XII
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: THE MARTYRED PRESIDENT
Among the heroes who helped save the Republic, the last, best hope of earth, in that it gives liberty to the slaves, that it might assure freedom to the free, stands Abraham Lincoln, the emancipator and martyr. Take him all in all, Abraham Lincoln is the greatest thing the Republic has achieved. History tells of no child who passed from a cradle so humble to a grave so illustrious. The institutions of the Republic were founded for the manufacture of a good quality of soul. In the presence of the greatest men of history we can point with pride to Lincoln, saying, "This is the kind of man the institutions of the Republic can produce." For Lincoln's most striking characteristic was his Americanism. At best, Washington was a patrician, the fine product of aristocratic institutions, so that England claimed him. Washington was the richest man of his era, his home an old manor house, his estate wide inherited acres, his relative an English baronet, his brother the child of Oxford University. The books he read were English books, the teachers he had were English tutors. The root was planted in English soil, though it fruited under American skies. But Americanism is the very essence of Lincoln's thoughts, Lincoln's enthusiasm, Lincoln's utterances, and Lincoln's character. One of the golden words of the Republic is the word "opportunity." Here, all the highways that lead to office, land and honour must be open unto all young feet. A banker's son may climb to the governor's mansion, or the White House, but so may the washerwoman's. The widow's son practices eloquence in the corn fields of Virginia, but he has ability and patriotism, and we bring Henry Clay to the Senate chamber. A child out in Ohio goes barefooted over the October grass, driving an old red cow to the barn lot, but we bring McKinley to the White House.
Yonder stands the Temple of Fame. The door is open by day and by night, and a tall, thin, sallow boy turns his back upon a log cabin in Illinois and seeks entrance. But the angel at the threshold asks hard questions: "Can you eat crusts? Can you wear rags? Can you sleep in a garret? Can you endure sleepless nights and days of toil? Can you bear up against every wind that assails your bark? Can you live for liberty and God's truth, and can you die for them?" And that boy bowed his assent. Washington climbed hand over hand up the golden rounds of the ladder of success; Lincoln built the ladder up which he climbed out of the fence rails which his own hands had split. Like his Divine Master, he touched two or three crusts and turned them into bread for the hungry multitudes.
His little log cabin shames our palaces. His three books, the Bible, the "Pilgrim's Progress" and "Æsop's Fables" eclipse our libraries. His six months in a log schoolhouse were more than equal to our eight years in lecture hall and university. His fidelity to the great convictions shames our shifting politicians. For fifty years he walked forward under clouded skies. Like Dante, he held heart-break at bay. During one brief epoch only did his sun clear itself of clouds. He died without full recognition or reward. In retrospect he stands forth the saddest and sweetest, the strongest and gentlest, the most picturesque and the most pathetic figure in our history. The Saviour of the world was born in a stable and cradled in a manger, and went by the Via Dolorosa towards the world's throne. Not otherwise Abraham Lincoln was born in a cabin, more suited for herds and flocks than for a young mother and a little child; and by the way of poverty and adversity the great emancipator travelled towards his throne of influence and world supremacy.
History holds a few deeds so great that they can be done but once. There are some laws, some reforms and some liberties that once achieved are always achieved. Thus, Columbus discovered this new world, but his achievement reduced all the other explorers to the level of imitators. Thus Isaac Newton discovered gravity, and in a moment every other astronomer became a pupil and a disciple. There never can be but one James Watt, for, though a thousand inventors improve his engine, their names are little tapers, shining over against the sun. The last century offered men of genius two signal opportunities, and there were a thousand eager aspirants for the honour. Charles Darwin discovered the golden key that unlocked the kingdom of nature and life, and carried off the honours of science. Abraham Lincoln, in an hour when some would meanly lose it, planned to nobly save the Union, emancipated three million slaves, and carried off the honours in the realm of reform and liberty.
How great was the work done by this man and how supreme was the man himself, we can best understand by comparison and contrast. Among small men it is easy to be great. In Patagonia, where everybody eats blubber, a boy in the first reader is a prodigy of learning.
