The incidents of his life were few but notable. He was a resident of three states before he was 21, and made a river trip to New Orleans, longer than Thomas Jefferson had taken at his age. At New Orleans he saw for the first time the auction and whipping of slaves, which made so deep an impression on him that it may be said to be the birth of his anti-slavery sentiment.
The choice of Mr. Lincoln for President was not a strained one. He was the logical selection. Lincoln’s qualities, that sympathy with the common people, that homely sincerity, have given him a place in the people’s hearts a little closer, a little dearer, than is held by any other public man. He had faults, but they were small compared with his virtues. He had not Washington’s grandeur, the mental alertness of Hamilton, or the intellectual force of Webster. His greatness was made up of natural qualities, as of a hillside towering o’er a plain, yet a part of it. Lincoln was surpassed in certain qualities by other of our historically great men, but there are none, we feel sure, who would have filled the place he filled as well as he.—Secretary of War Long.
LINCOLN’S SPECIFIC LIFE WORK.
One often thinks of his life as cut off, but no great man since Cæsar has seen his life work ended as did Lincoln. Napoleon died upon a desert rock, but not until Austerlitz and Wagram had become memories, and the dust of the empire even as all dust. Cromwell knew that England had not at heart materially altered. Washington did not know that he had created one of the great, perhaps the greatest, empires to be known to man. But Lincoln had a specific task to do—to save his country and to make it free—and on that fateful 14th of April he knew that he had accomplished both things.
There are those who would say that chance put this man where he was to do this work. To the thoughtful mind it was not chance, however, but design, and that the design of which all greatness is a part. War is indeed the crucible of the nations. It is the student of a century hence who shall properly place the civil war in American history. But, whatever that place be, there can be no doubt of the position in it of the war President. Like William the Silent, his domination of all about him was a matter not of personal desire, but of absolute and constant growth. There are few more interesting characters in history than Lincoln. There is none who in quite the same manner fits himself so absolutely into his circumstances. It is the highest form of genius that so produces as to make production seem effortless, and it is perhaps the greatest of all tributes to Lincoln that what he did seems sometimes only what the average man would have done in his place.
THE PROPOSED PURCHASE OF THE SLAVES.
The discussion on the question of whether or not Abraham Lincoln suggested at the conference with the southern commissioners at the so-called Fortress Monroe meeting, that he was prepared to pay $400,000,000 for the slaves in the Southern States provided peace with union could be obtained, is hardly likely to lead to any definite conclusion, for the reason that the few who should have known definitely about it are distinctly divided in their opinions. We are inclined to believe that, if the proposition was made, Mr. Lincoln, notwithstanding the immense influence that he then possessed, would have found it exceedingly difficult to convince Congress and a majority of the people of the North of the wisdom of the suggestion. As a business proposition, entirely apart from sentiment, it might have been, even at that late day, a wise plan to adopt. But the war had then been going on for years, and the hard feelings engendered would apparently have made the scheme a less tenable one then than at an earlier day. It will, we imagine, appear to future historians that, in spite of the example which had been set by England in the West Indies, those representing both the North and the South showed themselves, just prior to the war, wanting in the true elements of statesmanship in not realizing that it was better to peaceably adjust their differences than have recourse to physical force. It is now well understood, and might have been well understood at the time, that the main issue was the slave issue, and that once out of the way, all other sources of division were insignificant. We could have well afforded to vote, if need be, several thousands of millions of dollars to purchase the freedom of the slaves if by that means the civil war with all of its wastes and sufferings could have been avoided; and if not now, a generation or two hence, we feel convinced that the people, both of the North and the South, will be of the opinion that such an outcome of the contention would have been possible if we had had on both sides of the quarrel, statesmen of the caliber of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, John Quincy Adams and other eminent Americans who have made their mark in our national history.