The following is a letter to Mrs. Bixby, of Bos- 
 ton: 
 
 Nov. 21, 1864. 
 
 "Dear Madam : — I am shown, in the files of the 
 War Department, a statement of the Adjutant- 
 General of Massachusetts, 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 would attempt to beguile you 
 from a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain, 
 from tendering to you the consolation that may be 
 found in the thanks of the Republic they died to 
 save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may as- 
 suage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave 
 you only the cherished memory of the loved and 
 lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to 
 have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of free- 
 dom. 
 
 "Yours very sincerely and respectfully, 
 
 "ABRAHAM LINCOLN." 
 
 The anecdotes that Lincoln told were mostly 
 humorous; and often, from our present standards, 
 coarse. He resorted to humor quite philosophically, 
 as throwing a bright light on the field of 
 vision, illustrating by sharp incongruities the 
 pathway of wisdom and discretion. He knew 
 its value, too, as a safety-valve to the mind, giving 
 
relief from the crushing burden of serious reflection 
 and distracting meditation. 
 
 The following anecdotes, told by Lincoln, may 
 serve as types : 
 
 Three men had persistently bothered him with 
 applications for office. They called at the White 
 House every day for a week. Finally he told them 
 the story of a Sunday School boy who was asked 
 to give an account of the Hebrew children in the 
 fiery furnace, and got on very well till he reached 
 the names of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, 
 names that were hard for him to pronounce, when 
 he blurted out: "Here come those three infernal 
 bores; I wish the devil had them." 
 
 Lincoln wrote as follows to a correspondent who 
 had urged a candidate for office on the President: 
 "I saw your friend, and, as I haven't much influence 
 with the administration, I sent him to Chase, who 
 told him to go to the devil ; the fellow came straight 
 back to me." 
 
 A brigadier-general and twelve army mules had 
 been captured in a rebel raid. Colfax brought the 
 sad news to Lincoln, who said : "How unfortunate ! 
 I can fill the general's place in five minutes, but 
 those mules cost $200 apiece." 
 
 When Lincoln was in the Illinois Legislature he 
 was put forward by the Republicans to answer an 
 elaborate attack made by the Democratic leader on 
 one of his pet measures on the ground that it was 
 unconstitutional. "Unconstitutional !" said Lincoln, 
 "The gentleman's argument reminds me of a story. 
 
 8 
 
One of my neighbors down on the Sangamon River 
 got up early one morning, and, looking out of the 
 window, saw, as he thought, a coon up a tree. He 
 called on his son Ben to bring a gun, and taking a 
 good aim, asked Ben if he, too, saw the coon in the 
 tree. Ben, however, answered the old man and 
 said : 'Say, dad, that ain't no coon, that's a stye on 
 your eyelid.' " 
 
 The real grandeur of Lincoln's character was in 
 his moral earnestness and entire devotion to duty. 
 He had the heart of a child, and was continually 
 impairing the efficiency of the army by reprieves 
 and pardons, wrung from him by the tears and 
 prayers of the mothers, wives, and sweethearts of 
 soldiers who had incurred military discipline. The 
 colored people idolized him and called their children 
 by his name. 
 
 To-night we celebrate the incomparable services 
 and resplendent patriotism of Abraham Lincoln. A 
 mass of myth is fast obscuring the true and simple 
 story of what he did. Popular legend, rilling in the 
 gaps of history, has told of his frontier life and of 
 his ups and downs as a flat-boatman and rail-split- 
 ter. Partisan zeal discovered and exhibited the 
 very rails that he is said to have split ; but the true 
 muse of history finds his own assertion that he 
 never split a rail in his life. 
 
 John Conness, United States Senator from Cali- 
 fornia from 1863-69, and who died in Boston last 
 month, writes in the North American Review as 
 follows: 
 
"Mr. Lincoln told the writer that he never split 
 a rail, and he described his confusion when, after 
 his nomination for President, the people came to 
 congratulate him, bringing on their shoulders the 
 rails he had split. What should he do about it ? It 
 was not true, and his impulse was then and there to 
 correct it; but here were masses of men, taking 
 their own means of expressing their joy at the event 
 of his nomination. Should he dampen the ardor of 
 his supporters on the threshold of a campaign, or 
 let it go on, and treat it as a means or incident in 
 our elections? He concluded to let it pass. The 
 loose tradition has now passed into the realm of 
 accepted facts." 
 
 Lincoln was a son of the common people. His 
 origin was humble, his fortune was long in coming, 
 his poverty was sharp, and his schooling was limited 
 to twelve months. No family was ennobled by his 
 achievements; no university was honored by his 
 record of glory; no church, with narrow walls and 
 narrower creed, claims him in the fellowship of her 
 blind votaries. His human frailties are forgotten 
 in the memory of his martrydom; and to-night we 
 gladly rehearse those heroic myths that do no harm, 
 but only prompt us to seize great virtues and hold 
 them fast in flesh and blood where all the young and 
 old can see and hear and think and then go out to 
 do great deeds. 
 
 The transcendent genius of Lincoln, while the 
 gift of God, was developed by the activities of his 
 unique career, and displayed in scenes that can 
 
 10 
 
never be re-enacted in human history. A child of 
 poverty, he reached the highest station among the 
 sons of men. Without the culture of the schools, 
 he found his best equipment for the most arduous 
 of labors in the discipline of experience. His fame 
 is imperishable while liberty lasts, and the story of 
 his life is the most glorious page in the annals of 
 the Republic. 
 
 ii 
 
EAGLE PRESS, BROOKLYN-NEW YORK 
 
 BMy13 
 

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