973.7L63 Miller, Frederick Scott. 
 B3M613a 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, his 
 greatest quality. 
 
LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER 
 

 Abraham Cittroln 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 FRED S. MILLER & COMPANY 
 
 1 923 
 
With malice toward none, and charity for all 
 
 COPY3KSHTCO 1923 
 BY CSeO S. MILLER 
 
L. (j? J 
 
 Hitturltt'a (greatest (fttalttg 
 
 By FREDERICK SCOTT MILLER 
 
 Amid the throes of the great Civil War a party of 
 clergymen begged Lincoln to do something vastly 
 important enough, in their eyes, to warrant straining 
 the point of honesty and common sense. In order 
 to make the worse appear the better reason the 
 spokesman of the delegation was as dida&ical and 
 loud as he might have been in his own pulpit. In 
 the midst of his harangue — "If you call a sheep's 
 tail a leg, how many legs will it have?" Lincoln 
 asked him mildly. 
 
 The orator reined up his eloquence: "Five!" he 
 shouted hotly, exasperated at such interrupting levity 
 on the part of the nation's chief executive. 
 "No, four," corre&ed Lincoln; "calling the tail a leg 
 wouldn't make it one." 
 
 His sense of humor was Abraham Lincoln's greatest 
 quality ; for humor is the ability to juflly recognize 
 values; which means that you are not to be fooled 
 or frighted in this vale of illusions that continually 
 impose themselves to push us from our stools. >0 
 Raw-head-and-bloody-bones Superstition, and smug 
 Conventionality, and self-complacent-in-hypocrasy 
 Respectability, shrivel at the touchstone of humor; 
 and what a relief and a saving come from this fine 
 ability to turn a robustious calamity inside out and 
 view the puppets dallying! 
 
It was Lincoln's fate to be surrounded, at his time 
 of greatest trial, by men — able and sincere, who yet 
 lacked this quality to lift them into greatness. Hence 
 his towering superiority. Amidst the tremendous 
 responsibilities pressing upon them all he alone was 
 able, at a touch, to relieve the tensest situations, to 
 restrain the over-zealous or quell the timidly cruel: 
 all because it reminded him of a little story! After 
 hearing which they went forth to their several tasks 
 chagrined perhaps, but sane and smiling. 
 Hence Lincoln's hold upon the masses. When in 
 his great addresses he had formulated their ideas for 
 them and made things plain, he clinched the thought 
 with an instance marvellously apt — the seal upon the 
 writ. And to fix an incident exadly to the point 
 requires as high an ability as that which makes a 
 symphony or a poem. 
 
 Such works endure; "for the things which are seen 
 are temporal, but the things which are not seen are 
 eternal." Some years have rolled away, and already 
 the War of the Rebellion has dwindled. The 
 thunder of its captains and its shouting mean little 
 to our generation, dazed but now by an uproar vaft 
 and hideous. The issues of its time are dead issues; 
 its heroism inspires only a duteous admiration. But 
 Lincoln's stories are fresh and virile, they lift and 
 light up, they lead us out upon a hill. 
 And all because they grip us with the personality of 
 
this sad humorist of the Sangamon. Personality is 
 everything. John knew this and wrote it down: The 
 Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. The 
 Gospels are the effulgence of the Man of Galilee; 
 great events are such only in the refle&ed light of 
 great personalities. History is the proper grouping 
 of fads about the lives of these representative men; 
 the epoch crystallizes into the epic when their deeds 
 are significantly sung. Rightly taken their "lightest 
 word* falls with the authority of an apparition.^ 
 Lincoln's stories illumine a period when the American 
 charadter, racked and writhing, revealed its inmost 
 soul; and by him in fuller measure than by his 
 contemporaries were the issues of that time recognized 
 and reconciled, When the fissures opened and the 
 swirling masses ground and crashed on one another 
 he held his balance true. He was the spontaneously 
 accredited representative of the North; and he knew 
 the South, and so he was the South' s best friend.^ 
 After Appomattox he said this to a fiery young 
 Republican: "Harlan was up here yesterday and he 
 made a speech. He got the crowd pretty well 
 warmed up, and then he shouted l Now what' 11 we 
 do with the rebels? 1 ! Hang 'em!' yelled someone; 
 but my little son Tad was there, and he piped out 
 quick 'No, hang onto 'em!' That brought down 
 the house ; and I say to you, young man, we'll just 
 have to hang onto 'em! n 
 
Lincoln was called Our Martyr President, but that 
 was a fool phrase, the blind and haSty outcry of 
 men Startled out of their self-possession and frightened 
 to revenge. It was applied, as well, to Garfield and 
 McKinley; and for a little moment it served to set 
 the three in equal rank before the minds of their 
 countrymen. Such is the power of a phrase, and 
 such may be the insane consequence of the inability 
 to properly recognize values. A&ion is equal to 
 rea&ion: the assassin and the community he outrages 
 are alike sublimely ridiculous. 
 
 Booth yelled Sic semper tyrannis! but he should 
 have cried, like Pilate, ^cce homo! Behold the 
 man — THE MAN REPRESENTATIVE — embodier 
 and suStainer of a priceless hope and faith of other 
 men, in his portentous passing! Lincoln's place is 
 with the Saviours of the world; not among the 
 sincere who died from blind prejudice or insane 
 caprice. The signs proclaimed him; w r hat was dim 
 descried has been made plain. North and South 
 Stood Still and gazed on one another at the sound 
 of the pistol shot —for the veil between them had 
 been rent in twain from the top to the bottom! J0 
 But, more than his death, Lincoln's own utterances 
 proclaim his Station and degree; for all his great 
 addresses may be resolved into the Wonderful 
 Words : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill £ 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 3 0112 002243043