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LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
THE GUIDE TO SUCCEEDING 
 PRESIDENTS 
 
 By 
 EMANUEL HERTZ 
 
 Delivered over WOR, February 11, 19^ 
 

 
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 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 

 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 THE GUIDE TO SUCCEEDING PRESIDENTS 
 
 By EMANUEL HERTZ 
 
 THE ambition of those who lead in every walk of life during 
 the ages has been so to rule, think, write, compose, paint, 
 preach — and so through the entire gamut of man's activity — 
 that those who come after them should be guided by what they 
 have done — what they had set up for those who would follow. 
 Of all the myriads who have thus gone the way of all human 
 beings, who appear and disappear, how many stand out and 
 apart among great writers, among men of achievement, 
 founders of States, the conquerors, who can say, if they need 
 say it at all : "Follow me." Those few elect who are followed 
 need not beckon — the very fact that they have seen part of and 
 been part of the elemental, the eternal, is sufficient to ensure 
 their immortality. How many are there among the rulers of 
 the world, in recorded history, who are ■ thus implicitly fol- 
 lowed? No one name springs to our lips, whom we could com- 
 mend in ancient or medieval history — with the possible excep- 
 tion of Alfred the Great — ^but he has become so mythical, so 
 indistinct a figure as to be but a poor example to set up. Rather 
 must we turn to the other example — Machiavelli — who stands 
 out a sample of the selfish prince, and we must unhesitatingly 
 state that he must not be followed. Every other name must, if 
 to act as a model, be c[ualified, some. act or deed stands in the 
 way of a claim for immortality. But when we reach the 19th 
 century, we do find what we miss in other centuries and in all 
 other lands. We find one name which we may without any 
 hesitation class with the few great names which come down 
 to us through the millennia. Hammurabi, that indistinct legis- 
 
 787397 
 
lator of hoary antiquity, Moses in Egypt and in the Desert, 
 who studied him, Socrates of Athens, Alfred of Anglo-Saxon 
 England, William of Orange and Abraham Lincoln — the last 
 has certainly accomplished what most of the others have done 
 in part only. He has even become the guide of our perplexed 
 presidents. Every succeeding President, regardless of party, 
 regardless of the school of politics which claimed him, had but 
 one rule in his official life. "What would Lincoln do in my 
 place" — "How would Lincoln act" — "How would Lincoln 
 settle this or that great problem?" Nay, more. Every one of 
 them from the fitful and futile administration of Johnson to 
 the superbly balanced official career of Coolidge, have gone to 
 Lincoln's works, to his recorded State papers, to his marvelous 
 epistles and letters, some of them even now appearing from 
 their hiding places and sought advice, consolation, help and 
 justification for what they advised, for what they counselled, 
 and for what they sought to enact into law. Each one claimed 
 or hoped to be the logical successor of Lincoln, each one but 
 continuing the tasks which he, the great War President, had 
 laid down. Like some great architect who plans and prepares 
 a great world city to be completed and finished by those who 
 follow — so did these succeeding Presidents find the plans of 
 Lincoln's Union indellibly traced for them in the government 
 and in the conduct of these United States. The greater the 
 President, the greater his insight into Lincoln. The more he 
 would seek to better his people, the nearer he came to the great 
 rail-splitter whose great heart beat for all. From Johnson to 
 Coolidge, every President has seen himself walking in the foot- 
 steps of his great predecessor, overshadowed in the penumbra 
 of that receding star of the first magnitude. Johnson knew him 
 as an associate; he was one of his war governors, his second 
 Vice-President. And this is what Johnson sorrowfully spoke 
 of his dead leader: "In the midst of the American people, 
 when every citizen is taught to obey the law and observe the 
 rules of Christian conduct, our Chief Magistrate, the beloved 
 
of all hearts, has been assassinated; ^ ^ ^ ^ great and 
 good man, honored and revered, the beloved and the hope of 
 the people, h< * *^ When future generations shall read the 
 history of the second revolutionary crisis in which our Republic 
 is now redeemed and regenerated from the curse of slavery, 
 Abraham Lincoln will stand out the greatest man of the age." 
 
