IV. HUMANITY AND THE GREAT SCHOOL OF EXPERIENCE
Many people in estimating Lincoln’s scholarship do not sufficiently recognize how much an eager student of life can learn in such wide experience as his among men. To say that he was uneducated or that he was self-made are alike erroneous. He was truly entered in the school of experience in which he chose the wisest interest as his teacher, and from which he graduated as a martyred president, one of the wisest masters of humanity.
It can hardly be said that Lincoln arrived slowly at a leadership of men. He was only twenty-eight when he was regarded as one of the most influential men in his State. The nation was then in the midst of the religious belief that God intended slavery or he would not have made men black. Even at that early period Lincoln, with the boldness of a Martin Luther, declared that “the institution of slavery is founded both on injustice and bad policy,” though the great reformation was not yet at hand.
It is said that “those in glass houses should not throw stones.” Society and government have yet so many sins and wrongs to answer for that the people of slavery days can hardly be blamed for not seeing as we see now. Mankind seems to be only well started on the way to civilization. Now and then we are given a great far-seeing man and the vision of righteousness is made a little clearer. We see a little farther through him into the promised land of a better world.
To any one looking down upon the stormy United States of that period it could be seen that probably no one ever entered the presidency, and more probably never would, who seemed so destitute of influential associates and political supporters. It was Lincoln alone and his faith in the unseen faithful of his ancient Israel. He knew the people. He knew they understood what the great crisis in their country’s history meant for their ideals of America. They wanted a leader from among themselves, because they no longer trusted the politicians in high places.
In 1862 John James Piatt wrote:
“Stern be the Pilot in the Dreadful hour
When a great nation, like a ship at sea,
With the wroth breakers whitening at her lea,
Feels her last shudder if the Helmsman cower;
A God-like manhood be his mighty dower!”
This seems to show that the patriotic men of the literary East were not yet sure of him. In fact, it was not yet sure that there was any man anywhere who could remain sane and true through the rampant treason and raging strife.
A year later Frank Moore wrote:
“Stand like the rock that looks defiant
Far o’er the surging seas that lash its form!
Composed, determined, watchful, self-reliant,
Be master of thyself and rule the storm.”
If the Americans who tried to destroy Washington could now appear among us and see what we and the world think of him, they would hardly attempt to justify what they said and did to ruin him. Many lived to realize their error in defaming Lincoln and to appreciate their pitiful malignity in spreading the gossip and slander about him. And yet a few strove on to save some of their reputation for intelligence or personal honor and honesty, until research and cumulative evidence established the unassailable truth of his standing and character as one of the noblest and greatest of Americans.
The lesson of personal justice and integrity is learned slowly where freedom has long seemed to mean political license to distort and defame party opponents. But election slanders die out as the people emerge from party possession and mastery. After the election is over, still increasing numbers become conscious that most of the evils told of the opposition have either been lies or the distorted halftruths that are more misleading to the honest-intentioned minds.
But, fortunately, one of Lincoln’s great sayings has been proven true even in the miscellaneous freedom of Americans. To an insignificant interruption on an insignificant occasion, one of those famous sayings popped up, as it were from the mass of thinking in Lincoln’s mind, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”
Lincoln’s great passion for friendship in the midst of his prophetic vision is shown in the last paragraph of his first inaugural address. He said, “I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched as they surely will be, by the better angels of our nature.”