Chapter XXVI: The Man

Reasons for His Re-election--What was Accomplished--Leaning on
the People--State Papers--His Tenacity of Purpose--Washington
and Lincoln--As a Man--Favorite Poem--Autobiography--His
Modesty--A Christian--Conclusion.

What shall be said, in summing up, of Abraham Lincoln as a statesman and a man? That from such humble beginnings, in circumstances so adverse, he rose to be the Chief Magistrate of one of the leading countries of the world, would were it in any other country, be evidence of ability of the very highest order.

Here, however, so many from similar surroundings have achieved similar results that this fact of itself does not necessarily unfold the man clearly and fully to us. He might have been put forward for that high station as a skillful and accomplished politician, from whose elevation hosts of partisans counted upon their own personal advancement and profit. Or he might have been a successful general; or one possessing merely negative qualities, with no salient points, all objectionable angularities rounded off till that desirable availability, which has at times been laid hold of for the Presidency had been reached; or, yet again, one who had for a long time been in the front ranks of an old and triumphant party, and, therefore, as such matters have been managed with us, admitted to have strong claims upon such party; or, lastly, one who, having for many years schemed and plotted and labored, in season and out of season, for the nomination, at last achieved it.

For such Presidents have been furnished us. But he was neither. And yet the highest point to which an American may aspire he reached. Clearly, then, there must have been something of strength and of worth in the man.

He was reëlected, the first President since Jackson to whom that honor had been accorded. And thirty-two years had passed--eight Presidential terms--since Jackson’s reëlection. He was, moreover, reëlected by a largely increased vote.

The years covered by his administration were the stormiest in American history, “piled high,” as he himself said, “with difficulties.” No President was ever more severely attacked, more unsparingly denounced than he. None more belittled than he. And yet he was triumphantly reëlected. Why? For the same reason that first brought him before the country.

Primarily and mainly because the mass of the people had unbounded confidence in his honesty and devotion to principle. Though these qualities, it is pleasant to say, have been by no means rare in our Presidents, yet Abraham Lincoln seemed so to speak, so steeped and saturated in them that a hold was thereby obtained upon the common mind, the like of which no other President since Washington had secured. The bitterest opponent of his policy was constrained, if candid, to admit, if not the existence of these qualities, at least the prevailing popular belief in their existence.

What shall be said of him as a statesman?

That he found the fabric of our National Government rocking from turret to foundation stone--that he left it, after four years of strife such as, happily, the world rarely witnesses, firmly fixed, and sure; this should serve in some sort, as an answer.

But might not this be owing, or principally so, to the ability of the counsellors whom he gathered about him? Beyond a doubt the meed of praise is to be shared. Yet we should remember that few Presidents have so uniformly acted of and for themselves in matters of state policy, as did Mr. Lincoln. Upon many questions the opinions of his Cabinet were sought--a Cabinet representing the various shades of thought, the various stages of progress, through which the people, of whom they were the exponents, were passing from year to year--after obtaining which, he would act. But, in most instances, perhaps, he struck out for himself, after careful, conscientious reflection, launching his policy upon unknown seas, quietly assured that truth was with him and that he could not be mistaken. Nor was he often.

Having to feel his way along, for the most part--groping in the dark--he could not push on so fast and far as to leave the people out of breath or staring far in his rear. Still, it must not be understood that he never acted against what was plainly the popular will. The man was not of that mould. Unquestionably in his dealings with the two leading European powers he often acted in direct opposition to the popular wish. Nothing would have been easier than for him to have brought a foreign war upon the country; and in such action, for a time at least, he would have been sustained by the mass of the people. So, too, as to vindictive measures towards the rebels. By adopting these he would, oftentimes, have been in harmony with the general wish for vengeance and retaliation. In both these instances--to name no others--he chose to act counter to the current sentiment. More politic, with a more piercing outlook than the mass, he saw the end from the beginning, and in the one case chose to overlook what was, to his mind, grossly wrong, and in the other, to stand up for the general interests of humanity through all time rather than to cater to the desire of the hour, natural and, perhaps, pardonable though it was.

What is meant is this--that, in the complications in which the country was involved, he invariably acted, where expediency simply and not principle was concerned, so as to feel sure that the body of the people were with him. If failure were to result, he would have them feel that the responsibility for it rested as much upon them as upon him. He earnestly endeavored to point out what he judged the better way and to bring the people to his conviction; but, if they relucted, he waited till they should have advanced where, or nearly where, he was. This was generally felt, and it added largely to the confidence reposed in him. By means of it, a general acquiescence was procured in many measures earlier than could have been gained by any other course. We Americans are a peculiar people in some respects. We dislike to be led by any man. Nay, we stoutly deny that we are. We are not--when we see the leading strings.

Mr. Lincoln’s state papers in their structure and composition were not always what a critical scholar would have desired. Some would say they were presented quite too often in undress. The people are not profound critics. They could comprehend every word. They felt that they were addressed as fellow-citizens. The ordinarily formal and stilted official documents came from his plain pen a talk to them by the fireside. He said, moreover, exactly what he meant and as he meant, in his own clear cogent way, void of verbiage, homely often but always the outgrowth of a profound intelligent conviction. And, generally, he struck home. His were the words to which “the common pulse of man keeps time.” How studded are his papers with lucid illustration; how transparently honest and candid, like the man, their author!

