But the memory of Lincoln, even now, so many years after his piteous death, stirs the tenderest love of the nation, thrills it with a sense of intimate relationship to his greatness and awakens a personal affection in the average American’s breast—not a mere political enthusiasm, but a peculiarly heartfelt sentiment that has no parallel in human history.
If it be true that the nation has at once become old, that it has grown sinister and corrupt, that it cringes before material success, stands in awe of multi-millionaires and prostrates itself before money, why is it that we love Lincoln?
If in the pride of wealth and strength we have forgotten our early republican ideals of simple justice and manhood, how is it that the movement to commemorate the birth of this lowly, clumsy backwoodsman and frontier lawyer turned President—a movement begun in the rich cities of New York and Chicago—instantly spread to the remotest villages, and all that seemed ugly and haggard, with all that seemed brave and fair and true, swarmed together, heart-naked, to make that twelfth day of February an unforgetable event?
Arches and statues; flower-strewn streets with endless processions; moving ceremonies in thousands of schools and colleges; multitudes kneeling in churches; other multitudes listening to orators; warships and fortresses roaring out salutes.
Yet these were the mere externals of Lincoln Day. The average American does not shout when he hears Lincoln’s name. Even the political demagogue, the stock gambler, the captain of industry, aye, the sorriest scarecrow of a yellow journalist, is likely to grow silent and reverential when that word is spoken.
With all our national levity, we do not jest about Lincoln. With all our political divisions, every party to-day reveres his memory and claims his spirit. It is sober truth to say that he struck the noblest, highest, holiest note in the inmost native soul of the American people. There is nothing so arrogant or sodden and sordid in that new paganism which has set its altars in Wall Street but will in some sense uncover and kneel at the sound of his name.
Our fleet, in its voyage around the world, found no record of such a man in any of the lands of its visitations. Each nation, each epoch, each race, has its hero. But there is none like Lincoln. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Cromwell—how cold their glory seems to his, how immeasurably smaller their place in the affections of mankind?
And, while America was getting ready to honor Lincoln, none might pretend to understand his people who had not first discovered what it is in his character and in ours that, even in this day of restless commercialism, makes us love him above comparison in the story of the world’s great men—love him for his poverty, for his simplicity, for his humanity, for his fidelity, for his justice, for his plainness, for his life and for his death.
By sheer force of character, conscience-inspired, Abraham Lincoln rose from abject depths of squalid environment to become the most august figure in American history, and perhaps the most significant and lovable personality in the annals of mankind.
In his amazing emergence to greatness from poverty and ignorance is to be found a supreme demonstration and justification of American institutions.