III. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF MOMENTOUS TIMES
Reference to a few of his speeches, made before his election to the presidency, will give a clear idea of his political Americanism, to which was entrusted the definition and the destiny of the greatest democracy in the world.
The Illinois legislature of 1854, by the union of Whigs and Know-Nothings, indorsed him for senator and sent a committee to notify him. The Know-Nothings were especially strong on the slogan of “America for Americans,” and wanted to shut out immigration.
In the reply to the delegation or committee of notification, he said, “Who are the native Americans? Do they not wear the breech-clout and carry a tomahawk! Gentlemen, your principle is wrong. It is not American. For instance, I had an Irishman named Patrick working my garden. One morning I went out to see how Pat was getting along.
“‘Mr. Lincoln,’ he said, ‘what d’ye think of these Know-Nothing fellers?’ I explained their ideas and asked him if he had been born in America.”
“‘Faith, to be sure,’ Pat replied, ‘I wanted to be, very much, but me mother wouldn’t let me. It’s no fault of mine.’”
Lincoln and Pat thus together believed that every baby, born anywhere on earth, is a good American until its mind is moulded into some man-made shape.
Referring to the thirteen original colonies and what they stood for, he said, “These communities by their representatives in old Independence Hall said to the world of men: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ This was their lofty and wise and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to his creatures. In their enlightened belief nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on and degraded and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the race of men then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They created a beacon to guide their children and their children’s children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages.”
Among the many familiar quotations from these great speeches that made him known to the nation may be mentioned a few that should never be forgotten.
“Let none falter who believes he is right.”
“Let us have faith that right makes might.”
“Freedom is the last, best hope of earth.”
“Disenthrall ourselves, then we shall save ourselves.”
“Come what will, I’ll keep my faith with friend and foe.”
“For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like.”
“I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.”
“No man is good enough to govern another without the other’s consent.”
“Would you undertake to disprove a proposition in Euclid by calling Euclid a liar!”
“Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them.”
In pioneer days it was very common for individuals to conclude any personal controversy by resort to the settlement of “fist and skull,” and, on the far frontier of the Wild West, the convincing evidence that brought peace was often the quickest and most skillful use of the gun.
We are now in that pioneer day and wild-west age of nations whose “fist and skull” arguments and wild-west “gun-play” must end. This is what Lincoln thought of it in the midst of the Civil War. It was written to the Springfield convention.
“Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who take such an appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost.”
It is interesting here, as he came up out of the darkness into the dawn of his supreme humanity, to know what the greatest men of his times thought of him, when that great day of human service closed down over him, in the martyrdom of assassination. It is not eulogy, but an estimate of values in a personality, and as appreciation of righteousness exalting a man into an ideal of his age.
Lord Beaconsfield, addressing the House of Commons, said, “In the life of Lincoln there is something so homely and so innocent that it takes the subject, as it were, out of the pomp of history, and out of the ceremonial of diplomacy. It touches the heart of nations, and appeals to the domestic sentiments of mankind.”
John Stuart Mill, one of the most distinguished philosophers of the last century, speaks in his writings of Lincoln as “The great citizen who afforded so noble an example of the qualities befitting the first magistrate of a free people, and who, in the most trying circumstances, won the admiration of all who appreciate uprightness and love freedom.”
D’Aubigne, the historian of the Reformation, wrote,
“While not venturing to compare him to the great sacrifice of Golgotha, which gave liberty to the captive, is it not just to recall the word of the apostle John (I John 3:16): ‘Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.’ Among the legacies which Lincoln leaves to us, we shall all regard as the most precious his spirit of equity, of moderation, and of peace, according to which he will still preside, if I may so speak, over the destinies of your great nation.”