Your obedient servant,
A. Lincoln.”
After that no man might claim that he had not bared his soul.
Editors, political leaders, personal friends, vainly attempted during the Presidential campaign to draw from him some public expression of opinion, some hint of what was going on in his mind while the national horizon flamed with passion and threats of war were openly made by the slaveholders.
But he knew that it would not pay to say a word that might complicate a question so clear. The American people were sound at heart. If the issue could be confined to the question of whether slavery was morally right or wrong, the common people could be depended upon to vote against spreading it to the free territories.
Lincoln’s confidence in the plain people grew with years. In spite of his shrewd experience in politics he was free from cynicism. There was a childlike simplicity in his character, a central purity and earnestness, that enabled him to see under the broadcloth and ruffles of the East the same elemental humanity he had known under the deerhide, jeans and coonskins of the West.
Up to the hour of his death he gave no evidence of class consciousness. The rich citizen was no better and no worse than the poor citizen. The college professor was no better and no worse than the field hand. At the bottom of each was the original man, with almost divine possibilities of justice, love and compassion in him.
It was this supreme faith in the better natures of men, and their ability to reach sound conclusions on simple moral issues, that persuaded Lincoln to remain mute throughout the struggle.
How many political leaders are there in the United States to-day who disclose their minds and hearts so unreservedly to the people that they could dare to stand for office with closed lips, relying solely on their record and on the general public intelligence?
Even in his career as a lawyer Lincoln made fun of himself. His small fees were the jest of his companions. It is probable that he did not earn an average of more than three thousand dollars a year, notwithstanding his eloquence and logic. When he went to the White House, all his possessions, including his residence, were worth only about seven thousand dollars.
So he laughed at and made light of his personal appearance. The change from deerhide breeches and coonskin cap to black cloth and a high silk hat simply emphasized the clumsy enormity of his figure. His skin was yellow and his face seamed and puckered. The gray eyes looked out of hollow sockets. The high cheek-bones protruded sharply above sunken cheeks. The mouth was awry and the neck long, lean and scraggy. His immensely long arms swung loosely from stooped shoulders, his trousers were always “hitched up too high,” and his ill-kept hat was set at a grotesque tilt from his lugubrious countenance. His great height, the lank, swinging slouchiness of his immense frame, his somber, saggy clothing and sorrowful expression, added to unconventional manners, made him a target for his political opponents.