CHARACTER OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.
Mr. Lincoln had been some time in the Presidency before the public estimate of him was correct or appreciative. The people did not at first understand him. In the glamour of the Presidential canvass they had idealized him,—attributing to him some traits above and many below his essential qualities. After his election and before his inauguration there was a general disposition to depreciate him. He became associated in the popular mind with an impending calamity, and tens of thousands who had voted for him, heartily repented the act and inwardly execrated the day that committed the destinies of the Union to his keeping. The first strong test brought upon Mr. Lincoln was this depressing re-action among so many of his supporters. A man with less resolute purpose would have been cast down by it, but Mr. Lincoln preserved the mens aequa in arduis. Through the gloom of the weeks preceding his inauguration he held his even way. Perhaps in the more terrible crises through which he was afterwards called to pass, a firmer nerve was required, but not so rare a combination of qualities as he had shown in the dismal months with which the year 1861 opened.
Mr. Lincoln united firmness and gentleness in a singular degree. He rarely spoke a harsh word. Ready to hear argument and always open to conviction, he adhered tenaciously to the conclusions which he had finally reached. Altogether modest, he had confidence in himself, trusted to the reasoning of his own mind, believed in the correctness of his own judgment. Many of the popular conceptions concerning him are erroneous. No man was farther than he from the easy, familiar, jocose character in which he is often painted. While he paid little attention to form or ceremony he was not a men with whom liberties could be taken. There was but one person in Illinois outside of his own household who ventured to address him by his first name. There was no one in Washington who ever attempted it. Appreciating wit and humor, he relished a good story, especially if it illustrated a truth or strengthened an argument, and he had a vast fund of illustrative anecdote which he used with the happiest effect. But the long list of vulgar, salacious stories attributed to him, were retailed only by those who never enjoyed the privilege of exchanging a word with him. His life was altogether a serious one—inspired by the noblest spirit, devoted to the highest aims. Humor was but an incident with him, a partial relief to the melancholy which tinged all his years.
He presented an extraordinary combination of mental and moral qualities. As a statesman he had the loftiest ideal, and it fell to his lot to inaugurate measures which changed the fate of millions of living men, of tens of millions yet to be born. As a manager of political issues and master of the art of presenting them, he has had no rival in this country unless one be found in Jefferson. The complete discomfiture of his most formidable assailants in 1863, especially of those who sought to prejudice him before the people on account of the arrest of Vallandigham, cannot easily be paralleled for shrewdness of treatment and for keen appreciation of the reactionary influences which are certain to control public opinion. Mr. Van Buren stands without rival in the use of partisan tactics. He operated altogether on men, and believed in self- interest as the mainspring of human action. Mr. Lincoln's ability was of a far higher and broader character. There was never the slightest lack of candor or fairness in his methods. He sought to control men through their reason and their conscience. The only art the employed was that of presenting his views so convincingly as to force conviction on the minds of his hearers and his readers.
The Executive talent of Mr. Lincoln was remarkable. He was emphatically the head of his own Administration, ultimate judge at all points and on all occasions where questions of weight were to be decided. An unwise eulogist of Mr. Seward attributes to him the origination and enforcement of the great policies which distinguished the Administration. So far is this from the truth that in more than one instance the most momentous steps were taken against the judgment and contrary to the advice of the Secretary of State. The position of control and command so firmly held by Mr. Lincoln was strikingly shown when the Peace Conference was about to assemble at Fortress Monroe. He dispatched Mr. Seward to the place of meeting in advance of his own departure from Washington, giving him the most explicit instructions as to his mode of action, —prescribing carefully the limitations he should observe, and concluding with these words: "You will hear all they may choose to say, and report it to me. You will not assume to definitely consummate any thing." Assuredly this is not the language of deference. It does not stop short of being the language of command. It is indeed the expression of one who realized that he was clothed with all the power belonging to his great office. No one had a more sincere admiration of Mr. Seward's large qualities than the President; no one more thoroughly appreciated his matchless powers. But Mr. Lincoln had not only full trust in his own capacity, but a deep sense of his own responsibility—a responsibility which could not be transferred and for which he felt answerable to his conscience and to God.
