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Gornell University Library
Ithaca, New York

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE

SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND

THE GIFT OF

HENRY W. SAGE

1891
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN

An €ssap

BY

CARL SCHURZ

 

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Che Hiverside Press Cambridge

4

ies
» 266

Copyright, 1891,
By CARL SCHURZ
and

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO

Adl rights reserved.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN

O American can study the char-
acter and career of Abraham

 

Lincoln without being carried
away by sentimental emotions. We are
always inclined to idealize that which we
love, —a state of mind very unfavorable to
the exercise of sober critical judgment.
It is therefore not surprising that most
of those who have written or spoken on
that extraordinary man, even while con-
scientiously endeavoring to draw a life-like
portraiture of his being, and to form a just
estimate of his public conduct, should have
drifted into more or less indiscriminating
eulogy, painting his great features in the
most glowing colors, and covering with
tender shadings whatever might look like a
blemish.
2 Abraham Lincoln

 

But his standing before posterity will
not be exalted by mere praise of his vir-
tues and abilities, nor by any concealment
of his limitations and faults. The stature
of the great man, one of whose peculiar
charms consisted in his being so unlike all
other great men, will rather lose than gain
by the idealization which so easily runs
into the commonplace. For it was dis-
tinctly the weird mixture of qualities and
forces in him, of the lofty with the com-
mon, the ideal, with the uncouth, of that
which he had become with that which he
had not ceased to be, that made him so
fascinating a character among his fellow-
men, gave him his singular power over
their minds and hearts, and fitted him to
be the greatest leader in the greatest crisis
of our national life.

His was indeed a marvelous growth.
The statesman or the military hero born
and reared in a log cabin is a familiar fig-
ure in American history; but we may
search in vain among our celebrities for
Abraham Lincoln 3

 

one whose origin and early life equaled
Abraham Lincoln’s in wretchedness. He
first saw the light in a miserable hovel in
Kentucky, on a farm consisting of a few
barren acres in a dreary neighborhood ; his
father a typical “ poor Southern white,”
shiftless and improvident, without ambi-
tion for himself or his children, constantly
looking for a new piece of land on which
he might make a living without much
work ; his mother, in her youth handsome
and bright, grown prematurely coarse in
feature and soured in mind by daily toil
and care; the whole household squalid,
cheerless, and utterly void of elevating in-
spirations. Only when the family had
“moved” into the malarious backwoods of
Indiana, the mother had died, and a step-
mother, a woman of thrift and energy, had
taken charge of the children, the shaggy-
headed, ragged, barefooted, forlorn boy,
then seven years old, ‘‘ began to feel like a
human being.” Hard work was his early
lot. When a mere boy he had to help in
4 Abraham Lincoln

 

supporting the family, either on his father’s
clearing, or hired out to other farmers to
plough, or dig ditches, or chop wood, or
drive ox teams ; occasionally also to “tend
the baby,” when the farmer’s wife was
otherwise engaged. He could regard it as
an advancement toa higher sphere of ac-
tivity when he obtained work in a “cross-
roads store,” where he amused the custom-
ers by his talk over the counter; for he
soon distinguished himself among the back-
woods folk as one who had something to
say worth listening to. To win that dis-
tinction, he had to draw mainly upon his
wits ; for, while his thirst for knowledge
was great, his opportunities for satisfying
that thirst were wofully slender.

In the log school-house, which he could
visit but little, he was taught only read-
ing, writing, and elementary arithmetic.
Among the people of the settlement, bush
farmers and small ,tradesmen, he found
none of uncommon intelligence or educa-
tion; but some of them had a few books,
Abraham Lincoln 5

 

which he borrowed eagerly. Thus he read
and re-read AXsop’s Fables, learning to tell
stories with a point and to argue by para-
bles; he read Robinson Crusoe, The Pil-
grim’s Progress, a short history of the
United States, and Weems’ Life of Wash-
ington. To the town constable’s he went
to read the Revised Statutes of Indiana.
Every printed page that fell into his hands
he would greedily devour, and his family
and friends watched him with wonder, as
the uncouth boy, after his daily work,
crouched in a corner of the log cabin or
outside under a tree, absorbed in a book
while munching his supper of corn bread.
In this manner he began to gather some
knowledge, and sometimes he would aston-
ish the girls with such startling remarks as
that the earth was moving around the sun,
and not the sun around the earth, and they
marveled where “Abe” could have got
such queer notions. Soon he also felt the
impulse to write; not only making extracts
from books he wished to remember, but
6 Abraham Lincoln

 

also composing little essays of his own.
First he sketched these with charcoal on a
wooden shovel scraped white with a draw-
ing-knife, or on basswood shingles. Then
he transferred them to paper, which was
a scarce commodity in the Lincoln house-
hold; taking care to cut his expressions
close, so that they might not cover too
much space, —a style-forming method
greatly to be commended. Seeing boys
put a burning coal on the back of a wood
turtle, he was moved to write on cruelty to
animals. Seeing men intoxicated with
whiskey, he wrote on temperance. In
verse-making, too, he tried himself, and
in satire on persons offensive to him or
others, — satire the rustic wit of which
was not always fit for ears polite. Also
political thoughts he put upon paper, and
some of his pieces were even deemed
good enough for publication in the county
weekly.

Thus he won a neighborhood reputation
as a clever young man, which he increased
Abraham Lincoln 7

 

by his performances as a speaker, not. sel-
dom drawing upon himself the dissatisfac-
tion of his employers by mounting a stump
in the field, and keeping the farm hands
from their work by little speeches in a jo-
cose and sometimes also a serious vein.
At the rude social frolics of the settlement
he became an important person, telling
funny stories, mimicking the itinerant
preachers who had happened to pass by,
and making his mark at wrestling matches,
too; for at the age of seventeen he had at-
tained his full height, six feet four inches
in his stockings, if he had any, and a ter-
ribly muscular clodhopper he was. But he
was known never to use his extraordinary
strength to the injury or humiliation of
others; rather to do them a kindly turn,
or to enforce justice and fair dealing be-
tween them. All this made him a favorite
in backwoods society, although in some
things he appeared a little odd to his
friends. Far more than any of them, he
was given not only to reading, but to fits
8 Abraham Lincoln

 

of abstraction, to quiet musing with him-
self, and also to strange spells of melan-
choly, from which he often would pass in
a moment to rollicking outbursts of droll
humor. But on the whole he was one of
the people among whom he lived ; in ap-
pearance perhaps even a little more un-
couth than most of them, —a very tall,
rawboned youth, with large features, dark,
shriveled skin, and rebellious hair; his
arms and legs long, out of proportion ; clad
in deerskin trousers, which from frequent
exposure to the rain had shrunk so as to
sit tightly on his limbs, leaving several
inches of bluish shin exposed between their
lower end and the heavy tan-colored shoes ;
the nether garment held usually by only
one suspender, that was strung over a
coarse home-made shirt ; the head covered
in winter with a coonskin cap, in summer
with a rough straw hat of uncertain shape,
without a band.