 Grant respected and revered the only man who divined his 
 military plans, the man who plucked him from obscurity and 
 made him Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 And this is what he has to say about him : 
 
 "Amid obloquy, personal abuse, and hate undisguised, and 
 which was given vent to without restraint through the press, 
 upon the stump, and in private circles, he remained the same 
 staunch, unyielding servant of the people, never exhibiting a 
 revengeful feeling toward his traducers, but he rather pitied 
 them ,and hoped, for their own sake, and the good name of 
 their posterity, that they might desist. * * * With all his 
 disappointments from failures on the part of those who had 
 gained his confidence but to betray it, I never heard him utter 
 a complaint, nor cast a censure for bad conduct or bad faith. 
 It was his nature to find excuses for his adversaries." 
 
 Hayes, the noble, humble, religious warrior — the plain soldier 
 risen to the rank General, Governor and President, designated 
 by someone as the best prepared and best trained man for the 
 Presidential ofHce, revered his military chief and expressed in 
 noble and eloquent periods how deeply the words of Lincoln 
 sank into his religious soul. 
 
 "As to Mr. Lincoln's name and fame and memory," says 
 President Hayes, "all is safe. His firmness, moderation, good- 
 ness of heart ; his quaint humor, his perfect honesty and direct- 
 ness of purpose, his logic, his modesty, his sound judgment, and 
 great wisdom ; the contrast between his obscure beginnings and 
 the greatness of his subsequent position and achievements; his 
 tragic death, giving him almost the crown of martyrdom, elevate 
 
him to a place in history second to none other in ancient or 
 modern times. His success in his great office, his hold upon 
 the confidence and affections of his countrymen, we shall all 
 say are only second to Washington's; we shall probably feel 
 and think that they are not second even to his. (A year later 
 Mr. Hayes wrote.) The truth is, if it were not sacrilege, I 
 should say Lincoln is overshadowing Washington. Washing- 
 ton is formal, statue-like — a figure for exhibition. But both 
 were necessary to complete our history. Neither could have 
 done the other's work." 
 
 No more eloquent expression to what Lincoln was and is, is 
 to be found anywhere than in the words of Garfield — the sec- 
 ond martyr — the second victim of the assassin. No more 
 superb expression of the magnitude of our loss is to be found 
 anywhere than in his scholarly utterances in the Halls of Con- 
 gress, and there were men in both Houses of Congress in those 
 days. "The President is dead, but the government in Wash- 
 ington lives," — stilled the crowds, who were infuriated by the 
 cowardly act of the assassin on the most dismal Good Friday in 
 our history. 
 
 Says Garfield in attempting to epitomize that great career : 
 
 "Gifted with an insight and a foresight which the ancients 
 would have called divination, he saw, in the midst of darkness 
 and obscurity, the logic of events, and forecast the result. 
 From the first, in his own quaint, original way, without ostenta- 
 tion or offense to his associates, he was pilot and commander of 
 his administration. He was one of the few great rulers whose 
 wisdom increased with his power, and whose spirit grew gentler 
 and tenderer as his triumphs were multiplied." 
 
 And so we pass to another soldier, — President Arthur, who 
 followed Lincoln in the field — and to the sturdy Cleveland who 
 in many respects followed his predecessor — "All my life I have 
 tried so hard to do right" — a real Lincoln utterance. And this 
 is his high tribute to the country lawyer Lincoln : 
 
 8 
 
''Lincoln, too, was a country lawyer; and he was called to 
 save the nation. He never lost the impress of an early life 
 closely surrounded by all the incidents of rural existence, and 
 encompassed by the stern providences of God. He, too, loved 
 the country ; and He Who made the country gave him, in com- 
 pensation an unstinted measure of inspiration for the most 
 impressive and solemn public duty. 
 
 "The deeds of these two country lawyers need no special 
 recital. They are written in the annals of a grateful nation, and 
 challenge the admiration of mankind. And who shall say that 
 the majestic forms of Webster and Lincoln, standing forth in 
 the bright light of human achievement, do not teach the world 
 how the nobility of American character is developed by Amer- 
 ican rural life?" 
 