Anybody can be a giant in heroism and reform among Hottentots and South Sea savages. But the era of the Civil War was an era of heroes. Great men walked in regiments up and down the land. It was the age of Daniel Webster, whose genius is so wonderful that he achieved the four supreme things of four realms,—the greatest legal argument we have, the Dartmouth College case; the greatest plea before a judge and jury, the Knapp murder case; our finest outburst of inspirational eloquence, the oration at Bunker Hill; the greatest argument in defense of the Constitution, his reply to Hayne. It was the age of John C. Calhoun, a statesman whose political theories led half a continent to deeds of daring war. It was the era of Seward, the all-round scholar, of Chase the greatest secretary of treasury since Alexander Hamilton, a man who struck the rock with the rod of his genius, and made the waters of finance flow forth from the desert. It was the age of our greatest orators, for then Wendell Phillips and Beecher were at their best. It was the era of Emerson, the philosopher; of Theodore Parker, the reformer; of Garrison, the abolitionist; of Lovejoy, the martyr; of Lowell and Whittier, the poets of freedom; of Greeley, the editor; it was also the age of the greatest soldiers, Grant and Sherman, and Sheridan and Lee. The great man is a form of fruit ripened in an atmosphere made warm and genial, and the climate that nurtured Lincoln unfolded the talents that represented also other forms of mental fruit. Among these men Lincoln lived and wrote and spoke, and suffered and died;—but he stands forth a master among men, an indisputable genius, one of the five supreme statesmen of all history.
Now if we are to understand the unique place of Abraham Lincoln in our history we must recall again for a moment the men who set the battle lines in array. Unfortunately, most of our histories tell our children and youth that the Civil War raged about the slave. As a matter of fact, slavery was the occasion of the war, but not the cause. Slavery was the sulphur match that exploded the powder magazine, though the powder magazine could have been set off by a spark from the flint and steel, or a hundred other methods.
The Civil War was really fought over the question whether a constitutionally formed nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal could permanently endure. The whole period from 1789 to 1865 was a critical period, during which the Constitution was being tested and tried out.
During this testing many forms of secession were planned, and several actual rebellions took place. In 1787 there was a Massachusetts rebellion under Shays, over the question of taxation. In 1794 there was what was known as the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania. In 1830 to 1835 there was a secession movement on in South Carolina, and President Jackson put down that rebellion over the tariff. Then Daniel Webster marked out the final lines of battle, entrenching the Constitution against rebellious attempts. Webster fired the first shot of the war, whose last shot was fired at Appomattox. Webster carried the flag that Grant followed at Vicksburg, and shook out the folds of the banner that was crimsoned with blood at Gettysburg. It was Webster's banner that Anderson pulled down at Fort Sumter, under the stress of fire, and it was Webster's banner that, four years later to an hour, the same General Anderson pulled up on the same flagstaff at the same Fort Sumter.
During the period of the thirties and the forties, the conflict was a conflict of words and arguments between men like Webster and Calhoun and Garrison and Phillips. Later, the strife took on the form of a guerrilla warfare, and here and there leaders like Lovejoy were martyred. At last the strife entered into politics, when Douglas and Lincoln struggled for the supremacy of their principles,—but always it was a question of Constitutional interpretation, against whatever interest attacked the "supreme law."
Soon the conflict entered the Church, and the American Tract Society, to hold the gifts of slave owners, forbade the distributions of Testaments to slaves, while the Bishop of New Jersey destroyed an edition of the Prayer Book because it contained a picture of Ary Scheffer's picture of "Christ the Emancipator," who was engaged in striking the shackles from slaves. The bishop was quite willing that Christ should open the eyes of the blind, make the deaf to hear and the lame to walk, but as for Jesus freeing the slaves—well, that was too much. Over the question of the Constitutional power of Congress to resist the further extension of slavery in newly opened territories, the whole land rocked with excitement. Liberty and Slavery, like two giants, grappled for the death struggle. In such an era God raised up Abraham Lincoln, to lead the people out of the wilderness, and into the Promised Land of Union, of Liberty, and of Peace.