It is doubtful whether he felt him-
self much superior to his surroundings,
Abraham Lincoln 9

 

although he confessed to a yearning for
some knowledge of the world outside of
the circle in which he lived. This wish
was gratified; but how? At the age of
nineteen he went down the Mississippi to
New Orleans as a flatboat hand, tempo-
rarily joining a trade many members of
which at that time still took pride in be-
ing called “half horse and half alligator.”
After his return he worked and lived in
the old way until the spring of 1830, when
his father “moved again,” this time to IIli-
nois ; and on the journey of fifteen days
“ Abe” had to drive the ox wagon which
carried the household goods. Another log
cabin was built, and then, fencing a field,
Abraham Lincoln split those historic rails
which were destined to play so picturesque
a part in the presidential campaign twenty-
eight years later.

Having come of age, Lincoln left the
family, and “struck out for himself.” He
had to “take jobs whenever he could get
them.” The first of these carried him
10 Abraham Lincoln

 

again asa flatboat hand to New Orleans.
There something happened that made a
lasting impression upon his soul: he wit-
nessed a slave auction. “His heart bled,”
wrote one of his companions; “said no-
thing much ; was silent ; looked bad. I can
say, knowing it, that it was on this trip that
he formed his opinion on slavery. It run
its iron in him then and there, May, 1831.
I have heard him say so often.” Then he
lived several years at New Salem, in Illi-
nois, a small mushroom village, with a mill,
some “stores” and whiskey shops, that
rose quickly, and soon disappeared again.
It was a desolate, disjointed, half-working
and half-loitering life, without any other
aim than to gain food and shelter from day
to day. He served as pilot on a steamboat
trip, then as clerk in a store and a mill;
business failing, he was adrift for some
time. Being compelled to measure his
strength with the chief bully of the neigh-
borhood, and overcoming him, he became
a noted person in that muscular commu-
Abraham Lincoln II

 

nity, and won the esteem and friendship of
the ruling gang of ruffians to such a de-
gree that, when the Black Hawk war broke
out, they elected him, a young man of
twenty-three, captain of a volunteer com-
pany, composed mainly of roughs of their
kind. He took the field, and his most
noteworthy deed of valor consisted, not in
killing an Indian, but in protecting against
his own men, at the peril of his own life,
the life of an old savage who had strayed
into his camp.

The Black Hawk war cover, he turned to
politics. The step from the captaincy of
a volunteer company to a candidacy for
a seat in the legislature seemed a natural
one. But his popularity, although great in
New Salem, had not spread far enough over
the district, and he was defeated. Then
the wretched hand-to-mouth struggle be-
gan again. He “set up in store-business ”
with a dissolute partner, who drank whis-
key while Lincoln was reading books. The
result was a disastrous failure and a load
12 Abraham Lincoln

 

of debt. Thereupon he became a deputy
surveyor, and was appointed postmaster of
New Salem, the business of the post office
being so small that he could carry the in-
coming and outgoing mail in his hat. All
this could not lift him from poverty, and
his surveying instruments and horse and
saddle were sold by the sheriff for debt.
But while all this misery was upon him
his ambition rose to higher aims. He
walked many miles to borrow from a
school-master a grammar with which to
improve his language. A lawyer lent him
a copy of Blackstone, and he began to
study law. People would look wonderingly
at the grotesque figure lying in the grass,
“with his feet up a tree,” or sitting on
a fence, as, absorbed in a book, he learned
to construct correct sentences and made
himself a jurist. At once he gained a
little practice, pettifogging before a justice
of the peace for friends, without expect-
ing a fee. Judicial functions, too, were
thrust upon him, but only at horse-races or
Abraham Lincoln 13

 

wrestling matches, where his acknowledged
honesty and fairness gave his verdicts un-
disputed authority. His popularity grew
apace, and soon he could be a candidate
for the legislature again. Although he
called himself a Whig, an ardent admirer
of Henry Clay, his clever stump speeches
won him the election in the strongly Dem-
ocratic district. Then for the first time,
perhaps, he thought seriously of his out-
ward appearance. So far he had been con-
tent with a garb of “ Kentucky jeans,” not
seldom ragged, usually patched, and al-
ways shabby. Now he borrowed some
money from a friend to buy a new suit of
clothes — “store clothes” — fit for a Sanga-
mon County statesman ; and thus adorned
he set out for the state capital, Vandalia,
to take his seat among the lawmakers.

His legislative career, which stretched
over several sessions, for he was thrice re-
elected, in 1836, 1838, and 1840, was not
remarkably brilliant. He did, indeed, not
lack ambition. He dreamed even of mak-
14 Abraham Lincoln

 

ing himself “the De Witt Clinton of Ili-
nois,” and he actually distinguished him-
self by zealous and effective work in those

”

“log-rolling’’ operations by which the
young State received “a general system of
internal improvements” in the shape of
railroads, canals, and banks,—a reckless
policy, burdening the State with debt, and
producing the usual crop of political de-
moralization, but a policy characteristic of
the time and the impatiently enterprising
spirit of the Western people. Lincoln, no
doubt with the best intentions, but with
little knowledge of the subject, simply fol-
lowed the popular current. The achieve-
ment in which, perhaps, he gloried most
was the removal of the state government
from Vandalia to Springfield ; one of those
triumphs of political management which
are apt to be the pride of the small politi-
cian’s statesmanship. One thing, however,
he did in which his true nature asserted
itself, and which gave distinct promise of
the future pursuit of high aims. Against
Abraham Lincoln 15

 

an overwhelming preponderance of senti-
ment in the legislature, followed by only
one other member, he recorded his protest
against a proslavery resolution, — that pro-
test declaring “the institution of slavery
to be founded on both injustice and bad
policy.” This was not only the irrepres-
sible voice of his conscience; it was true
moral valor, too ; for at that time, in many
parts of the West, an abolitionist was re-
garded as little better than a horse-thief,
and even “Abe Lincoln” would hardly
have been forgiven his anti-slavery princi-
ples, had he not been known as such an
“uncommon good fellow.” But here, in
obedience to the great conviction of his
life, he manifested his courage to stand
alone, — that courage which is the first
requisite of leadership in a great cause.
Together with his reputation and influ-
ence as a politician grew his law practice,
especially after he had removed from New
Salem to Springfield, and associated him-
self with a practitioner of good standing.
16 Abraham Lincoln

 

He had now at last won a fixed position in
society. He became a successful lawyer,
less, indeed, by his learning as a jurist than
by his effectiveness as an advocate and by
the striking uprightness of his character ;
and it may truly be said that his vivid sense
of truth and justice had much to do with
his effectiveness as an advocate. He would
refuse to act as the attorney even of per-
sonal friends when he saw the right on the
other side. He would abandon cases, even
during trial, when the testimony convinced
him that his client was in the wrong. He
would dissuade those who sought his ser-
vice from pursuing an obtainable advantage
when their claims seemed to him unfair.
Presenting his very first case in the United
States Circuit Court, the only question
being one of authority, he declared that,
upon careful examination, he found all the
authorities on the other side, and none
on his. Persons accused of crime, when
he thought them guilty, he would not de-
fend at all, or, attempting their defense, he
Abraham Lincoln 17

we

was unable to put forth his powers. One

 