 And then the soldier boy in the Civil War who reached the 
 Presidency — McKinley — the first soldier to halt the rout at 
 Winchester and help Phil. Sheridan pluck victory from defeat, 
 — a nobler soul never lived. When he graced the great office to 
 which he came — the first plain soldier to be raised on the shield 
 of his comrades to the highest position in the land — ^he simply 
 quotes and follows the great Commoner at all times ; in almost 
 every address of moment he quotes, he refers to, he follows 
 Lincoln : 
 
 "Lincoln," says McKinley, "had sublime faith in the people. 
 He walked with and among them. He recognized the im- 
 portance and power of an enlightened public sentiment and 
 was guided by it. Even amid the vicissitudes of war, he con- 
 cealed little from public review and inspection.. In all he did, 
 he invited, rather than evaded examination and criticism. He 
 submitted his plans and purposes, as far as practicable, to public 
 consideration with perfect frankness and sincerity. There was 
 such homely simplicity in his character that it could not be 
 hedged in by the pomp of place, nor the ceremonials of high 
 official station. He was so accessible to the public that he 
 seemed to take the whole people into his confidence. Here per- 
 
 9 
 
haps was the secret of his power. The people never lost their 
 confidence in him, however much they added to his personal 
 discomfort and trials. His patience was almost superhuman; 
 and who will say that he was mistaken in his treatment of the 
 thousands who thronged continually about him? More than 
 once when reproached for permitting visitors to crowd upon 
 him, he asked, in pained surprise: 'Why what harm does this 
 confidence in men do me ? I get only good and inspiration from 
 it.' " 
 
 And when he became the third martyr in the list of murdered 
 Presidents — ^he is succeeded by the versatile and scholarly 
 Roosevelt — whose heart was practically carved from that of 
 his one ideal character in his tempestous and active career. His 
 the only portrait before him at his work — he could not mix with 
 any other personality. "Where could I get a real portrait of 
 Lincoln?" he writes to Prof. Norton. His Lincoln addresses 
 are the very high water mark of Lincoln appreciation and Lin- 
 coln eulogy. Lincoln's soul echoes and re-echoes throughout 
 the life and deeds of Theodore Roosevelt : 
 
 "* * * This rail-splitter," says President Roosevelt — ■ 
 "this boy who passed his ungainly youth in the dire poverty of 
 the poorest of the frontier folk, whose rise was by weary and 
 painful labor — lived to lead his people through the burning 
 flames of a struggle from which the nation emerged, purified 
 as by fire, born anew to a loftier life. After long years of iron 
 effort, and of failure that came more often than victory, he at 
 last rose to the leadership of the Republic at the moment when 
 that leadership* had become the stupendous world-task of the 
 time. He grew to know greatness, but never ease. Success 
 came to him, but never happiness, save that which springs from 
 doing well a painful and a vital task. Power was his, but not 
 pleasure. The furrows deepened on his brow, but his eyes 
 were undimmed by either hate or fear. His gaunt shoulders 
 were bowed, but his steel thews never faltered as he bore for 
 a burden the destinies of his people. His great and tender 
 
 10 
 
heart shrank from giving pain; and the task allotted him was 
 to pour out like water the life blood of the young men, and to 
 feel in his every fibre the sorrow of the women. Disaster sad- 
 dened but never dismayed him. As the red years of war went 
 by they found him ever doing his duty in the present, ever 
 facing the future with fearless front — high of heart, and 
 dauntless of soul. Unbroken by hatred, unshaken by scorn, he 
 worked and suffered for the people. Triumph was his at the 
 last ; and barely had he tasted it before murder found him, and 
 the kindly, patient, fearless eyes were closed forever." 
 