Never was a candidate for universal fame born under so unfriendly a sky. His annals are "the short and simple annals of the poor." His home was a log cabin that had but three sides, the fourth one being a buffalo robe, swaying to and fro in the wind. When the biting wind of poverty became unbearable in Kentucky, the scant possessions were loaded upon a horse, carried across the Ohio, and the child walked barefooted through the forests of Indiana, where a new shack was built in the wilderness. There Lincoln's "angel mother" sickened and died—that mother to whom Lincoln said he owed all that he was or hoped to be. Then when the winter of poverty and discontent settled down blacker than ever, the father removed to another State, where the mud was deeper, and the winters colder, where nature was less propitious. Lying on his face, before blazing logs, the boy committed to memory the four Gospels, "Æsop's Fables," and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." At nineteen he went to New Orleans, and standing in the slave market saw a young girl sold at public auction, and told his brother, Dennis Hanks, that if he ever had a chance he would hit slavery the hardest blow he could. At twenty he split 1,200 rails for a farmer, whose wife wove for him three yards of cloth, dyed in walnut juice, with which he had a new suit of clothes. He started a little store, failed in business, became a surveyor, bought a copy of the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence; was made postmaster; several years later returned to the government agent the exact silver quarters and copper cents that he had kept tied up in a bag, because honesty meant that the identical coins must be returned to the government; entered upon the study and the practice of the law; was elected to the legislature, and reflected; was sent to Congress, and on a second campaign for the United States senatorship from Illinois met his competitor, Stephen A. Douglas, in the great debate. Beginning this contest, he delivered the "house divided against itself cannot stand" speech; and in the course of his marvellous debate made the issue between liberty and slavery so clear that a wayfaring man, though a fool, could not misunderstand; declared that if slavery was not wrong, there was nothing that was wrong. Soon he came to be looked upon as one who each year would coin the happy phrase and the rhythmical watchword that would be taken upon the lips of 30,000,000 of people; was made the leader of the new "party of freedom," and President.
Now, with infinite skill and patience, he entered upon the task of proving that he was the strongest man in his Cabinet, the strongest man in the North, the strongest man in the country, and the only man who had the last fact in the case, and therefore had the right to rule. Seward, experienced politician and statesman that he was, began by delicately hinting to Lincoln that if he felt himself unequal to emergencies, he could rely upon his Secretary of State for guidance, and that he, Seward, would not evade the responsibility. Lincoln answered by reading Seward's statement of a possible measure, and then placing beside it a statement of his own that reduced Seward to the level of a schoolboy standing up beside a giant. Then Stanton entered the lists as competitor, and quietly Lincoln asserted himself until Stanton's attitude became one of almost reverent worship, as he said of Lincoln, "Henceforth he belongs with the immortals." Then Greeley put in his claim for supremacy, and after Lincoln had published his answer to Horace Greeley, in lines as clear as crystal, and in words as gentle as sunbeams, not a man in the land but saw that Lincoln was intellectually head and shoulders above Horace Greeley. One by one and step by step he ascended the hills of difficulty. Round by round he climbed the ladder of fame. Naturally, therefore, his centennial was observed by a week's celebration, when all the wheels were still, and all the stores and factories were silent, when ninety millions of people were gathered into one vast audience chamber, when one name was upon all lips—the name of Abraham Lincoln, the emancipator of the slaves, the acknowledged master of men, who gave liberty to the slaves that he might assure freedom to the free.
Thoughtless writers have talked Lincoln's ancestry down, and careless biographers have defamed him. Superficial students speak of him as a miracle, and say that his genius is surrounded with silence and mystery. But all that Abraham Lincoln was he had at the hands of his fathers and his mothers. Although their greatness was latent, his parents had as much ability in their way as their distinguished son had in his way. How do we know? Because when God wants to call a strong man He begins by calling his father and mother. There never was a great man who did not have a great ancestry, even though the greatness may have been latent and unconscious.
Every strong man stands upon the shoulders of his ancestors. When you start for the top of Pike's Peak you start at Omaha. When you reach Denver you are six thousand feet in the air, and Pike's Peak is shouldered up on the foot-hills. Socrates is a great teacher, but look at Sphroniscus, the sculptor, his father. Paganini is a great musician, but Paganini was born of musicians whose wrists had muscles that stood out like whip-cords. Bach is a great musician, but there were forty people of the name of Bach mentioned in musical dictionaries. Charles Darwin is the great scientist, but there were four generations of scientists who had made ready for Darwin, just as there were seven generations of scholars that culminated in Emerson. And standing in the shadow behind Abraham Lincoln are half a dozen generations of men and women who handed forward to him a perfect logic engine, a sound mind, in a sound body; a mental instrument that worked without fever and without friction and without flaw. At the hands of Stradivarius one piece of apple wood is fashioned into a violin. If Stradivarius passes by the other board because he has not time, let no man say the board that was undeveloped was not full of latent music. The Divine Artist and Architect shaped Abraham Lincoln's nature into a world instrument, but the same quality and the stuff were in his father and mother, who lived and died a bundle of roots that were never planted, a handful of blossoms that never fruited.
