I. THE MAN AND THE CONFIDENCE OF THE PEOPLE
Abraham Lincoln, as President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of its army and navy, never seemed to know that he was any more bound to look out for the good opinion of the world than at any time before. To him there was no such thing as presidential attitude or pose. He did not see that he had any part to act out more than he had always had. Life might be a stage, as Shakespeare had described it, and Lincoln had played many parts, but it was always as a man.
“Nothing was more marked in Lincoln’s personal demeanor,” says one of his intimate friends, “than his utter unconsciousness of his position. He never seemed aware that his place or his business was essentially different from that in which he had always been engaged. All duties were alike to him. All called equally upon him for the best service of his mind and heart, and all were alike performed with a conscientious, single-hearted devotion.”
Mr. Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner, says, “The great predominating elements of Mr. Lincoln’s peculiar character were: First, his great capacity and power of reason; second, his excellent understanding; third, an exalted idea of the sense of right and equity; and, fourth, his intense veneration of what was true and good.”
Thackery expresses a vision of character that might well be used to describe the motive-interest of Lincoln, and every other youth who desires to be worth while:
“Come wealth or want, come good or ill,
Let old and young accept their part,
And bow before this awful will,
And bear it with an honest heart.
Who misses or who wins the prize,—
Go, lose or conquer as you can;
But if you fail or if you rise,
Be each, pray God, a gentleman.”
In that great address which he gave on the occasion of his being sworn in the first time as President of the United States, toward the close, he said, “Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences is either party without faith in being right? If the Almighty ruler of nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail, by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people.”
Lincoln Monument—Springfield, Illinois.
At the last of his inaugural address he said, referring to the people of the South, “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government; while I have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ it.”
It was in 1840, when he set this standard that made him worthy of being called the savior of his nation. In a great political address at that time, he said, “Let it be my proud plume not that I was the last to desert (my country), but that I never deserted her.”
The result is a united and powerful America facing the centuries of human posterity as a working place for the enlargement of freedom accomplished as rapidly as is possible through the perfection of character and civilization.