 And when his great-hearted and big-brained successor came 
 along, Lincoln had an additional appeal — the great jurist recog- 
 nized the great lawyer in addition to the great President. Presi- 
 dent Taft certainly contributed his share of appreciation of 
 Lincoln in his far-flung travels and multifarious experiences. 
 In the Presidency and out of it — he ever was a keen student and 
 an humble follower of the lawyer-statesman of Illinois. In his 
 Springfield address President Taft says: 
 
 "Those traits in him which now place him with Washington, 
 and with Washington alone, did not make themselves clearly 
 manifest and were not fully developed until the trials of the 
 four years of our awful Civil War. In that supreme test he 
 threw off such dross as his early life may have shown, and the 
 gold of his great character and intellect shone forth in its 
 purity." * * * Lincoln had to go down through the val- 
 ley of the shadow of popular denunciation and popular dis- 
 trust. * * * YoT months and years he had to strengthen 
 himself with the thought that he alone understood the problems 
 that he was working out: he alone had the necessary clearness 
 of vision to see far beyond the present and secure the Nation's 
 salvation at the expense of popular misunderstanding and 
 partisan attack. But fortunately, he lived through these trials, 
 and his martyr's death did not come until the people knew of 
 his patience, his sacrifice, his great qualities of heart and mind, 
 his patriotism, and his far-sighted statesmanship. And the 
 
 11 
 
generations that have followed and will follow him, even those 
 whose ancestors were in conflict with him, will give him a 
 higher and higher place in the history of the world." 
 
 And then came the great stylist, the great scholar, who had 
 transformed a local school — Witherspoon's and Madison's 
 school — into a great national university, and transformed the 
 governorship of New Jersey from a petty office into a great 
 engine for wholesome legislation — he certainly found a leader 
 in the great scion of the backwoods of Illinois. This is what 
 he says : 
 
 "* * * When you read that name you are at once aware 
 of something that distinguishes it from all the rest. There was 
 in each of those other men some special gift, but not in Lincoln. 
 You cannot pick Lincoln out for any special characteristic. He 
 did not have any one of those peculiar gifts that the other men 
 on this list possessed. He does not seem to belong in a list at 
 all ; he seems to stand unique and singular and complete in him- 
 self. The name makes the same impression upon the ear that 
 the name of Shakespeare makes, because it is as if he contained 
 a world within himself. And that is the thing which marks the 
 singular stature and nature of this great — and, we would fain 
 believe, typical — American. Because when you try to describe 
 the character of Lincoln you seem to be trying to describe a 
 great process of nature. Lincoln seems to have been of general 
 human use and not of particular and limited human use. There 
 was no point at which life touched him that he did not speak 
 back to it instantly its meaning. There was no afifair that 
 touched him to which he did not give back life, as if he had 
 communicated a spark of fire to kindle it. The man seemed to 
 have, slumbering in him, powers which he did not exert of his 
 own choice, but which woke the moment they were challenged, 
 and for which no challenge was too great or comprehensive." 
 
 And again in "Mere Literature" : 
 
 "Lincoln, nevertheless, rather than Jackson, was the supreme 
 American of our history. In Clay, East and West were mixed 
 
 12 
 
without being fused or harmonized: he seems like two men. 
 In Jackson there was not even a mixture ; he was all of a piece, 
 and altogether unacceptable to some parts of the country, — a 
 frontier statesman. But in Lincoln the elements were com- 
 bined and harmonized. The most singular thing about the 
 wonderful career of the man is the way in which he steadily 
 grew into a national stature. He began an amorphous, un- 
 licked cub, bred in the rudest of human lairs ; but, as he grew, 
 everything formed, informed, transformed him. The process 
 was slow but unbroken. He was not fit to be President until 
 he actually became President. He was fit then because, learn- 
 ing everything as he went, he had found out how much there 
 was to learn, and had still an infinite capacity for learning. The 
 quiet voices of sentiment and murmurs of resolution that went 
 whispering through the land, his ear always caught, when others 
 could hear nothing but their own words. He never ceased to be 
 a common man: that was his source of strength. But he was a 
 common man with genius, a genius for things American, for in- 
 sight into the common thought, for mastery of the fundamental 
 things of politics that inhere in human nature and cast hardly 
 more than their shadows on constitutions; for the practical 
 niceties of affairs; for judging men and assessing arguments. 
 Jackson had no social imagination: no unfamiliar community 
 made any impression on him. His whole fibre stiffened young, 
 and nothing afterward could modify or even deeply affect it. 
 But Lincoln was always a-making; he would have died unfin- 
 ished if the terrible storms of the war had not stung him to 
 learn in those four years what no other twenty could have 
 taught him. And, as he stands there in his complete manhood, 
 at the most perilous helm in Christendom, what a marvelous 
 composite figure he is ! The whole country is summed up in 
 him : the rude Western strength, tempered with shrewdness and 
 a broad and humane wit; the Eastern conservatism, regardful 
 of law and devoted to fixed standards of duty. He even un- 
 derstood, the South, as no other Northern man of his genera- 
 