Lincoln's father and mother were like the crystal caves in their own Kentucky. There the traveller is led through a cave of crystals, newly discovered. One day a farmer ploughing thought the ground sounded hollow under his feet. Going to the barn, he brought a spade and opened up an aperture. Flinging down a rope, his friends let the explorer down, and when the torches were lighted, lo, a cave as of amethysts, sapphires and diamonds! For generations the cave had been undiscovered and the jewels unknown. Wild beasts had wandered above these flashing gems, and still more savage men had lived and fought and died there. And yet just beneath was this cave of splendid beauty. Oh, pathetic illustration of men who are big with talent, of women full of latent gifts, of fathers and mothers like Thomas Lincoln and his young wife, who struggle on without opportunity, who are denied their chance, who are imprisoned by poverty, and fettered by circumstance, who are like birds beating bloody wings against the bars of an iron cage, who die unfulfilled prophecies, and dying, transfer their ambitions to their gifted children, believing that their son shall behold what the father and mother must die without seeing. God worked no miracle in Abraham Lincoln.
There is a photograph of the signature of the grandfather upon a title deed in Culpeper County in Virginia. Now, place that signature side by side with the signature of Abraham Lincoln on the emancipation proclamation, and the strong, sinewy sweep in the signature of the grandfather comes down and repeats itself in the strong, steady clearness of the grandson. And perhaps the strong, sinewy sentence came down and repeated itself also, for all fine thinking stands with one foot on fine brain fibre. The time has come for men with a sharp knife and a hot iron to expunge from two or three of the otherwise best biographies of Abraham Lincoln these false, superficial and ignorant statements about his ancestry. Science, observation, experience, history and sifted facts all unite to tell us that whatever was great in its unfolding in the talent of Abraham Lincoln was great in the seed form in his father and mother.
Where were the hidings of his power? Why is Lincoln revered above his fellows, the orators, the soldiers, and the statesmen and editors and secretaries of his time? A line of contrast with the other great men who were his competitors for fame will make Lincoln's supremacy to stand forth as clear in outline as the mountains, and as bright as the stars. For example, Wendell Phillips was the agitator and orator of the abolitionists. Phillips said, "Emancipation is the essential thing. The Union secondary. If the Southern States will not emancipate the slaves, force them out of the Union." Horace Greeley was the editor of the war epoch. Greeley said, "Emancipation is first, the Union secondary. If they prefer slavery to liberty let the erring sisters go." Beecher was the all-round man of genius. His great speech in England began with an exordium at Manchester; he stated the arguments at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool; he pronounced the peroration at Exeter Hall, in London, and no such peroration and eloquence has been heard since Demosthenes' philippic against the tyrant of Macedon. But Beecher's criticisms of Lincoln in the New York Independent during April and May of 1862 led Lincoln to exclaim after reading one of them, "Is Thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" If these great men did not appreciate the national crisis, Lincoln understood it perfectly. Now, over against the editorials of Beecher and Horace Greeley and the lectures of Phillips, stands Lincoln, and to these three men he sent words addressed only to Horace Greeley, explaining to them why the time had not come for the Emancipation Proclamation. And although a part of this we have quoted in defense of Webster's position in 1850, that and yet more of the famous letter may well be repeated here:—
"I would save the Union.
"If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them.
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery.
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.
"If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it.
"And if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.
"What I do about slavery and the coloured race I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.
"I shall do less whenever I believe that what I am doing hurts the cause.
"And I shall do more whenever I believe that doing more will help the Union."