His tenacity of purpose was marked. Signing that immortal proclamation, which made him the Liberator of America, on the afternoon of January 1st, 1863, after hours of New Year’s hand-shaking, he said to friends that night--“The signature looks a little tremulous, for my hand was tired, but my resolution was firm. I told them in September, if they did not return to their allegiance and cease murdering our soldiers, I would strike at this pillar of their strength. And now the promise shall be kept; and not one word of it will I ever recall.” In all the varying scenes through which as our leader he passed, avoiding the extremes of sudden exultation or deep depression, calm and quiet, and resolute and determined, he kept on his course, with duty as his guiding star, an unwarped conscience his prompter. Feeling always that he bore his life in his hands, in the perilous position in which he was placed, as well as he who went forth to do duty in the battle-field, he faltered not, swerved not, compromised not, retracted not, apologized not, but pursued his way with an inflexibility as rare as it is grand and inspiring. Others might doubt--not he. He saw the end toward which the nation and himself must strive. That was ever present to him, and toward that he ever worked. His mission as President was, as he so often and so pointedly stated, to save the Union. And he saved it. There may be those who will contend that such a result might have been reached by other means than those he was impelled to employ. That is theory. He reduced his to practice. For himself, he could work only in his own harness; and patiently, persistently, painfully he worked on till the goal was reached.

Well has Washington been styled the Father of his Country. Yet this arose from veneration rather than from love; for the most felt such an impassable gulf between themselves and the patriot-hero, that to them he appeared of quite another order of beings than themselves.

Abraham Lincoln was both Saviour and Father; for he preserved whatever was most valuable in the old and created a new order of things possessing an inherent dignity and importance which the old never had. And such titles the people bestow upon him through love.

The characteristics of the man stood prominently out in the statesman. He had not one garb as an official and another as a citizen. No change marked his transit from the chat of the drawing-room to the consultation of cabinet. What he was in the one situation he was in the other. His peculiar humor was not, as those who least knew him judged, his habitual disposition. More of melancholy and sadness centred in him than most were aware. His favorite poem--given below for the sufficient reason that it was his favorite--attests the vein of pensiveness which was in him. “There is one poem,” he remarked in conversation, “that is almost continually present with me: it comes in my mind whenever I have relief from thought and care.”

Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift, fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
Man passeth from life to his rest in the grave.

The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around and together be laid;
And the young and the old, and the low and the high,
Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie.

The infant a mother attended and loved;
The mother that infant’s affection who proved;
The husband that mother and infant who blessed,
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of Rest.

The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye
Shone beauty and pleasure--her triumphs are by;
And the memory of those who loved her and praised,
Are alike from the minds of the living erased.

The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne;
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn;
The eye of the sage and the heart of the brave,
Are hidden and lost in the depth of the grave.

The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap;
The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the steep;
The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread,
Have faded away like the grass that we tread.

The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven,
The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven,
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.

So the multitude goes, like the flowers or the weed
That withers away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.

For we are the same our fathers have been;
We see the same sights our fathers have seen--
We drink the same stream and view the same sun--
And run the same course our fathers have run.

The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think;
From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink,
To the life we are clinging they also would cling;
But it speeds for us all, like a bird on the wing.

They loved, but the story we cannot unfold;
They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;
They grieved, but no wail from their slumber will come;
They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.

They died, aye! they died; and we things that are now,
Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
Who make in their dwelling a transient abode,
Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.

Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
We mingle together in sunshine and rain;
And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.

’Tis the wink of an eye, ’tis the draught of a breath;
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud--
Oh why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

No one was more modest than he. Look at the record of his life as furnished by himself, in 1858, for Lanman’s Dictionary of Congress:

“Born February 12, 1809, in Hardin county, Kentucky.

“Education Defective.

“Profession a lawyer.

“Have been a captain of volunteers in the Black Hawk war.

“Postmaster at a very small office.

“Four times a member of the Illinois Legislature.

“And was a member of the lower House of Congress.

“Yours, etc.,
A. LINCOLN.”

With no self-conceit, a pupil in the school of events, he was never ashamed to confess himself a learner, and as such he grew and ripened. Equable in his temperament, never wrathful or passionate, none need have been his enemy, unless such an one were intended for an enemy of the human race. Mild and forgiving, he never allowed the unmerited abuse which was heaped upon him to affect in the least his intercourse or dealings with its authors. His very failings leaned to mercy’s side. There is scarcely a hamlet in the loyal States that does not contain some witness of his clemency and lenity. One of the most touching incidents connected with his obsequies at Washington was the placing on his coffin of a wreath of flowers, sent from Boston by the sister of a young man whom he had pardoned when sentenced to death for some military offence.

Honored as a private citizen, happy in his domestic relations, successful as a statesman, he was, moreover, an avowed Christian. He often said that his reliance in the gloomiest hours was on his God, to whom he appealed in prayer, although he had never become a professor of religion. To a clergyman who asked him if he loved his Saviour, he replied:

“When I was first inaugurated I did not love him; when God took my son I was greatly impressed, but still I did not love him; but when I stood upon the battle-field of Gettysburg I gave my heart to Christ, and I can now say I do love the Saviour.”

Attention has already been called to the reverential spirit which pervades his official papers; and this was the index of the man. Leaving home, he invoked the prayers of his townsmen and friends; during the excitements of his Washington life, he leaned upon a more than human arm; against his pure moral character not even his bitterest enemy could truthfully utter a word.

Such--imperfectly sketched, and at best but in rude outline--was Abraham Lincoln. The manner of his death invests his name with a tragic interest. This will be but temporary. But the more the man as he was is known, the more completely an insight is obtained into his true character, the more his private and public life is studied, the more carefully his acts are weighed, the higher will he rise in the estimation of all whose esteem is desirable. Coming years will detract nought from him. He has passed into history. There no lover of honesty and integrity, no admirer of firmness and resolution, no sympathizer with conscientious conviction, no friend of man need fear to leave--

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.