In an article entitled "Lincoln's Literary Experiments," by John G. Nicolay, one of Lincoln's two private secretaries, which was published in the Century Magazine for April, 1894, are reproduced Lincoln's notes of one lyceum lecture on "Niagara Falls," and [top] the text of another on "Discoveries, Inventions and Improvements." These, however, detract, if anything, from Lincoln's reputation as a writer, for in choice of subjects and in style of treatment there is seen an almost discreditable stooping of a man of genius, even in his function of teacher, to the low popular taste of the West at the time. In the first lecture Lincoln presented the statistics of the water power of Niagara Falls for each minute, and led his hearers from this base to the "contemplation of the vast power the sun is constantly exerting in the quiet noiseless operation of lifting water up to be rained down again." Yet at this point he stopped short of his duty as an educator, for he made no suggestion as to the utilization of this power. He was satisfied with giving the people what they had come for—the pleasant excitation of a mental faculty, that of the imagination in its primary form of wonder at the grandeur of the material universe. In short, he was acting as a mere entertainer—as so many of our public men do now at "Chautauquas."
In the second lecture he [performed this function in a still more] discreditable manner, by catering to the unworthy demand of his hearers for obvious and familiar humorous conceptions to grasp which would cause them no mental exertion. Thus, in speaking of the inventions of the locomotive and telegraph, already old enough for the first inevitable similitudes and jocose remarks about them to be current, he said:
"The iron horse is panting and impatient to carry him (man) everywhere in no time; and the lightning stands ready harnessed to take and bring his tidings in a trifle less than no time."
This reveals Lincoln's taste for the characteristic American humor of exaggeration, which was later to afford him relief from the stress and strain of his duties as President in the works of "Petroleum V. Nasby" and "Artemus Ward," writers, however, with a quaint originality which lifted them and their admirers above the plane of humorous composition and appreciation of the preceding decade. Indeed, Lincoln developed his own power of witty expression to a degree excelling that of the writers he admired, and in quality of product, if not in quantity (for the greater part of the [top] "funny stories" attributed to him, thank heaven, are apocryphal) he stands in the front rank of the American humorists of his generation.
And as the poet and the wit are near akin through this common appeal to the imagination, Lincoln, had he overcome the obsession of melancholy in his nature which was the mood in which he resorted to poetry, and which early limited his taste for it to verse of a sad and reflective kind, might have become a literary craftsman of the order of Holmes, whose poetry in the main was bright and joyous, and, even when he occasionally touched upon such subjects as death, was, as we have seen, informed with inspiring Hellenic beauty rather than depressing Hebraic moralization. It was in his sad moments, says Henry C. Whitney, that the mind of Lincoln "gravitated toward the weird, sombre and mystical. In his normal and tranquil state of mind, 'The Last Leaf,' by Oliver Wendell Holmes, was his favorite" (poem). It was Lincoln's happy lot to rise in the realm of oratory by the power of his poetic spirit higher than any American, save probably Emerson, has done in other fields of literature. On the theme of slavery, where his unerring moral sense had free sway, he became our supreme orator, transcending even Webster in grandeur of thought and beauty of its expression. His periods are not as sonorous as the Olympian New England orator's, but their accents will reach as far and resound even longer by the carrying and sustaining power of the ideas which they express. Indeed, it is on the wings supplied by Lincoln that Webster's most significant conception, that of the nature of the Constitution, is even now borne along, because of the uplifting ideality which Lincoln gave it by more broadly applying it to the nation itself as an examplar and preserver to the world of ideal government.
Webster said: "It is, sir, the people's Constitution, the people's Government; made for the people; made by the people; and answerable to the people."
This he made the thesis for an argument which was to be followed by a magnificent peroration ending with a sentiment, calculated for use as a toast at political banquets, and as a patriotic slogan: "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!" [top]
Lincoln with purer taste, the expression of which, be it said to Webster's credit, had been made possible by the acceptance of the earlier statesman's contention, assumed the thesis as placed beyond all controversy, and, making it the exhortation of his speech, gave to it the character of a sacred adjuration: "That we here highly resolve … that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Another example of Lincoln's ability to improve the composition of another writer is the closing paragraph of his first inaugural address. The President-elect had submitted the manuscript of this most important speech, which would be universally scrutinized to find what policy he would adopt toward the seceded States, to Seward, his chosen Secretary of State, for criticism and suggestion. Mr. Seward approved the argument, but advised the addition of a closing paragraph "to meet and remove prejudice and passion in the South; and despondency in the East." He submitted two paragraphs of his own as alternative models. The second was in that poetic vein which occasionally cropped out in Seward's speeches, and over which Lincoln on better acquaintance was wont good-naturedly to rally him. It is evidence of Lincoln's predilection for poetic language, at least at the close of a speech, that he adopted the latter paragraph. It ran:
"I close. We are not, we must not be, aliens or enemies, but fellow-countrymen and brethren. Although passion has strained our bonds of affection too hardly, they must not, I am sure they will not, be broken. The mystic chords which, proceeding from so many battlefields and so many patriot graves, pass through all the hearts and all hearths in this broad continent of ours, will yet again harmonize in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of the nation."