 

 

notable exception is on record, wnen his
personal sympathies had been strongly
aroused. But when he felt himself to be
the protector of innocence, the defender
of justice, or the prosecutor of wrong, he
frequently disclosed such unexpected re-
sources of reasoning, such depth of feeling,
and rose to such fervor of appeal as to as-
tonish and overwhelm his hearers, and
make him fairly irresistible. Even an or-
dinary law argument, coming from him,
seldom failed to produce the impression
that he was profoundly convinced of the
soundness of his position. It is not sur-
prising that the mere appearance of so con-
scientious an attorney in any case should
have carried, not only to juries, but even
to judges, almost a presumption of right
on his side, and that the people began to
call him, sincerely meaning it, “honest
Abe Lincoln.”

In the mean time he had private sorrows
and trials of a painfully afflicting nature,
18 Abraham Lincoln

 

He had loved and been loved by a fair and
estimable girl, Ann Rutledge, who died in
the flower of her youth and beauty, and he
mourned her loss with such intensity of
grief that his friends feared for his reason.
Recovering from his morbid depression, he
bestowed what he thought a new affection
upon another lady, who refused him. And
finally, moderately prosperous in his world.
ly affairs, and having prospects of political
distinction before him, he paid his ad-
dresses to Mary Todd, of Kentucky, and
was accepted. But then tormenting doubts
of the genuineness of his own affection
for her, of the compatibility of their char-
acters, and of their future happiness came
upon him. His distress was so great that
he felt himself in danger of suicide, and
feared to carry a pocket-knife with him ;
and he gave mortal offense to his bride by
not appearing on the appointed wedding
day. Now the torturing consciousness of
the wrong he had done her grew unendur-
able. He won back her affection, ended
Abraham Lincoln 19

 

the agony by marrying her, and became a
faithful and patient husband and a good
father. But it was no secret to those who
knew the family well, that his domestic life
was full of trials. The erratic temper of
his wife not seldom put the gentleness of
his nature to the severest tests ; and these
troubles and struggles, which accompanied
him through all the vicissitudes of his life
from the modest home in Springfield to
the White House at Washington, adding
untold private heartburnings to his public
cares, and sometimes precipitating upon
him incredible embarrassments in the dis-
charge of his public duties, form one of
the most pathetic features of his career.
He continued to “ ride the circuit,” read
books while traveling in his buggy, told
funny stories to his fellow-lawyers in the
tavern, chatted familiarly with his neighe
bors around the stove in the store and at
the post-office, had his hours of melancholy
brooding as of old, and became more and
more widely known and trusted and be-
20 * Abraham Lincoln

 

loved among the people of his State for his
ability as a lawyer and politician, for the
uprightness of his character and the ever-
flowing spring of sympathetic kindness in
his heart. His main ambition was con-
fessedly that of political distinction ; but
hardly any one would at that time have
seen in him the man destined to lead the
nation through the greatest crisis of the
century.

His time had not yet come when, in
1846, he was elected to Congress. In a
clever speech in the House of Representa-
tives, he denounced President Polk for hav-
ing unjustly forced war upon Mexico, and
he amused the Committee of the Whole by
a witty attack upon General Cass. More
important was the expression he gave to
his anti-slavery impulses by offering a bill
looking to the emancipation of the slaves
in the District of Columbia, and by his re-
peated votes for the famous Wilmot Pro-
viso, intended to exclude slavery from the
Territories acquired from Mexico. But
Abraham Lincoln 21

 

when, at the expiration of his term, in
March, 1849, he left his seat, he gloomily
despaired of ever seeing the day when the
cause nearest to his heart would be rightly
grasped by the people, and when he would
be able to render any service to his coun-
try in solving the great problem. Nor had
his career as a member of Congress in any
sense been such as to gratify his ambition.
Indeed, if he ever had any belief in a great
destiny for himself, it must have been
weak at that period ; for he actually sought
to obtain from the new Whig President,
General Taylor, the place of Commissioner
of the General Land Office, willing to bury
himself in one of the administrative bu-
reaus of the government. Fortunately for
the country, he failed ; and no less fortu-
nately, when, later, the territorial gover-
norship of Oregon was offered to him, Mrs.
Lincoln’s protest induced him to decline
it. Returning to Springfield, he gave him-
self with renewed zest to his law practice,
acquiesced in the Compromise of 1850
22 Abraham Lincoln

 

with reluctance and a mental reservation,
supported in the presidential campaign of
1852 the Whig candidate in some spirit-
less speeches, and took but a languid inter-
est in the politics of the day. But just
then his time was drawing near.

The peace promised, and apparently in-
augurated, by the Compromise of 1850 was
rudely broken by the introduction of the
Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854. The repeal
of the Missouri Compromise, opening the
Territories of the United States, the heri-
tage of coming generations, to the invasion
of slavery, suddenly revealed the whole
significance of the slavery question to the
people of the free States, and thrust itself
into the politics of the country as the par-
amount issue. Something like an electric
shock flashed through the North. Men
who but a short time before had been ab-
sorbed by their business pursuits, and de-
precated all political agitation, were star-
tled out of their security by a sudden
alarm, and excitedly took sides. That rest-
Abraham Lincoln 23

 

less trouble of conscience about slavery,
which even in times of apparent repose
had secretly disturbed the souls of North-
ern people, broke forth in an utterance
louder than ever. The bonds of accus-
tomed party allegiance gave way. Anti-
slavery Democrats and anti-slavery Whigs
felt themselves drawn together by a com-
mon overpowering sentiment, and soon
they began to rally in a new organization.
The Republican party sprang into being to
meet the overruling call of the hour. Then
Abraham Lincoln’s time was come. He
rapidly advanced to a position of conspicu-
ous championship in the struggle. This,
however, was not owing to his virtues and
abilities alone. Indeed, the slavery ques-
tion stirred his soul in its profoundest
depths; it was, as one of his intimate
friends said, “the only one on which he
would become excited ;” it called forth all
his faculties and energies. Yet there were
many others who, having long and ardu-
ously fought the anti-slavery battle in the
24 Abraham Lincoln

 

popular assembly, or in the press, or in
the halls of Congress, far surpassed him in
prestige, and compared with whom he was
still an obscure and untried man. His re-
putation, although highly honorable and
well earned, had so far been essentially
local. As a stump-speaker in Whig can-
vasses outside of his State he had attracted
comparatively little attention; but in Illi-
nois he had been recognized as one of the
foremost men of the Whig party. Among
the opponents of the Nebraska bill he oc-
cupied in his State so important a position,
that in 1854 he was the choice of a large
majority of the “ Anti-Nebraska men” in
the legislature for a seat in the Senate
of the United States which then became
vacant; and when he, an old Whig, could
not obtain the votes of the Anti-Nebraska
Democrats necessary to make a majority,
he generously urged his friends to trans-
fer their votes to Lyman Trumbull, who
was then elected. Two years later, in the
first national convention of the Republican
Abraham Lincoln 25

