Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further.”[223]
Impressed by their beauty, or by some presentiment unuttered, he read them aloud a second time. As the friends about listened to his reading, they little thought how in a few days what was said of the murdered Duncan would be said of him. “Nothing can touch him further.” He is saved from the trials that were gathering. He had fought the good fight of Emancipation. He had borne the brunt of war with embattled hosts, and conquered. He had made the name of Republic a triumph and a joy in foreign lands. Now that the strife of blood was ended, it remained to be seen how he could confront those machinations which are only prolongation of the war, and more dangerous because more subtle,—where recent Rebels, with professions of Union on the lips, but still denying the birthday Declaration of the Republic, vainly seek to organize peace on another Oligarchy of the skin. From all these trials he was saved. But his testimony lives, and will live forever, speaking by his life, speaking yet again by his death. Invisible to mortal sight, and now above all human weakness, he is still champion, as in his early conflict, summoning his countrymen back to the truths in the Declaration of Independence. Dead, he speaks with more than living voice. But the author of Emancipation cannot die. His immortality on earth has begun. Country and age are already enshrined in his example, as if he were the great poet gathered to his fathers.
“Back to the living hath he turned him,
And all of death has passed away;
The age that thought him dead and mourned him
Itself now lives but in his lay.”[224]
If the President were on earth, he would protest against any monotony of panegyric. He never exaggerated. He was always cautious in praise, as in censure. In endeavor to estimate his character, we shall be nearer him in proportion as we cultivate the same spirit.
In person he was tall and bony, with little resemblance to any historic portrait, unless he might seem in one respect to justify the epithet given to an early English king.[225] As he stood, his form was angular, with something of that straightness in lines so peculiar in the figure of Dante by Flaxman. His countenance had more of rugged strength than his person, and, while in repose, inclined to sadness; yet it lighted easily. Perhaps the quality that struck most at first was his constant simplicity of manner and conversation, without form or ceremony beyond that among neighbors. His handwriting had the same simplicity. It was clear as that of Washington, but less florid. Each had been surveyor, and was perhaps indebted to this experience. But the son of the Western pioneer was more simple in nature, and the man appeared in the autograph. An integrity which has become a proverb belonged to the same quality. The most perfect honesty must be the most perfect simplicity. Words by which an ancient Roman was described picture him,—“Vita innocentissimus, proposito sanctissimus.”[226] He was naturally humane, inclined to pardon, and never remembered hard things against himself. He was always good to the poor, and in dealings with them was full of those “kind little words which are of the same blood as great and holy deeds.” On the Saturday before his death I saw him shake hands with more than five thousand soldier patients in the tent-hospitals at City Point, and he told me afterwards that his arm was not tired. Such a character awakened the instinctive sympathy of the people. They saw his fellow-feeling, and felt the kinship. With him as President, the idea of Republican Institutions, where no place is too high for the humblest, was perpetually apparent; so that his simple presence was like a Proclamation of Human Equality.
While social in nature and enjoying the flow of conversation, he was often reticent. Modesty was natural to such a character. Without affectation, so was he without pretension or jealousy. No person, civil or military, complains that he appropriated to himself any honor belonging to another. To each and all he gave the credit that was due. And this same spirit appeared in smaller things. In a sally of Congressional debate, he exclaimed, that a fiery slave-master of Georgia, who had just spoken, was “an eloquent man, and a man of learning, so far as he could judge, not being learned himself.”[227]