CHARACTER OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.
There has been discussion as to Mr. Lincoln's religious belief. He was silent as to his own preference among creeds. Prejudice against any particular denomination he did not entertain. Allied all his life with Protestant Christianity, he thankfully availed himself of the services of an eminent Catholic prelate—Archbishop Hughes of New York—in a personal mission to England, of great importance, at a crisis when the relations between the two countries were disturbed and threatening. Throughout the whole period of the war he constantly directed the attention of the nation to dependence on God. It may indeed be doubted whether he omitted this in a single state paper. In every message to Congress, in eery proclamation to the people, he made it prominent. In July, 1863, after the battle of Gettysburg he called upon the people to give thanks because "it had pleased Almighty God to hearken to the supplications and prayers of an afflicted people and to vouchsafe signal and effective victories to the Army and Navy of the United States," and he asked the people "to render homage to the Divine Majesty and to invoke the influence of his Holy Spirit to subdue the anger which has produced and so long sustained a needless and cruel rebellion." On another occasion, recounting the blessings which had come to the Union, he said, "No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out, these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy." Throughout his entire official career,—attended at all times with exacting duty and painful responsibility,—he never forgot his own dependence, or the dependence of the people, upon a Higher Power. In his last public address, delivered to an immense crowd assembled at the White House on the 11th of April, to congratulate him on the victories of the Union, the President, standing as he unconsciously was in the very shadow of death, said reverently to his hearers, "In the midst of your joyous expression, He from whom all blessings flow must first be remembered"!
Not only in life but in treasure the cost of the war was enormous. In addition to the large revenues of the Government which had been currently absorbed, the public debt at the close of the struggle was $2,808,549,437.55. The incidental losses were innumerable in kind, incalculable in amount. Mention is made here only of the actual expenditure of money—estimated by the standard of gold. The outlay was indeed principally made in paper, but the faith of the United States was given for redemption in coin—a faith which has never been tarnished, and which in this instance has been signally vindicated by the steady determination of the people. Never, in the same space of time, has there been a National expenditure so great.
Other nations have made costly sacrifices in struggles affecting their existence or their master passions. In the memorable campaigns of the French in 1794, when the Republic was putting forth its most gigantic energies, the expenses rose to 200,000,000 francs a month, or about $450,000,000 a year. For the three years of the rebellion, after the first year, our War Department alone expended $603,314,411.82, $690,391,048.66, and $1,030,690,400 respectively. The French Directory broke down under its expenditures by its lavish issue of assignats and the French Republic became bankrupt. Our Government was saved by its rigorous system of taxation imposed upon the people by themselves. Under Napoleon, in addition to the impositions on conquered countries, the budgets hardly exceeded in francs the charges of the United States for the rebellion, in dollars. Thus in 1805 the French budget exhibited total expenditures of 666,155,139 francs, including 69,140,000 francs for interest on the debt. In the same year the minister stated to the Chambers that income was derived from Italy of 30,000,000 francs, and from Germany and Holland 100,000,000, leaving 588,998,705 to be collected from France. In 1813 the French expenditures had risen to 953,658,772 francs, and the total receipts from French revenue were 780,959,847 francs. The French national debt has been measured since 1797 by the interest paid, fixed at that time at five per cent. From 1800 to 1814, the period of the Consulate and the Empire, this interest was increased by 23,091,635 francs, indicating an addition of twenty times that sum to the principal of the debt. The Government of the Restoration added in 1815, 101,260,635 francs to the annual interest. Thus the cost of the Napoleonic wars to France may be stated at about $487,000,000 added to the principal of the debt, or less than one-fifth of the increment of our national obligations on account of the rebellion. The French burdens were extended over the whole period from 1800 to 1814. Our own were concentrated into the space of four years.