 

party, the delegation from Illinois brought
him forward as a candidate for the vice-
presidency, and he received respectable
support. Still, the name of Abraham Lin-
coln was not widely known beyond the
boundaries of his own State. But now it
was this local prominence in Illinois that
put him in a position of peculiar advan-
tage on the battlefield of national politics.
In the assault on the Missouri Compro-
mise which broke down all legal barriers
to the spread of slavery, Stephen Arnold
Douglas was the ostensible leader and cen-
tral figure; and Douglas was a Senator
from Illinois, Lincoln’s State. Douglas’s
national theatre of action was the Senate,
but in his constituency in Illinois were the
roots of his official position and power.
What he did in the Senate he had to jus-
tify before the people of Ilinois, in order
to maintain himself in place; and in Illi-
nois all eyes turned to Lincoln as Doug:
las’s natural antagonist.

As very young men they had come to
26 Abraham Lincoln

 

Illinois, Lincoln from Indiana, Douglas
from Vermont, and had grown up together
in public life, Douglas as a Democrat, Lin:
coln as a Whig. They had met first in
Vandalia, in 1834, when Lincoln was in the
legislature and Douglas in the lobby; and
again in 1836, both as members of the leg-
islature. Douglas, a very able politician,
of the agile, combative, audacious, “ push-
ing” sort, rose in political distinction with
remarkable rapidity. In quick succession
he became a member of the legislature, a
State’s attorney, secretary of state, a judge
on the supreme bench of Illinois, three
times a Representative in Congress, and a
Senator of the United States when only
thirty-nine years old. In the national
Democratic convention of 1852, he ap-
peared even as an aspirant to the nomina-
tion for the presidency, as the favorite of
“young America,” and received a respect-
able vote. He had far outstripped Lincoln
in what is commonly called political suc-
cess and in reputation. But it had fre.
Abraham Lincoln 27

 

quently happened that in political cam-
paigns Lincoln felt himself impelled, or
was selected by his Whig friends, to an-
swer Douglas’s speeches; and thus the
two were looked upon, in a large part of
the State at least, as the representative
combatants of their respective parties in
the debates before popular meetings. As
soon, therefore, as, after the passage of his
Kansas-Nebraska bill, Douglas returned to
Illinois to defend his cause before his con-
stituents, Lincoln, obeying not only his
own impulse, but also general expectation,
stepped forward as his principal oppo-
nent. Thus the struggle about the princi-
ples involved in the Kansas-Nebraska bill,
or, ina broader sense, the struggle between
freedom and slavery, assumed in Illinois
the outward form of a personal contest
between Lincoln and Douglas; and, as it
continued and became more animated, that
personal contest in Illinois was watched
with constantly increasing interest by the
whole country. When, in 1858, Douglas’s
28 Abraham Lincoln

 

senatorial term being about to expire, Lin-
coln was formally designated by the Re-
publican convention of Illinois as their
candidate for the Senate, to take Douglas’s
place, and the two contestants agreed to
debate the questions at issue face to face
in a series of public meetings, the eyes of
the whole American people were turned
eagerly to that one point ; and the specta-
cle reminded one of those lays of ancient
times telling of two armies, in battle array,
standing’ still to see their two principal
champions fight out the contested cause
between the lines in single combat.
Lincoln had then reached the full matu-
rity of his powers. His equipment as a
statesman did not embrace a comprehen-
sive knowledge of public affairs. What he
had studied he had indeed made his own,
with the eager craving and that zealous
tenacity characteristic of superior minds
learning under difficulties. But his narrow
opportunities and the unsteady life he had
led during his younger years had not per-
Abraham Lincoln 29

 

mitted the accumulation of large stores in
his mind. It is true, in political campaigns
he had occasionally spoken on the osten-
sible issues between the Whigs and the
Democrats, the tariff, internal improve-
ments, banks, and so on, but only in a per-
functory manner. Had he ever given
much serious thought and study to these
subjects, it is safe to assume that a mind
so prolific of original conceits as his would
certainly have produced some utterance
upon them worth remembering. His soul
had evidently never been deeply stirred by
such topics. But when his moral nature
was aroused, his brain developed an untir-
ing activity until it had mastered all the
knowledge within reach. As soon as the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise had
thrust the slavery question into politics as
the paramount issue, Lincoln plunged into
an arduous study of all its legal, histori-
cal, and moral aspects, and then his mind
became a complete arsenal of argument.
His rich natural gifts, trained by long and
30 Abraham Lincoln

 

varied practice, had made him an orator of
rare persuasiveness. In his immature days,
he had pleased himself for a short period
with that inflated, high-flown style which,
among the uncultivated, passes for “beau-
tiful speaking.” His inborn truthfulness
and his artistic instinct soon overcame that
aberration, and revealed to him the noble
beauty and strength of simplicity. He pos-
sessed an uncommon power of clear and
compact statement, which might have re-
minded those who knew the story of his
early youth, of the efforts of the poor boy,
when he copied his compositions from the
scraped wooden shovel, carefully to trim
his expressions in order to save paper. His
language had the energy of honest direct-
ness, and he was a master of logical lucid-
ity. He loved to point and enliven his
reasoning by humorous illustrations, usu-
ally anecdotes of Western life, of which
he had an inexhaustible store at his com-
mand, These anecdotes had not seldom a
flavor of rustic robustness about them, but
Abraham Lincoln 31

 

he used them with great effect, while amus-
ing the audience, to give life to an abstrac-
tion, to explode an absurdity, to clinch
an argument, to drive home an admoni-
tion. The natural kindliness of his tone,
softening prejudice and disarming parti-
san rancor, would often open to his rea-
soning a way into minds most unwilling to
receive it.