How wonderfully does this publish the supremacy of Abraham Lincoln! Lincoln saw clearly, where others had an indistinct vision. As to gravity, Isaac Newton's vote outweighs all the other millions of men, and from the hour that Lincoln published this letter to Horace Greeley the people saw that Abraham Lincoln had the last fact in the case, saw the whole truth, saw it through and through. By sheer power, clarity of thought, strength of statement and fairness, Abraham Lincoln finally won over not only a lukewarm North, but a bitter South, until to-day he belongs to the ninety millions. If every Northerner should die, the brave and patriotic men of the South living now would defend everything for which Abraham Lincoln lived and died. For at last it is true of both North and South, in Lincoln's own pathetic words, that the mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field 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 surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
The most striking characteristic of Lincoln's character was his honesty. Some men are naturally secretive: Lincoln was naturally open as sunshine. The exact fact, truth in the hidden parts, openness, these were the innermost fibre of his being. Machiavelli laid out the diplomat's career on the line of deceit, and concealing the cards. Lincoln would have made a poor diplomat,—he spread all his cards out on the table. He won from his opponent, Stephen A. Douglas, the tribute, "Lincoln was the fairest and most honest man I ever knew." If there ever lived an absolutely honest lawyer, Lincoln was the man. In his work before the jury Lincoln never misrepresented his opponent's position, never twisted the testimony of the witness, never made biassed statements to win a verdict. Once a young lawyer who was opposing Lincoln made a poor plea for his client, and overlooked in his argument before the jury two most important considerations. Lincoln was restless, and greatly disturbed. He seemed to think that the lawyer's client had been badly used, and that his attorney had not given him a fair chance, or guarded his rights. When Lincoln arose, therefore, he began by saying that the opposing counsel had overlooked the most important point. He then stated his opponent's position far more strongly than his lawyer had, and made the best possible statement for his opponent, to the astonishment and indignation of his own client, whom he was defending. Then Lincoln turned to answer these arguments,—with the result that for the first time the two litigants understood the exact facts of both sides, and at Lincoln's request settled the case, withdrawing it from the court.
This love of the exact truth and of fair play and of essential justice shone from the man's face, dominated his arguments, explained his view-point, revealed his character. The nickname, "Honest Old Abe," tells the whole story. Lincoln's final judgment partook of the nature of a final decree and law. At length his pronouncements became like a divine fiat. Take the truth out of Lincoln's character, and it would be like taking the warmth out of a sunbeam. He was truth, he thought truth, loved the truth, surrendered himself to the truth. Under that influence he refused to play politics, or fence for position with Douglas. Once Lincoln won a case so easily that he returned one-half of the retainer's fee, because he felt that he had not earned it.
Here, therefore, is found the secret of Lincoln's unbounded popularity. The common people know their friends, and—what with Lincoln's gentleness, his justice, his boundless kindness, his sympathy with the poor and the unfortunate, and his honesty—he became the most beloved man in the Illinois circuit.
Wonderful, too, his literary achievements. His great passages read like the Bible, and have almost the moral authority thereof. If preachers ever wear the old Bible out, Lincoln's Second Inaugural, and his speech at Gettysburg, and certain other passages, will furnish texts for another hundred years. One thing is certain,—if Chinese students in their universities two thousand years from now translate any oration out of the English language, as we now translate the speeches of Demosthenes, these Chinese students will translate Lincoln's speech at Gettysburg, and his Second Inaugural Address. Contrary to the usual idea, it may be confidently affirmed that Lincoln was a well equipped man, and had the best possible training for literary style. During the plastic years of memory, Lincoln had three books to study, and two of these are the finest models for style in all literature,—King James' Version of the Bible, and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." These are the world's great literary masterpieces, these are the wells of English, pure and undefiled. Upon these two books Robert Burns was reared. To the fact that his mother made him commit to memory forty chapters of the Bible before he was seven years old, John Ruskin attributed his mastery in English style. Second rate men know something about everything. Lincoln was a first rate man who knew everything about some one thing. If you want to make a versatile man, turn a boy loose in a library. If you want a boy to have the note of distinction upon his pages, lock him out of a library, and send him into solitude, with the English Bible, with John Bunyan, and with Æsop's Fables, and let him take these three books into his intellect, as he takes meat and bread into the rich blood of the physical system.
Literary style is the shadow that the soul flings across the page. Style is simply the intellect rushing into exhibition and verbal form. Therefore style is the balance of faculty, symmetry of development. A man is healthy when he does not know that he has a single organ in his body, and a page has style when you do not know where to find the note of distinction. There is a world of difference between "style," and "a style." Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural has style. Carlyle's French Revolution has a style. A perfect Kentucky horse has style. A knee-sprung horse has a style. Down the track comes this perfect horse, eyes flashing, head up, neck arched, feet dancing, not a flaw, not a blemish, upon leg or body. Looking at the glorious creature you exclaim, "That horse has style!" For a horse's style is born of perfect health, perfect lungs and perfect legs, one power balancing another, and all united to produce an absolutely perfect horse. Now comes a horse that represents a collection of ringbones, and glanders, and poll-evil. The one horse limping in front has "a style." Thomas Carlyle's sentences are knee-sprung in front and his phrases are spavined behind, and, therefore, Carlyle has "a style" but not "style." You would know one of his sentences if you saw its skeleton lying in the desert on the road to Khartoum. But on the other hand, Lincoln has "style,"—that indescribable bloom and beauty, born of balance, development and symmetrical growth. Samuel Johnson bulged on the side of Latinity. Daniel Webster is an example of the magnificent, illustrating gorgeousness, opulence, and tropic splendour. Lincoln's sentences are like the Bible and Bunyan,—they are plate-glass windows through which you look to see the jewelled thought beyond.
