VI. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A SUPERIOR MIND
The boy who reads the story of Lincoln, desiring to get real help in building his life, will find no miracle nor any short-cuts to get easily the ambitions of life. Lincoln did not know the office he wanted to hold, but he knew the kind of man he wanted to be and he worked unceasingly to reach that ideal of mind and manhood. In proportion, it is no harder now to know more than others, in order to be correspondingly useful to others, than it was in Lincoln’s time.
Lincoln said that he went to school by “littles” altogether not more than a year, but no one ever thinks of him as anything less than a learned man. All records show that he was intellectually at home in company with any worldly-wise men. It was in the prudent selection of interests nobly directed in honorable ways that gave him world-wisdom from the most limited supply, while now the multiplication of great books has made the diffusion of knowledge almost unlimited for anyone who seeks to be worth while. But it was in his high moral nature where was to be found the secret of his unwavering progress. Numerous characteristic incidents illustrate how little he was disturbed by the ill-nature of others.
That Lincoln was above “holding spite” or “bearing a grudge” is shown in his experience with the noted Kentucky lawyer, John Breckenridge.
There had been a murder at Boonville, Indiana, and Lincoln went to hear the speech made to the jury by the defense. He had never before heard a learned and eloquent man. The powerful plea of the silver-tongued John Breckenridge went through the sensitive soul of Lincoln like heavenly music. Forgetting his backwoodsman appearance, he rushed forward with others at the close of the speech to express his admiration.
Breckenridge was a “gentleman” of the South, not used to being familiarly addressed by anyone having the appearance of being “poor white trash.” He gazed in insulted amazement at the presumptuous youth and strode indignantly away.
This was probably the first knowledge Lincoln had of the artificial social barriers set up by men developing antagonizing classes. Here he first met the great problem of the ages in a land where all are born free and equal before life and law. It was a social partisanship not only contrary to common sense and moral law, but in violation of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the entire meaning of America. This is the great significance of Lincoln, that his life so unmistakably refuted so many un-American ideas of society and civilization.
In 1862 this same Breckenridge, now an humble petitioner for presidential favors, was introduced to President Lincoln, who then completed his expression of admiration for the excellent speech made by Mr. Breckenridge in the Indiana murder case. The able lawyer was indeed dumbfounded and it gave him a new vision of Lincoln, if not of the relationship of men. That equality of mind and opportunity which Lincoln represented was the master meaning of America, disclosing that in its freedom there is opportunity for the poorest to become the greatest through human values the most lasting and worthwhile.
Lincoln could have satisfied a righteous resentment against such haughty treatment toward the poor as was shown by Breckenridge to him at Boonville, and he could have given a deserved rebuke to pride in a land where pride of that kind is unpatriotic as well as immoral, but Lincoln chose the better part. It reminds us of the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Lincoln’s heart was as large as the world, but nowhere had any room for the memory of a wrong.”