Abraham Lincoln's Cardinal Traits; / A Study in Ethics, with an Epilogue Addressed to Theologians

by Clark S. Beardslee

Here is in Lincoln something wonderful. Among the millions of his fellowmen he counts but one. But in the range and grasp of his thought, in the eager passion of his heart, in the controlling power of his commanding will, he comprehends them all. Stable and heedful at once, he could challenge unanswerably every man's esteem. His symbol is the firm, benignant oak, the sheltering, abiding hills. Thus he stood to help and hold, to serve and rule among his fellowmen. Thus he wrought coherence into our great career. Thus he linked together those mighty political events with a logic which succeeding times have proved powerless to refute, but strong and glad to confirm. He had marvelous capacity to divine. With him to reason was to illuminate. Things bewilderingly obscure, within his thought and speech grew plain. He was our prime interpreter. He explained the Nation to itself. But in every such elucidation the Nation was made to co-operate. His instinctive, habitual attitude toward other men was that of a conferee. He was sensitively open to complaints and appeals. Delegations and private supplicants always found him courteous. This courtesy was never formal. To a degree altogether noteworthy the words of other men found entrance into the counselings of his mind. He was not merely accessible. He was impressible, sensitive, quick to appreciate and honor the sentiments of another man. With the earnest plea of balanced, honest argument, hailing from whatever source, he was facile to correspond. His judgments and decisions were amenable to estimates wholly novel to him. Indeed, to an almost astonishing degree his major movements were commensurate with the progress and pace of the national events that environed his life. In some of his mightiest accomplishments he seemed to do little more than register the conclusions of the national mind.

All this is to say that Lincoln's constancy was poise, not obstinacy; a well-reflected equilibrium, not a stiff rigidity. All his steadiness was studied. Never can it be said of Lincoln that his verdicts were snap judgments. On the contrary, with him deliberation and delay were so habitual and so excessively indulged, while pondering some massive, political perplexity, that the patience of some of our greatest statesmen repeatedly broke down, and he was charged repeatedly with criminal, and all but wanton indifference, inertia, and neglect. But never was sorer libel. Through it all he was only too intent. Through it all his eye refused to sleep, while his steady and steadying mind pursued the vexing task, until its permanent solution stood clear. And then, with his eye steadily single to the guiding hand of God, to the Nation's immortal weal, and to his own unsurrendered integrity, he would publish and fulfill his studied and sturdy resolve. Upon the basis of these internal mental conquests did all his firmness rest. Hence his life-long evenness and freedom from fluctuation.

But this challenges still further study. Given this notable blending in his mental habits of independent stalwartness and amenability to others' views, what is the inmost secret and explanation of his undeniable consistency? It lay in his human sincerity. His affinity with his neighbor was a reality. The Nation's deepest concerns were as deeply his own. Hence his ultimate convictions, though ripening in a single decade, proved to be in deep and enduring agreement with the ultimate convictions of the Nation at large, though requiring a full century to mature. The sentiments that were essentially his own were seen, when openly published upon his lips, to be the sentiments essential and common to his fellowmen. His personal aspiration was a national goal. His personal character was a national type. Truly representative, he was at the same time as truly unique. Always facing towards other men, he always stood erect.

This was Lincoln's constancy. It was not the stubbornness of an arbitrary will, although his will had regal energy. It was not a frigid intellectualism, although in mental penetration he could not be surpassed. It was not a tide of swelling enthusiasm, although the supreme emotion of his heart was the passion of an ideal patriotism. His commanding constancy, potent to compose a Nation's turbulence, was but the outer stature of his typical interior integrity. It was the open assertion and attestation of his personal self-respect.

Thus Lincoln's convictions and verdicts were unfailingly his own. And thus those verdicts and convictions had continental breadth. Dealing with a Nation's destiny, he came to be clothed with a Nation's majesty. In his own great heart, as in a Nation's crucible, he assembled and resolved the Nation's complexities; and in his own pure desire, as in a Nation's purified hopes, he defined and described our national goal. Of all things narrow and peculiar, of all things partisan and sectional, he purged his eye, until with malice toward none, with charity for all, with reverence towards God, he could see the total vastness of the things with which he had to deal.

