Lincoln, the Politician

by T. Aaron Levy

Expediency is as essential to the triumph of right as to that of wrong. Cunning materialism may vanquish virtue that is a stranger to wisdom, but prudent integrity never knows final defeat. The following of visions without purpose is as vain as the worship of debasing worldliness. Politics is a larger phase of life than the idealist comprehends, while ideas are more dominant than politicians dream.

In an ideal state diplomats would be no more essential than the physician, lawyer, jurist and minister. Compromise finds its basis in human weakness, conservatism and selfishness. The history of humanity is written in blood and tears largely because men have been prone to passion and prejudice rather than true to reason and judgment. Politics is the art of securing results in government. It is a study of success applied to legislation and administration.

There are few problems of larger moment than the general acceptance of the wisest policy in combating established and organized evil. Civilization itself depends on the manner in which the unresting battle between the constructive and destructive forces in society is conducted and decided. Mighty empires have flourished and fallen, democracies have sprung to life and decayed, dauntless protesters have sacrificed on the altar of conviction, even nations under the spirit of high impulses have for a short time followed the banner of the brotherhood of man. Yet in spite of ages of progress, of heroic martyrdom, the battle is still of the same character as the conflict was on the plains of Palestine, the banks of the Nile and the seven hills of Rome. Human nature has changed largely in outer manifestations, not in essential character. The selfishness of man, vested interests, fear of change, still stand in the way of righteous reforms, which are now as bitterly contested as they were by the patricians of Latium and the barons of the middle ages. In the conflicts of centuries good men have sunk sometimes in a fearless, sometimes in an imprudent encounter with the host of cohesive and malignant interests. Selfish motives unite the supporters of evil, while the forces of righteousness are often discordant and rent with civil feuds. Economic interest is the influence that makes evil gregarious.

Lincoln conceived his plan of warfare on the organized evil of his time in wisdom. He attacked it at its weakest point, its injustice and its bad policy. He made it not only an ethical issue, but an economic one as well. He understood that reform must be founded on self interest as well as on justice. He fought the evil and not the wrong doer. He was aware of the influence of environment on the opinions of men whenever property rights were involved and so would not exact nor expect too much of the individual. He did not favor premature reform, knowing that it was not permanent. A foe to slavery, yet for a long time he was not a friend of abolitionism. He longed for the emancipation of the black man, yet would not buy it by attacks on the Constitution or on the compromises of the statesmen of the Republic.

He admitted the evil of slavery, yet recognized the institution as far as the law sanctioned its existence. So he would fight its transfer to new territory where it had no legal right of entrance. He would circumscribe and starve it, would favor compensated emancipation, and thus slowly and safely eradicate the evil from the nation. His political philosophy is worthy of the study of every citizen, patriot and reformer, of every man who believes in the dawn of better ages. His greatness consists in never having relinquished his lofty ideal in all of the materialism of daily compromise, and in never forgetting charity, justice and policy in his communion with world-shaking ideas.

No man in history longed for the triumph of justice more earnestly than Abraham Lincoln. He hated evil. Still his main purpose was the preservation of the principles of the republic. Rather than endanger them, the larger good, he would hesitate to begin a campaign against organized selfishness. Such battles for humanity require good generalship as well as those of cannon, fife and drum. It is not enough to hate evil, to strike at it in the dark. To husband strength, to bide the time, to await the solemn moment for attack, is political generalship, a generalship that is as essential in the Senate as on the battlefield.

He was willing to engage in the hard mission of educating men to believe that brotherhood was a more substantial foundation for humanity than hatred and selfishness. There was nothing of Don Quixote in his warfare. Democracy was his religion, the source of his strength and the secret of his influence. All that he was, he largely owed to the privileges of the Republic, to the support of the plain people. He believed in them with a rare faith and they trusted him with remarkable fidelity, as the incarnation of the higher humanity. He was in harmony with the onward movement of sanity, justice and manhood. Charity to all was his platform, justice his program, democracy his guide. His spirit is the spirit of the new age. He almost marks as distinguished an advance in American history as Moses did in that of Israel.

The politician blindly follows, while the statesman wisely educates public sentiment. In his political philosophy Lincoln gave due weight to the potency of the general opinion of mankind. He said, "He who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes or decisions possible or impossible to be executed." He well knew the principle, so paltrily recognized, by even modern legislators, that it is far more vital to prepare the public mind for righteous legislation than prematurely to pass laws. It would be well to write his supreme statement relating to public sentiment in every legislative hall and judicial tribunal in the whole land. An educated public sentiment will soon enough secure the passage of appropriate legislation, and what is more essential, see to it that it is enforced. The curse of American politics is the passage of multitudinous enactments to please certain organized interests and the deliberate indifference, if not hostility, of public sentiment to their subsequent enforcement. The problem will be far from settled until fewer laws are passed, and such enactments are religiously enforced. Lincoln would not aid in the passage of a law not intended to be enforced or incapable in the common course of events of being substantially enforced, and he recognized that legislation should be a practical science based on the actual character, the ability of a people to move forward. Froward reform is almost as pernicious as selfish conservatism.

So complete was Lincoln's mastery over the masses that many have misunderstood the power of his genius as merely following public opinion. He did infinitely more. He studied the capacity of men for progress, slowly leading them to the higher altitude. Lincoln recognized the limitations of average human advance; that the mind and heart move slowly in the march of centuries. He worked with the materials at hand and builded on the solid foundation of the real national character. He did not stand in the direct way of events, still he deemed it a duty ever to guide them toward the goal of an advancing civilization.

The attitude of Lincoln to party organization is of commanding interest. There was no more valiant, earnest worker in the Whig ranks. None can question his devotion to the routine, burdensome labor of the campaign. In making speeches, in writing platforms, in arranging meetings, in issuing circulars, and in the tiring work at the polls, he was a persistent toiler, a loyal partisan. In the Legislature he usually voted with his associates. He often sought to strengthen the party in the selection of office holders.