Lincoln tells us how he made his style. One day he heard a man use the word "demonstrate." For days he cudgelled his brains to find out just what it was to demonstrate a statement. He tells us that when he was about eight years old, he began to be irritated when men used long words that he could not understand. He began the habit of thinking over in the dark before he went to sleep any story he had heard, any statement that had been made, and he tried to substitute for the long hard words little short simple words, that a boy could understand. During those early years, he learned that the rich, racy, homey words are steeped and perfumed with beautiful associations. He knew that words are fossil poetry. What would one not give for the old cloak that Paul had from Troas, a piece of the marble by Phidias, the old threshold worn by the feet of Socrates, an old missal illuminated by Bellini, an old note-book in which Shakespeare wrote the first outline of Hamlet! And the old, sweet, home words with which a mother soothes her babe, with which a lover woos his bride, the old words of God, and home and native land, are the words that are rich in association and in power to move the heart. A bird lines its nest with feathers plucked from its own breast, and the heart steeps the dear, simple speech of home life in sacred associations. So Lincoln cut out all the long Latin words, and substituted the short Saxon ones. Schooled in the two great master books that are the precious life spirit of earth's greatest souls treasured up, he developed his style.
Nor must we overlook the fact that the apparent narrowness of his culture represents a real concentration that made for richness and depth. If one must choose, take the upper Rhine that is a river deep and pure and sweet, and strong for bearing the fleets of war and peace because it is confined between banks and narrowed. But when the Rhine comes down to the flats and approaches the sea and casts off all restraints, and tries to include everything, it turns into a swamp, a morass, losing its power for commerce, and becoming a source of disease and death. Lincoln's culture was limited to the English, and to a mastery of the Constitution—the principles of fundamental justice, to one country—the Republic, to one topic—the Union, and to one reform—Slavery. Beyond all doubt, this concentration of study during the critical years of his career made up a much better preparation than if he had gone to a college, studied half a dozen languages, and fifty or sixty different subjects, and come out well smattered, but poorly educated. It may be doubted whether Lincoln would have been much better off had he been able to read Latin and Greek, and speak French and German. Many people can say "It is a little yellow dog" in Greek, and German, and French, and Italian, and English, but after all it is only a little yellow dog. What educates is the idea, and not the half dozen names of a thing without an idea.
The important thing about a cistern is water, and not many mouths to the pump. Having spent many years learning to express one idea in five ways, one might be glad to trade the five ways of expression for five ideas to be expressed in one way. Edward Everett, once President of Harvard University, could talk in five languages, and at Gettysburg spoke for two hours. Lincoln could speak in one language, and did so for two minutes. But the next morning Mr. Everett wrote to the President: "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes." Lincoln's one language shames our knowledge of four languages, his three books shame our libraries, and our four years of college culture.
Nor must we overlook the influence upon Lincoln's style of the parables of Jesus and the fables of Æsop. There are two invariable signs of genius in a boy,—one is the serious note, and the other is the picture-making note. All the great things represent serious thinking. The greatest artist of the last century was the most serious one,—Watt, with his Love and Life, and Love and Death, and Mammon, and Hope. The great poems have been the serious poems, the In Memoriam, and the Intimations of Immortality, the Hamlet and the Lear. The great orators have been the serious orators.
The next sign of genius is the picture-making faculty. Men of talent evolve arguments, men of genius create emblems, parables and pictures. Minds oftentimes called profound use long abstractions, and are called deep thinkers, because nobody can understand them. But along comes a man of genius, and he squeezes the juice out of the abstract argument, and flings the rind away, and tells you what it is like.
Measured in terms of genius, the parables of Jesus are the greatest literary achievements in history. Æsop's fables teach by pictures. "Pilgrim's Progress" is pictorial.