Here is a loyalty worthy of the name—the plighted troth of one in whom the Nation's noblest hopes stand forth already realized, assured, secure. This defines and describes the force at play in this last inaugural. In the volume of those words Lincoln's message and Lincoln's manhood were identical. Its utterance was the voice of his self-respect. Herein Lincoln the patriot and Lincoln the man are one. Here was Lincoln's standard. His search for verity was a study of himself—of himself as true kindred of God and of his fellowmen. This is the core of Lincoln's honesty. This is the key to Lincoln's constancy. This is the secret of Lincoln's authority. This was the goal of Lincoln's quest for verity. This was for Lincoln the one reality. As child of the one great God, as closest kin of every man, he is our model champion and exemplar of the one abiding truth—personal self-respect. That this should be held unperverted and preserved intact was in the thought of Lincoln the primal equity, the very substance of a man's integrity.

His Humility—Worth

The name of Lincoln is linked inseparably with the lot of the slave. That the fortune of the lowly might be improved was the supreme enterprise of his life. As conceived by him, that enterprise concerned all men. Not for black men alone, and not alone for men in literal and evident bonds, was this, his major interest, engaged. Quite as keenly, nay even more, was his heart concerned for his closer kinsmen of Saxon blood, who never felt the slave driver's lash. But even here his prevailing inclination was a kindly solicitude for people of meager comfort, culture and liberty. Towards men whose fortune was adverse, and from whom more favored ones were prone to turn their face, his heart was prone to be compassionate. His very instincts seemed inclined to make the poor his intimates. And when he stood among the lowly, he never showed a sign that he had entered the shadow of any shame. Richly dowered with nobility himself, himself superior to every fortune, incapable of subjugation by any fate, a master owned among the mightiest, the dominant function of his life was ministration. This was his ambition. And it was sovereign. His towering aspiration was that the needy be relieved, that poor men might have means, that bondmen might be free.

This was a soaring, imperial wish. But it sent him where men were most down-trodden and overborne. It forced his name and reputation to become identified with the gross and low condition of the rudest, most untutored mortals of our land, the humble Afro-American slave. This lowly fellowship he never attempted to disguise nor consented to disclaim. He rather seemed to welcome whatever burden or reproach it might seem to involve. Before and against the white man who held the whip, beside and befriending the black who felt its lash, he chose to take, and persisted to keep, his stand. Many a time was this co-partnership flung in Lincoln's face with stinging words as a mongrel, shameful thing—with most vigorous persistence by Douglas in their famous debates. But it was not in Lincoln to desert and disown the poor, nor yet to apologize, nor to retort, nor even to reply. As champion and companion of the despised and embondaged victims of the white man's greed and contempt, Lincoln stands by the negro, as full of resoluteness, and as free from shame, as though defending his own home.

Here is genuine humility, not an attitude assumed, but a virtue inwrought. That this rare and Christian grace was planted deep in Lincoln's heart, and pervaded the total fullness of his life, may be argued from the very texture of his last inaugural. Upon just this point that document deserves minute attention. From the vantage ground of April 4, 1865, and from the point of view of slavery, that address is a profound and most commanding interpretation of the philosophy and phenomena of our American life. The war, God's Providence, and slavery—they are its sovereign themes. God's Providence shaping into national discipline the tragedy of the war; slavery "somehow" its deepest, fateful "cause:" there are thoughts for thoughtful men, who may wish to understand the meaning of our national life. The point to notice here is to observe how in Lincoln's mind in 1865, the course, and curse, and fate of slavery connect. It is nothing less than a profound elucidation of outstanding American events. It intimates impressively how Lincoln's mind had brooded and pondered over the lot of the African slave. He had reckoned all the value of their unrequited toil. The marks of their bruises and wounds were seared upon his soul. And of all the meaning of that sore humiliation, in terms of our national destiny and of the Divine dominion, he became the supreme and sympathetic expositor. In his unfolding of that meaning was infolded the master motive of his life. Under the hand of God he was having bitter but submissive share in setting forever right the cruel, age-long wrongs of the African slave. That such sentiments should take such shape at such a time is signal demonstration that they were the central sentiments of his heart. He was highly designated to a humble task; and he knew no higher honor than to keep close friendship with the poor, until his high commission stood complete. And to this close affiliation of lowliest lives with the loftiest aims and issues of his great career, he devotes well-nigh the whole of his inaugural address as our Nation's president to expound, therein betraying no slightest sign that he sees in that alliance the slightest incongruity. In that defense and championship of the rights that were elemental to men, though the most despised, he saw his highest dignity as president. And to that lowly aim he shaped and pledged his policy, his party, his fortune, and his fame.