Yet his greatest power consisted in the
charm of his individuality. That charm
did not, in the ordinary way, appeal to the
ear or to the eye. His voice was not melo-
dious ; rather shrill and piercing, especially
when it rose to its high treble in moments
of great animation. His figure was un-
handsome, and the action of his unwieldy
limbs awkward. He commanded none of
the outward graces of oratory as they are
commonly understood. His charm was of
a different kind. It flowed from the rare
depth and genuineness of his convictions
and his sympathetic feelings. Sympathy
was the strongest element in his nature.
32 Abraham Lincoln

One of his biographers, who knew him

 

before he became President, says: “ Lin-
coln’s compassion might be stirred deeply
by an object present, but never by an
object absent and unseen. In the former
case he would most likely extend relief,
with little inquiry into the merits of the
case, because, as he expressed it himself,
it ‘took a pain out of his own heart.’”
Only half of this is correct. It is certainly
true that he could not witness any individ-
ual distress or oppression, or any kind of
suffering, without feeling a pang of pain
himself, and that by relieving as much as
he could the suffering of others he put an
end to his own. This compassionate im-
pulse to help he felt not only for human
beings, but for every living creature. As
in his boyhood he angrily reproved the
boys who tormented a wood turtle by put-
ting a burning coal on its back, so, we are
told, he would, when a mature man, on a
journey, dismount from his buggy and

wade waist-deep in mire to rescue a pig
Abraham Lincoln 33

 

struggling ina swamp. Indeed, appeals to
his compassion were so irresistible to him,
and he felt it so difficult to refuse anything
when his refusal could give pain, that he
himself sometimes spoke of his inability to
say “no” as a positive weakness, But that
certainly does not prove that his compas-
sionate feeling was confined to individual
cases of suffering witnessed with his own
eyes. As the boy was moved by the as-
pect of the tortured wood turtle to com-
pose an essay against cruelty to animals in
general, so the aspect of other cases of suf-
fering and wrong wrought up his moral
nature, and set his mind to work against
cruelty, injustice, and oppression in gen-
eral.

As his sympathy went forth to others, it
attracted others to him. Especially those
whom he called the “plain people” felt
themselves drawn to him by the instinc-
tive feeling that he understood, esteemed,
and appreciated them. He had grown up
among the poor, the lowly, the ignorant.
34 Abraham Lincoln

 

He never ceased to remember the good
souls he had met among them, and the
many kindnesses they had done him. Al-
though in his mental development he had
risen far above them, he never looked down
upon them. How they felt and how they
reasoned he knew, for so he had once felt
and reasoned himself. How they could be
moved he knew, for so he had once been
moved himself and practiced moving oth-
ers. His mind was much larger than
theirs, but it thoroughly comprehended
theirs ; and while he thought much farther
than they, their thoughts were ever present
to him. Nor had the visible distance be-
tween them grown as wide as his rise in
the world would seem to have warranted.
Much of his backwoods speech and man-
ners still clung to him. Although he had
become “Mr. Lincoln” to his later ac-
quaintances, he was still “Abe” to the
“Nats” and “Billys” and “ Daves” of his
youth; and their familiarity neither ap-
peared unnatural to them, nor was it in
Abraham Lincoln 35

 

the least awkward to him. He still told
and enjoyed stories similar to those he had
told and enjoyed in the Indiana settlement
and at New Salem. His wants remained
as modest as they had ever been; his do-
mestic habits had by no means complete-
ly accommodated themselves to those of
his more highborn wife; and though the
“Kentucky jeans” apparel had long been
dropped, his clothes of better material and
better make would sit ill sorted on his gi-
gantic limbs. His cotton umbrella, without
a handle, and tied together with a coarse
string to keep it from flapping, which he
carried on his circuit rides, is said to be re-
membered still by some of his surviving
neighbors. This rusticity of habit was ut-
terly free from that affected contempt of
refinement and comfort which self-made
men sometimes carry into their more afflu-
ent circumstances. To Abraham Lincoln
it was entirely natural, and all those who
came into contact with him knew it to be
so. In his ways of thinking and feeling he
36 Abraham Lincoln

 

had become a gentleman in the highest
sense, but the refining process had polished
but little the outward form. The plain
people, therefore, still considered ‘“ honest
Abe Lincoln” one of themselves; and
when they felt, which they no doubt fre-
quently did, that his thoughts and aspira-
tions moved in a sphere above their own,
they were all the more proud of him, with-
out any diminution of fellow-feeling. It
was this relation of mutual sympathy and
understanding between Lincoln and the
plain people that gave him his peculiar
power asa public man, and singularly fitted
him, as we shall see, for that leadership
which was preéminently required in the
great crisis then coming on, — the leader-
ship which indeed thinks and moves ahead
of the masses, but always remains within
sight and sympathetic touch of them.

He entered upon the campaign of 1858
better equipped than he had ever been be-
fore. He not only instinctively felt, but he
had convinced himself by arduous study,
Abraham Lincoln 37

 

that in this struggle against the spread of
slavery he had right, justice, philosophy,
the enlightened opinion of mankind, his-
tory, the Constitution, and good policy on
his side. It was observed that after he
began to discuss the slavery question his
speeches were pitched in a much loftier
key than his former oratorical efforts.
While he remained fond of telling funny
stories in private conversation, they disap-
peared more and more from his public dis-
course. He would still now and then point
his argument with expressions of inimita-
ble quaintness, and flash out rays of kindly
humor and witty irony; but his general
tone was serious, and rose sometimes to
genuine solemnity. His masterly skill in
dialectical thrust and parry, his wealth of
knowledge, his power of reasoning and ele-
vation of sentiment, disclosed in language
of rare precision, strength, and beauty, not
seldom astonished his old friends. 2

Neither of the two champions could
have found a more formidable antagonist
38 Abraham Lincoln

 

than each now met in the other. Douglas
was by far the most conspicuous member
of his party. His admirers had dubbed
him “the little giant,” contrasting in that
nickname the greatness of his mind with
the smallness of his body. But though of
low stature, his broad-shouldered figure ap-
peared uncommonly sturdy, and there was
something lionlike in the squareness of his
brow and jaw, and in the defiant shake of
his long hair. His loud and persistent ad-
vocacy of territorial expansion, in the name
of patriotism and “ manifest destiny,” had
given him an enthusiastic following among
the young and ardent. Great natural parts,
a highly combative temperament, and long
training had made him a debater unsur-
passed in a Senate filled with able men.
He could be as forceful in his appeals to
patriotic feelings as he was fierce in de-
nunciation and thoroughly skilled in all the
baser tricks of parliamentary pugilism.
While genial and rollicking in his social in-
tercourse, — the idol of the “ boys,” — he
Abraham Lincoln 39

 

felt himself one of the most renowned
statesmen of his time, and would fre-
quently meet his opponents with an over-
bearing haughtiness, as persons more to be
pitied than to be feared. In his speech
opening the campaign of 1858, he spoke
of Lincoln, whom the Republicans had
dared to advance as their candidate for
“his” place in the Senate, with an air
of patronizing if not contemptuous conde-
scension, as “a kind, amiable, and intelli-
gent gentleman and a good citizen.” The
little giant would have been pleased to pass
off his antagonist as a tall dwarf. He
knew Lincoln too well, however, to indulge
himself seriously in such a delusion. But
the political situation was at that moment
in a curious tangle, and Douglas could ex-
pect to derive from the confusion great
advantage over his opponent.

