The reply that hurried to Springfield was a supreme answer. No judge of a high tribunal, no statesman of mature experience could have more thoroughly disposed of a specious contention.[228] In this letter of Lincoln there appears a might and an ability to grapple with a great issue, a sincerity of purpose, a soberness of thought that well betokens a student and patriot, whose heart was in unison with the inherent purposes of the Republic. He insisted that the imperial function of the Constitution in leaving the declaration of war with Congress was that no one man should hold the power of bringing the oppression of war upon the people.[229] Through this letter there looms up the man, who above all men hated kingly power and domination, and the consequent impoverishment of the people. Herndon, the Abolitionist, would, for the sake of policy, sanction the inception of an unjust aggression, while the conservative Lincoln stood resolutely when the hour summoned uncompromising conduct; then his knees were as "unwedgeable as the gnarled oak." When principle was at stake he sent policy to the rear. At such times he was more aggressive than the radical.
A letter to the Editor of the Tribune shows the deep hold that this subject had on Lincoln, his restlessness to be rightly understood on the theme. And the fact that he undertook to correct Horace Greeley in a familiar tone is an indication that he was coming to the front as a champion in the Whig ranks. He wrote the editor that he discovered a paragraph in the Tribune in which it was said that all Whigs and many Democrats contended that the boundary of Texas stopped at the Nueces. He contended that such a statement was a mistake which he disliked to see go uncorrected in a leading Whig paper; that the large majority of Whigs in the House of Representatives had not taken that position and that as the position could not be maintained it gave the Democrats advantage of them. In conclusion Lincoln asked the editor to examine what he said in a printed speech that he was sending him.[230]
He earnestly wrote to a minister that he would be obliged for a reference to any law, human or divine, in which an authority could be found for saying that the action of the Government constituted "no aggression." He then asked, "Is the precept 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them' obsolete? of no force? of no application?"[231]
He was not so elated with patriotism that he lost his standard of righteousness. As he was an honest judge of his own conduct, so he was of that of his country. This rare ability became a force of moment in later years.
During the tumult of the debate on the Mexican war Lincoln wrote in his own rare way that Stephens, of Georgia, a little slim, pale-faced, consumptive man, with a voice like Logan's, had just concluded the very best speech of an hour's length he ever heard; that his old withered dry eyes were full of tears yet.[232]
His appreciation knew no sectional limits. His range of vision was not bounded by the Mason and Dixon line. He was as much at home with the sons of the South as of the North; he took the same interest in the speech of Stephens of Georgia as he would in that of Webster.