On the night of the fatal 14th of April, 1865, when the President was assassinated, Mrs. Lincoln's first exclamation was, "His dream was prophetic."
History will record no censure against Mr. Lincoln for believing, like the first Napoleon, that he was a man of destiny; for such he surely was, if the term is at all admissible in a philosophic sense. And our estimate of his greatness must be heightened by conceding the fact that he was a believer in certain phases of the supernatural. Assured as he undoubtedly was by omens which to his mind were conclusive that he would rise to greatness and power, he was as firmly convinced by the same tokens that he would be suddenly cut off at the height of his career and the fulness of his fame. He always believed that he would fall by the hand of an assassin; and yet with that appalling doom clouding his life,—a doom fixed and irreversible, as he was firmly convinced,—his courage never for a moment forsook him, even in the most trying emergencies. Can greatness, courage, constancy in the pursuit of exalted aims, be tried by a severer test? He believed with Tennyson that—
"Because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence."
Concerning presentiments and dreams Mr. Lincoln had a philosophy of his own, which, strange as it may appear, was in perfect harmony with his character in all other respects. He was no dabbler in divination,—astrology, horoscopy, prophecy, ghostly lore, or witcheries of any sort. With Goethe, he held that "Nature cannot but do right eternally." Dreams and presentiments, in his judgment, are not of supernatural origin; that is, they proceed in natural order, their essence being preternatural, but not above Nature. The moving power of dreams and visions of an extraordinary character he ascribed, as did the Patriarchs of old, to the Almighty Intelligence that governs the universe, their processes conforming strictly to natural laws. "Nature," said he, "is the workmanship of the Almighty; and we form but links in the general chain of intellectual and material life."
Mr. Lincoln had this further idea. Dreams being natural occurrences, in the strictest sense, he held that their best interpreters are the common people; and this accounts in large measure for the profound respect he always had for the collective wisdom of plain people,—"the children of Nature," he called them,—touching matters belonging to the domain of psychical mysteries. There was some basis of truth, he believed, for whatever obtained general credence among these "children of Nature;" and as he esteemed himself one of their number, having passed the greater part of his life among them, we can easily account for the strength of his convictions on matters about which they and he were in cordial agreement.
The natural bent of Mr. Lincoln's mind, aided by early associations, inclined him to read books which tended to strengthen his early convictions on occult subjects. Byron's "Dream" was a favorite poem, and I have often heard him repeat the following lines:—
"Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world
And a wide realm of wild reality.
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off our waking toils,
They do divide our being."
He seemed strangely fascinated by the wonderful in history,—such as the fall of Geta by the hand of Caracalla, as foretold by Severus; the ghosts of Caracalla's father and murdered brother threatening and upbraiding him; and kindred passages. It is useless further to pursue this account of Mr. Lincoln's peculiar views concerning these interesting mysteries. Enough has been said to show that the more intense the light which is poured upon what may be regarded as Mr. Lincoln's weakest points, the greater and grander will his character appear.