By the repeal of the Missouri Compro-
mise, opening the Territories to the ingress
of slavery, Douglas had pleased the South,
but greatly alarmed the North. He had
40 Abraham Lincoln

 

sought to conciliate Northern sentiment
by appending to his Kansas-Nebraska bill
the declaration that. its intent was “not to
legislate slavery into any State or Terri-
tory, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to
leave the people thereof perfectly free to
form and regulate their institutions in their
own way, subject only to the Constitution
of the United States.” This he called
“the great principle of popular sover-
eignty.” When asked whether, under this
act, the people of a Territory, before its
admission as a State, would have the right
to exclude slavery, he answered, “That is
a question for the courts to decide.” Then
came the famous “Dred Scott decision,”
in which the Supreme Court held substan-
tially that the right to hold slaves as prop-
erty existed in the Territories by virtue of
the Federal Constitution, and that this
right could not be denied by any act of
a territorial government. This, of course,
denied the right of the people of any Ter-
ritory to exclude slavery while they were
Abraham Lincoln 41

 

in a territorial condition, and it alarmed
the Northern people still more. Douglas
recognized the binding force of the deci-
sion of the Supreme Court, at the same
time maintaining, most illogically, that his
great principle of popular sovereignty re-
mained in force nevertheless. Meanwhile,
the proslavery people of western Missouri,
the so-called “border ruffians,” had in-
vaded Kansas, set up a constitutional con-
vention, made a constitution of an extreme
proslavery type, the “ Lecompton Consti-
tution,” refused to submit it fairly to a vote
of the people of Kansas, and then referred
it to Congress for acceptance, — seeking
thus to accomplish the admission of Kan-
sas as a slave State. Had Douglas sup.
ported such a scheme, he would have lost
all foothold in the North. In the name of
popular sovereignty he loudly declared his
opposition to the acceptance of any consti-
tution not sanctioned by a formal popular
vote. He “did not care,” he said, “whether
slavery be voted up or down,” but there
42 Abraham Lincoln

 

must be a fair vote of the people. Thus
he drew upon himself the hostility of the
Buchanan administration, which was con-
trolled by the proslavery interest, but he
saved his Northern following. More than
this, not only did his Democratic admirers
now call him “the true champion of free-
dom,” but even some Republicans of large
influence, prominent among them Horace
Greeley, sympathizing with Douglas in his
fight against the Lecompton Constitution,
and hoping to detach him permanently
from the proslavery interest and to force
a lasting breach in the Democratic party,
seriously advised the Republicans of Mlli-
nois to give up their opposition to Douglas,
and to help reélect him to the Senate.
Lincoln was not of that opinion. He be-
lieved that great popular movements can
succeed only when guided by their faithful
friends, and that the anti-slavery cause
could not safely be entrusted to the keep-
ing of one who “did not care whether
slavery be voted up or down.” This opin.
Abraham Lincoln 43

 

ion prevailed in Illinois; but the influences
within the Republican party, over which it
prevailed, yielded only a reluctant acqui-
escence, if they acquiesced at all, after
having materially strengthened Douglas’s
position. Such was the situation of things
when the campaign of 1858 between Lin-
coln and Douglas began.

Lincoln opened the campaign on his side
at the convention which nominated him
as the Republican candidate for the sena-
torship, with a memorable saying which
sounded like a shout from the watch-tower
of history: ‘A house divided against it-
self cannot stand. I believe this govern-
ment cannot endure permanently half slave
and half free. I do not expect the Union
to be dissolved. I do not expect the house
to fall, but I expect it will cease to be di-
vided. It will become all one thing or all
the other. Either the opponents of sla-
very will arrest the further spread of it, and
place it where the public mind shall rest in
the belief that it is in the course of ulti-
44 Abraham Lincoln

 

mate extinction ; or its advocates will push
it forward, till it shall become alike lawful
in all the States, — old as well as new,
North as well as South.” Then he pro-
ceeded to point out that the Nebraska doc-
trine combined with the Dred Scott deci-
sion worked in the direction of making the
nation “all slave.” Here was the ‘irre-
pressible conflict” spoken of by Seward a
short time later, in a speech made famous
mainly by that phrase. If there was any
new discovery in it, the right of priority
was Lincoln’s. This utterance proved not
only his statesmanlike conception of the
issue, but also, in his situation as a candi-
date, the firmness of his moral courage.
The friends to whom he had read the
draught of this speech before he delivered
it warned him anxiously that its delivery
might be fatal to his success in. the elec-
tion. This was shrewd advice, in the or-
dinary sense. While a slaveholder could
threaten disunion with impunity, the mere
suggestion that the existence of slavery was
Abraham Lincoln 45

 

incompatible with freedom in the Union
would hazard the political chances of any
public man in the North. But Lincoln
was inflexible. “It is true,” said he, “and
I wz? deliver it as written... . I would
rather be defeated with these expressions
in my speech held up and discussed before
the people than be victorious without
them.” The statesman was right in his
far-seeing judgment and his conscientious
statement of the truth, but the practical
politicians were also right in their predic.
tion of the immediate effect. Douglas in-
stantly seized upon the declaration that a
house divided against itself cannot stand
as the main objective point of his attack,
interpreting it as an incitement to a “‘re-
lentless sectional war,’ and there is no
doubt that the persistent reiteration of this
charge served to frighten not a few timid
souls.

Lincoln constantly endeavored to bring
the moral and philosophical side of the
subject to the foreground. “Slavery is
46 Abraham Lincoln

 

wrong” was the keynote of all his speeches.
To Douglas’s glittering sophism that the
right of the people of a Territory to have
slavery or not, as they might desire, was in
accordance with the principle of true pop-
ular sovereignty, he made the pointed an-
swer: “Then true popular sovereignty,
according to Senator Douglas, means that,
when one man makes another man his
slave, no third man shall be allowed to ob-
ject.” To Douglas’s argument that the
principle which demanded that the people
of a Territory should be permitted to
choose whether they would have slavery or
not “originated when God made man, and
placed good and evil before him, allowing
him to choose upon his own responsibility,”
Lincoln solemnly replied : “No; God did
not place good and evil before man, telling
him to make his choice. On the contrary,
God did tell him there was one tree of the
fruit of which he should not eat, upon pain
of death.” He did not, however, place
himself on the most advanced ground taken
Abraham Lincoln 47

 

by the radical anti-slavery men. He ad-
mitted that, under the Constitution, “the
Southern people were entitled to a con-
gressional fugitive slave law,” although he
did not approve the fugitive slave law then
existing. He declared also that, if slavery
were kept out of the Territories during
their territorial existence, as it should be,
and if then the people of any Territory,
having a fair chance and a clear field,
should do such an extraordinary thing as
to adopt a slave constitution, uninfluenced
by the actual presence of the institution
among them, he saw no alternative but to
admit such a Territory into the Union.
He declared further that, while he should
be exceedingly glad to see slavery abolished
in the District of Columbia, he would, as
a member of Congress, with his present
views, not endeavor to bring on that aboli-
tion except on condition that emancipation
be gradual, that it be approved by the de-
cision of a majority of voters in the Dis-
trict, and that compensation be made to
48 Abraham Lincoln

 

unwilling owners. On every available oc-
casion, he pronounced himself in favor of
the deportation and colonization of the
blacks, of course with their consent. He
repeatedly disavowed any wish on his part
to have social and political equality estab-
lished between whites and blacks. On this
point he summed up his views in a reply
to Douglas’s assertion that the Declaration
of Independence, in speaking of all men
as being created equal, did not include the
negroes, saying: “I do not understand the
Declaration of Independence to mean that
all men were created equal in all respects.
They are not equal in color. But I believe
that it does mean to declare that all men
are equal in some respects ; they are equal
in their right to life, liberty, and the pur.
suit of happiness.”