Lincoln was exceedingly fortunate in his generation in that the three great books of pictures were in his hands during the imaginative epoch. Of course he was born with the talent for parable, because genius is one-half nature and the other half nurture. It was this natural gift and the training that taught him how when he had completed an argument and mastered the principle, to say, Now what is this great principle like, and how can I condense it into a picture and put it in a happy phrase that will sing itself across the land? This picture-making gift inspired him to quote the keen wisdom of that expression of Jesus, "The house divided against itself cannot stand." This skill in parables gave him the expression, "Better not swap horses in the middle of the stream," that gave him his second election. This vision power gave him that sentence equal to anything in Shakespeare, when Vicksburg fell, "Once more the Father of Waters goes unvexed to the sea." This faculty enabled him to sweep into one illustration a thousand arguments, so that the people could never forget the mother principle that explained the facts.
Nor may we forget what the great cause did for him. The era of the war was a great era, because God heaved society as the winds heave the waves, and men were swept forward with irresistible power upon the great movement of liberty. Great movements make great epochs and great men. A great ideal of God and righteousness and liberty lifts Savonarola and Florence to new levels; a great cathedral inspires Michael Angelo's great dome; a Divine Saviour and His transfiguration exalt Raphael; Paradise explains Dante; listening to the sevenfold Hallelujah chorus of God arouses the sweep and majesty of Milton's epic; the woes of three million slaves made eloquence possible for Phillips and Beecher. The saving of a Union, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal, represented a cause into which Lincoln could fling himself. The thought of meanly losing or nobly saving the last, best hope of earth, exalted, transformed, and armed the men, making feeblings strong, and strong men to be giants.
Eloquence and heroism wane during the commercial era. No man can be eloquent upon the duty on hides, or salt, or the digging of mud out of a river. But dumb lips will break into glorious speech at the thought of freeing millions of slaves, and saving free institutions, and handing liberty forward to other lands, and to generations yet unborn. The era of Fort Sumter and Gettysburg, when liberty and slavery were in their death grapple, was an era so great that the ordinary issues of avarice, self-interest, fame, luxury, became contemptible, and men were exalted to the point where they spake, and suffered, and marched, and died, more like gods than men. The great battles to be fought, the great armies to be moved, the great navies to be directed, the great orators and editors with whom he counselled, the many slaves for whom he became a voice, the great days on which he felt that he was making history, the great future into which he hoped to send the great liberties unimpaired and purified, the great God over all,—lent greatness to Abraham Lincoln, clothed him with pathos, with sorrow, with dignity and majesty, as with garments.
Like every giant, he was gentle. The truly great are always sensitive and sympathetic. In proportion as the mountain goes upward in size does it gain in power to return the strong man's shout, or the sigh of the lost child, echoing and reëchoing the cry of need. Sympathy is the soul journeying abroad, to bind up the wounds of him who has fallen among thieves. Sympathy cannot feast in a palace while the poor famish. Selfishness can stop its ears with wax lest it hear the groan of the poor, but sympathy is knitted in with its kind. Lincoln worked as hard to help men as slave masters did to recover a fugitive to bondage. It has been beautifully said that he did kind deeds stealthily, as if he were afraid of being found out. He became a shield above the fallen; he stood between the soldier, condemned for the sleep of exhaustion, and the hangman's noose. He refused to attend a cabinet meeting because he was trying to find a reason for reprieving a soldier. "It is butchery day," he said one Friday morning, and he denied himself to a committee because he did not think that hanging would help the boy who was condemned to die. "They said he was homely," said a poor woman, going away from the White House with a reprieve for her son; "he is the handsomest man I ever saw." It is this sympathy that runs through his letter to that mother, whose five sons had died gloriously on the field of battle. For he squeezed the purple clusters of the heart, and let the crimson tide flow down upon the page, as he prayed that the mother might carry through the years "only the cherished memory of the loved and the lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom."
