We remember his strength and faith in the great war; we remember his gentle patience, his justice and mercy, and his martyrdom; but do we fully realize the effort he made to save his people from the ghastly sacrifice made on the battlefields where the nation was reborn?
IX
How still Lincoln became after his nomination for President in 1860! A note of acceptance, just twenty-three lines long, and then unbroken silence till the end of the campaign.
He had thundered throughout the country against the Christless creed of slavery until men forgot his crude manners, preposterous figure and shrill, piping voice in admiration and reverence of his noble qualities.
Now the crooked mouth was set hard. He retired to his modest home in Springfield, Illinois. Nor could threats or persuasions induce him to address a word to the public during that terrific campaign which was the prelude to the horrors of civil war.
In the upward reachings of Lincoln’s life there was a singular mysticism that sometimes startles one who contemplates the imperishable grandeur of his place in history.
He saw omens in dreams; experimented with the ghostly world of spiritualism; half-surrendered to madness, when his personal affections were attacked; predicted a violent death for himself; dreamed of his own assassination, and discussed the matter seriously; and gave evidence many times of a strange, aberrant emotional exaltation, alternated with brooding sadness or hilarious, uncontrollable merriment.
But behind these mere eccentricities were sanity, conscience, strength and far-seeing penetrativeness.
In the midst of his heroic debate on slavery with Douglas in 1858, while the whole nation watched the exciting struggle, he showed his statesmanlike appreciation of the situation when he said: “I am after larger game; the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this.”