 13 
 
tion did. He respected, because he comprehended, though he 
 could not hold, its view of the Constitution ; he appreciated the 
 inexorable compulsions of its past in respect of slavery; he 
 would have secured it once more, and speedily if possible, in its 
 right to self-government, when the fight was fought out. To 
 the Eastern politicians he seemed like an accident; but to his- 
 tory he must seem like a providence." 
 
 I cannot help using one more extract: 
 
 ''That brooding spirit had no familiars. I get the impression 
 that it never spoke out in complete self -revelation, and that it 
 could not reveal itself completely to anyone. It was a very 
 lonely spirit that looked out from underneath those shaggy 
 brows and comprehended men without fully communing with 
 them, as if, in spite of all its genial efforts at comradeship, it 
 dwelt apart, saw its visions of duty where no man looked on. 
 There is a very holy and very terrible isolation for the con- 
 science of every man who seeks to read the destiny in affairs 
 for others as well as for himself, for a nation as well as- for 
 individuals. That privacy no man can intrude upon. That 
 lonely search of the spirit for the right perhaps no man can 
 assist. This strange child of the cabin kept company with in- 
 visible things, was born into no intimacy but that of its own 
 silently assembling and deploying thoughts." 
 
 Among the great number of great orations delivered by 
 Woodrow Wilson — and the number is remarkably great — none 
 is finer than the two on Abraham Lincoln — and he unwittingly 
 acknowledged the superiority of the rail-splitter's literary 
 genius on the day when he attempted — fifty years later — to 
 supplement at the Gettysburg Cemetery what Lincoln said and 
 did there for eternity. The genial Harding could not help but 
 fall in line, body and soul into the channel hewn by his great 
 predecessor — and although he lacked the finnesse, the great 
 ideals of his immediate precursors, he paid full tribute, es- 
 pecially on two occasions, for what he owed to Abraham Lin- 
 coln : 
 
 14 
 
"We are coming year by year," says Harding, "to a more 
 truthful and understanding appraisal of him * * * "VVe do 
 know that as men contemplate this strange career and study its 
 wonders and its lessons, they are at least planting in their minds 
 and hearts a certain vague realization of what Lincoln was and 
 meant; a consciousness of his personal significance to them; 
 and with all this, a keen aspiration for some little participation 
 in such a bestowal of selflessness, sacrifice and service as was 
 the life of Lincoln. That apiration, * * * jg fixed in a 
 greater number of human hearts today than it ever was before. 
 It may be somewhat vague and unformed, yet we readily rec- 
 ognize that it represents something like the aspirations of a race 
 for a new incarnation of the spirit and the leadership of Lin- 
 coln." 
 
 *' Somehow my emotions incline me to speak simply as a 
 reverent and grateful American, rather than one in official re- 
 sponsibility. I am thus inclined because the true measure of 
 Lincoln is in its place today in the heart of American citizenship 
 though nearly half a century has passed since his colossal serv- 
 ice and his martyrdom. Li every moment of peril, in every 
 -hour of discouragement, whenever the clouds gather there is 
 the image of Lincoln to rivet our hopes and to renew our faith. 
 Whenever there is a glow of triumph over national achievement 
 there comes the reminder that but for Lincoln's heroic and un- 
 alterable faith in the Union these triumphs could not have 
 been." 
 