With regard to some of these subjects
Lincoln modified his position at a later
period, and it has been suggested that he
would have professed more advanced prin-
ciples in his debates with Douglas, had he
Abraham Lincoln 49

 

not feared thereby to lose votes. This
view can hardly be sustained. Lincoln
had the courage of his opinions, but he
was not a radical. The man who risked
his election by delivering, against the ur-
gent protest of his friends, the speech
about “the house divided against itself”
would not have shrunk from the expression
of more extreme views, had he really en-
tertained them. It is only fair to assume
that he said what at the time he really
thought, and that if, subsequently, his opin-
ions changed, it was owing to new concep-
tions of good policy and of duty brought
forth by an entirely new set of circum-
stances and exigencies. It is characteristic
that he continued to adhere to the imprac-
ticable colonization plan even after the
Emancipation Proclamation had already
been issued.

But in this contest Lincoln proved him-
self not only a debater, but also a political
strategist of the first order. The “kind,
amiable, and intelligent gentleman,” as
50 Abraham Lincoln

 

Douglas had been pleased to call him, was
by no means as harmless as a dove. He
possessed an uncommon share of that
worldly shrewdness which not seldom goes
with genuine simplicity of character; and
the political experience gathered in the
legislature and in Congress, and in many
election campaigns, added to his keen in-
tuitions, had made him as far-sighted a
judge of the probable effects of a public
man’s sayings or doings upon the popular
mind, and as accurate a calculator in esti-
mating political chances and forecasting
results, as could be found among the party
managers in Illinois. And now he perceived
keenly the ugly dilemma in which Douglas
found himself, between the Dred Scott
decision, which declared the right to hold
slaves to exist in the Territories by virtue
of the Federal Constitution, and his “great
principle of popular sovereignty,” accord-
ing to which the people of a Territory, if
they saw fit, were to have the right to
exclude slavery therefrom. Douglas was
Abraham Lincoln 51

 

twisting and squirming to the best of his
ability to avoid the admission that the two
were incompatible. The question then pre-
sented itself if it would be good policy
for Lincoln to force Douglas to a clear ex-
pression of his opinion as to whether, the
Dred Scott decision notwithstanding, “the
people of a Territory could in any lawful
way exclude slavery from its limits prior
to the formation of a state constitution.”
Lincoln foresaw and predicted what Doug-
las would answer: that slavery could not
exist ina Territory unless the people de-
sired it and gave it protection by territo-
rial legislation. In an improvised caucus
the policy of pressing the interrogatory on
Douglas was discussed. Lincoln’s friends
unanimously advised against it, because
the answer foreseen would sufficiently com-
mend Douglas to the people of Illinois to
insure his reélection to the Senate. But
Lincoln persisted. “I am after larger
game,” said he. “If Douglas so answers,
he can never be President, and the battle
52 Abraham Lincoln

 

of 1860 is worth a hundred of this.” The
interrogatory was pressed upon Douglas,
and Douglas did answer that, no matter
what the decision of the Supreme Court
might be on the abstract question, the peo-
ple of a Territory had the lawful means to
introduce or exclude slavery by territorial
legislation friendly or unfriendly to the
institution. Lincoln found it easy to show
the absurdity of the proposition that, if
slavery were admitted to exist of right in
the Territories by virtue of the supreme
law, the Federal Constitution, it could not
be kept out or expelled by an inferior
law, one made by a territorial legislature.
Again the judgment of the politicians,
having only the nearest object in view,
proved correct : Douglas was reélected to
the Senate. But Lincoln’s judgment proved
correct also: Douglas, by resorting to the
expedient of his “unfriendly legislation
doctrine,” forfeited his last chance of be-
coming President of the United States.
He might have hoped to win, by sufficient
Abraham Lincoln 53

 

atonement, his pardon from the South for
his opposition to the Lecompton Constitu-
tion ; but that he taught the people of the
Territories a trick by which they could de-
feat what the pro-slavery men considered
a constitutional right, and that he called
that trick lawful, —this the slave power
would never forgive. The breach between
the Southern and the Northern democracy
was thenceforth irremediable and fatal.
The presidential election of 1860 ap-
proached. The struggle in Kansas, and
the debates in Congress which accompa-
nied it, and which not unfrequently pro-
voked violent outbursts, continually stirred
the popular excitement. Within the Dem-
ocratic party raged the war of factions,
The national Democratic convention met
at Charleston on the 23d of April, 1860.
After a struggle of ten days between the
adherents and the opponents of Douglas,
during which the delegates from the cot-
ton States had withdrawn, the convention
adjourned without having nominated any
54 Abraham Lincoln

 

candidates, to meet again in Baltimore on
the 18th of June. There was no prospect,
however, of reconciling the hostile ele-
ments. It appeared very probable that
the Baltimore convention would nominate
Douglas, while the seceding Southern
Democrats would set up a candidate of
their own, representing extreme pro-slavery
principles.

Meanwhile, the national Republican con-
vention assembled at Chicago on the 16th
of May, full of enthusiasm and hope. The
situation was easily understood. The Dem-
ocrats would have the South. In order to
succeed in the election, the Republicans
had to win, in addition to the States car-
ried by Frémont in 1856, those that were
classed as “doubtful,” — New Jersey, Penn-
sylvania, and Indiana, or Illinois in the
place of either New Jersey or Indiana.
The most eminent Republican statesmen
and leaders of the time thought of for the
presidency were Seward and Chase, both
regarded as belonging to the more ad-
Abraham Lincoln 55

 

vanced order of anti-slavery men. Of the
two, Seward had the largest following, main-
ly from New York, New England, and the
Northwest. Cautious politicians doubted
seriously whether Seward, to whom some
phrases in his speeches had undeservedly
given the reputation of a reckless radi-
cal, would be able to command the whole
Republican vote in the doubtful States.
Besides, during his long public career he
had made enemies. It was evident that
those who thought Seward’s nomination too
hazardous an experiment, would consider
Chase unavailable for the same reason.
They would then look round for an “avail-
able’? man; and among the “available”
men Abraham Lincoln was easily discov-
ered to stand foremost. His great debate
with Douglas had given him a national
reputation. The people of the East being
eager to see the hero of so dramatic a con-
test, he had been induced to visit several
Eastern cities, and had astonished and de.
lighted large and distinguished audiences
85 Abraham Lincoln