More striking still, Lincoln's trust in God and His overruling providence. Mr. Herndon in his biography and Dr. Abbott in an editorial and an oration at Cooper Institute emphasize the agnosticism of Lincoln. The one says that in his youth he wrote an article against Christianity, and the other that he was not a technical Christian. Dr. Abbott thinks all this so important that he places the agnosticism of Lincoln at the forefront. But too much has been made of the schoolboy article of Lincoln on doubt and infidelity. In his youth Gladstone was a Tory, but he outgrew it. In the outset Paul was against Christianity. Tennyson and Wordsworth in their teens wrote puerile verse, just as Lincoln in his teens wrote a foolish paper. But it is cruelly unfair not to allow Abraham Lincoln the full benefit of what he came to be, and not to take the man at his best. It is unfair to say that a man is what he is at his worst and lowest point; a man is what he is at his best and highest point. Stephen A. Douglas said Lincoln was the most honest man he ever knew. Well, if Lincoln was an honest man in his character, he must have been honest in talking about his religion and his faith in God. Was Abraham Lincoln an agnostic in that hour when he spoke his farewell words to his neighbours in Springfield, about starting on the memorable journey to his inauguration? He said: "I feel that I cannot succeed without the same divine aid that sustained Washington, and on the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support; and I hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive that divine assistance without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain." Was Abraham Lincoln without faith, and did he play to the gallery, when he set apart a day of fasting and prayer after the defeat at Bull Run? Having said that Abraham Lincoln was an honest man, why not remember it, when these critics read his First Inaugural, in which he declares that "intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favoured land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty." When Abraham Lincoln wrote the mother, Mrs. Bixby, "I pray that the heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement," he meant that he believed in God, in a God who answered prayer, in a God who cared for the mother living, and the five brave boys dead. "The Almighty has His own purposes," said Lincoln, in the Second Inaugural, an address that is steeped in religion, that exhales trust in God. Take God out of that Second Inaugural, and it would be like taking health out of the body, wisdom out of the book, sweetness out of the song, culture out of the intellect, life out of the body. You cannot in one breath say that Lincoln was an agnostic, and then in the next one say that Lincoln was an honest man. I care not one whit what Mr. Herndon says. I care everything about what Abraham Lincoln says about himself in his greatest speeches, in his noblest hours, when he gave his countrymen his latest, deepest, profoundest thoughts.
In trying to explain the character of Lincoln we therefore make our final appeal unto God, for God alone is equal to the making of this great man. When long time has passed, the name of Lincoln will probably be mentioned with Moses, Julius Cæsar, Paul, Shakespeare. Men will read a few of his paragraphs as a kind of Bible of Patriotism. Washington's name will not be less, but Lincoln's will certainly be more and more, and then still more. God and Sorrow made the man great.
And this is his life story. In the darkest hour of the Republic, when liberty and slavery were struggling to see which should rule the old homestead, it became evident that slavery would turn the garden into a desert, and the house into a ruin. And seeking a deliverer and a saviour, the great God, in His own purpose, passed by the palace with its silken delights. He took a little babe in His arms, and called to His side His favourite angel, the angel of Sorrow. Stooping, he whispered, "Oh, Sorrow, thou well-beloved teacher, take thou this little child of Mine and make him great. Take him to yonder cabin in the wilderness; make his home a poor man's house; plant his narrow path thick with thorns, cut his little feet with sharp and cruel rocks; as he climbs the hills of difficulty, make each footprint red with his own life-blood; load his little back with burdens; give to him days of toil and nights of study and sleeplessness; wrest from his arms whatever he loves; make his heart, through sorrow, as sensitive to the sigh of a slave as a thread of silk in a window is sensitive to the slightest wind that blows; and when you have digged lines of pain in his cheeks, and made his face more marred than the face of any man of his time, bring him back to me, and with him I will free three million slaves." That is how God made Abraham Lincoln great.
And then,—we slew him. For that is the way our ignorant, sinful earth has always rewarded its greatest souls. Ours is a world where we crucify the Saviour in Jerusalem, where we poison Socrates in Athens, where we exile Dante in Italy, and burn Savonarola in Florence, and starve Cervantes in Madrid, and jail Bunyan in Bedford,—for the greatest manhood is always rewarded with martyrdom. And what better thing for Abraham Lincoln than assassination, because he has emancipated three million slaves and saved the Union, as the last, best hope of earth?
But, lo, who are these in bright array, looking over the battlements of heaven, while the forces of liberty and slavery in other forms struggle together on these earthly plains beneath? These with radiant faces unstained by tears, that seem never to have known the mark of pain or sorrow? Ah! these are they who have come out of great tribulation, anguish and martyrdom; Paul from the stones; Homer from his blindness; Socrates from his cup of poison; Milton from his heart-break; Savonarola from his fagots, and Lincoln from his long martyrdom—the least part of which was the shot that freed his spirit in the hour of triumph and joy.