 And finally, the keenest stylist of them all — the man of the 
 short crisp sentence — of the chiselled paragraphs — the creator 
 of winged phrase and nugget-like axioms — he certainly has 
 pored long and often over the written word of that scholar of 
 the Bible and of Bunyan, of Shakespeare and of Burns — could 
 he help not to achieve such diction then, as is his ? Says Presi- 
 dent Coolidge: 
 
 15 
 
"Whenever men look upon his hfe, they are filled with new 
 wonder. About him there was never any needless thing. No 
 useless burdens held him back. No wilderness of tangled ideas 
 bewildered his vision. For him the outward show of the world 
 was cast aside that he might be a larger partaker of reality. 
 His cradle was bare, but above it was the precious canopy of . 
 love of a gentle mother. When she was borne away in his 
 early boyhood, he had learned the great lesson that all this" 
 world is- mortal. From his youth he knew that anguish is the 
 common lot of mankind. In his rearing there was no false art. 
 Like the strengthening of his body, the strengthening of his 
 mind came from great Nature." 
 
 I had almost forgotten Benjamin Harrison, probably the 
 greatest lawyer in the Presidency, how he discerned the great- 
 ness of Lincoln at a time when passions were far from being 
 stilled, when a recrudescence of hatred in the South was mani- 
 fest, when Dixie w^as momentarily in the saddle in the Federal 
 government. But Harrison saw what Lincoln meant to 
 humanity and said it in clearly formulated sentences of ad- 
 miration and reverence. 
 
 Benjamin Harrison thus epitomizes the work of the great 
 War President : 
 
 ''The Civil War called for a President who had faith in time, 
 for his country as well as for himself ; who could endure the 
 impatience of others and bide his time. A man who could by 
 a strong but restrained diplomatic correspondence hold oft* 
 foreign intermeddlers and at the same time lay the same basis 
 for the Geneva award, a man who could in all his public utter- 
 ances, while maintaining the authority of the law and the just 
 rights of the national government, breathe an undertone of 
 yearning for the misguided and the rebellious ; a man who 
 could hold the war and the policy of the government to its 
 original purpose — the restoration of the states without the de- 
 struction of slavery — until public sentiment was ready to sup- 
 
 16 
 
port a proclamation of Emancipation ; a man who could win 
 and hold the love of the soldier and of the masses of the people ; 
 a man who could be just without pleasure in the severities of 
 justice, who loved to forgive and pardon * * =k Qualities 
 of heart and mind combined to make a man who has won the 
 love of mankind * * * He stands like a great lighthouse 
 to show the way of duty to all his countrymen and to send afar 
 a beam of courage to those who beat against the winds." 
 
 And so we have found a type of ruler who truly belongs to 
 the ages — for so many reasons which have repeatedly been 
 enumerated by statesman and poet, by journalist and by 
 preacher, by jurist and by teacher — but for the additional great 
 reason that he ruled with charity toward all and with malice 
 toward none, and demonstrated that we were in a land where 
 there were no enemies, but all were friends — cemented by his 
 few elemental principles of government, that all men were 
 equal, that all men to be equal must be free, and that when that 
 was achieved a constitution must be cast in such frames of steel 
 that government of the people and by the people must endure 
 for all time. 
 
 Certain travellers of the 11th century relate, as Mazzini tells 
 us, that they saw at Teneriffe, a prodigiously lofty tree which, 
 from its immense extent of foliage, collected all the vapours 
 of the atmosphere; to discharge them, when its branches were 
 shaken, in a shower of pure, refreshing water. Lincoln is like 
 this wonderful giant tree — an emblem of immortality — and the 
 mission of this and succeeding ages should be to shake the 
 branches, to study his legacy of inspiration as seen in his life, 
 in his works, in his ideals, in his performances, in his strivings 
 and in his achievements. 
 
 17 
 
UmUmiyuHLUNOIS-URBANA 
 973.7L63GH44AB C001 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE GUIDE OT SUCCEEDING 
 
 3 0112 031819185