 

with speeches of singular power and ori-
ginality. An address delivered by him in
the Cooper Institute in New York, before
an audience containing a large number of
important persons, was then, and has ever
since been, especially praised as one of
the most logical and convincing political
speeches ever made in this country. The
people of the West had grown proud of
him as a distinctively Western great man,
and his popularity at home had some pecu-
liar features which could be ‘expected to
exercise a potent charm. Nor was Lin-
coln’s name as that of an available candi-
date left to the chance of accidental discov-
ery. It is indeed not probable that he
thought of himself as a presidential possi-
bility, during his contest with Douglas for
the senatorship. As late as April, 1859,
he had written to a friend who had ap-
proached him on the subject that he did
not think himself fit for the presidency.
The vice-presidency was then the limit of
his ambition. But some of his friends in
Abraham Lincoln 57

 

Illinois took the matter seriously in hand,
and Lincoln, after some hesitation, then
formally authorized “ the use of his name.”
The matter was managed with such energy
and excellent judgment that, in the con.
vention, he had not only the whole vote of
Illinois to start with, but won votes on all
sides without offending any rival. A large
majority of the opponents of Seward went
over to Abraham Lincoln, and gave him
the nomination on the third ballot. As
had been foreseen, Douglas was nominated
by one wing of the Democratic party at
Baltimore, while the extreme pro-slavery
wing: put Breckinridge into the field as its
candidate. After a campaign conducted
with the energy of genuine enthusiasm on
the anti-slavery side the united Republicans
defeated the divided Democrats, and Lin-
coln was elected President by a majority of
fifty-seven votes in the electoral colleges.
The result of the election had hardly
been declared when the disunion move-
ment in the South, long threatened and
58 Abraham Lincoln

 

carefully planned and prepared, broke out
in the shape of open revolt, and nearly a
month before Lincoln could be inaugurated
as President of the United States seven
Southern States had adopted ordinances
of secession, formed an independent con-
federacy, framed a constitution for it, and
elected Jefferson Davis its president, ex-
pecting the other slaveholding States soon
to join them. On the 11th of February,
1861, Lincoln left Springfield for Washing-
ton ; having, with characteristic simplicity,
asked his law partner not to change the
‘sign of the firm “Lincoln and Herndon”
during the four years’ unavoidable absence
of the senior partner, and having taken
an affectionate and touching leave of his
neighbors.

The situation which confronted the new
President was appalling: the larger part
of the South in open rebellion, the rest of
the slaveholding States wavering, prepar-
ing to follow; the revolt guided by deter-
mined, daring, and skillful leaders; the
Abraham Lincoln 59

 

Southern people, apparently full of enthu-
siasm and military spirit, rushing to arms,
some of the forts and arsenals already in
their possession; the government of the
Union, before the accession of the new
President, in the hands of men some of
whom actively sympathized with the revolt,
while others were hampered by their tra-
ditional doctrines in dealing with it, and
really gave it aid and comfort by their ir-
resolute attitude ; all the departments full
of “Southern sympathizers” and honey-
combed with disloyalty ; the treasury emp-
ty, and the public credit at the lowest ebb;
the arsenals ill supplied with arms, if not
emptied by treacherous practices; the reg-
ular army of insignificant strength, dis-
persed over an immense surface, and de-
prived of some of its best officers by defec-
tion; the navy small and antiquated. But
that was not all, The threat of disunion
had so often been resorted to by the slave
power in years gone by that most North-
ern people had ceased to believe in its
60 Abraham Lincoln

 

seriousness. But when disunion actually
appeared as a stern reality, something like
a chill swept through the whole Northern
country. A cry for union and peace at any
price rose on all sides. Democratic parti-
sanship reiterated this cry with vociferous
vehemence, and even many Republicans
grew afraid of the victory they had just
achieved at the ballot-box, and spoke of
compromise. The country fairly resounded
with the noise of “ anti-coercion meetings.”
Expressions of firm resolution from deter-
mined anti-slavery men were indeed not
wanting, but they were for a while almost
drowned by a bewildering confusion of dis-
cordant voices. Even this was not all. Po-
tent influences in Europe, with an ill-con-
cealed desire for the permanent disruption
of the American Union, eagerly espoused
the cause of the Southern -seceders, and
the two principal maritime powers of the
Old World seemed only to be waiting fora
favorable opportunity to lend them a help.
ing hand.
Abraham Lincoln 61

 

This was the state of things to be mas-
‘tered by “honest Abe Lincoln” when he
took his seat in the presidential chair, —
“honest Abe Lincoln,” who was so good-
natured that he could not say “no;” the
greatest achievement in whose life had
been a debate on the slavery question ;
who had never been in any position of
power; who was without the slightest ex-
perience of high executive duties, and who
had only a speaking acquaintance with the
men upon whose counsel and coéperation
he was to depend. Nor was his accession
to power under such circumstances greeted
with general confidence even by the mem-
bers of his party. While he had indeed
won much popularity, many Republicans,
especially among those who had advocated
Seward’s nomination for the presidency,
saw the simple “Illinois lawyer” take the
reins of government with a feeling little
short of dismay. The orators and jour-
nals of the opposition were ridiculing and
lampooning him without measure. Many
62 Abraham Lincoln

 

people actually wondered how such a man
could dare to undertake a task which, as he
himself had said to his neighbors in his
parting speech, was “more difficult than
that of Washington himself had been.”
But Lincoln brought to that task, aside
from other uncommon qualities, the first
requisite, — an intuitive comprehension of
its nature. While he did not indulge in
the delusion that the Union could be main-
tained or restored without a conflict of
arms, he could indeed not foresee all the
problems he would have to solve. He in-
stinctively understood, however, by what
means that conflict would have to be con-
ducted by the government of a democracy.
He knew that the impending war, whether
great or small, would not be like a foreign
war, exciting a united national enthusiasm,
but a civil war, likely to fan to uncommon
heat the animosities of party even in the
localities controlled by the government;
that this war would have to be carried on,
not by means of a ready-made machinery,
Abraham Lincoln 63

 

ruled by an undisputed, absolute will, but
by means to be furnished by the voluntary
action of the people :— armies to be formed
by voluntary enlistment ; large sums of
money to be raised by the people, through
their representatives, voluntarily taxing
themselves ; trusts of extraordinary power
to be voluntarily granted; and war mea-
sures, not seldom restricting the rights and
liberties to which the citizen was accus-
tomed, to be voluntarily accepted and sub-
mitted to by the people, or at least a large
majority of them;—and that this would
have to be kept up not merely during a
short period of enthusiastic excitement,
but possibly through weary years of alter-
nating success and disaster, hope and de-
spondency. He knew that in order to
steer this government by public opinion
successfully through all the confusion cre-
ated by the prejudices and doubts and dif-
ferences of sentiment distracting the pop-
ular mind, and so to propitiate, inspire,
mould, organize, unite, and guide the pop-
64 Abraham Lincoln

 

ular will that it might give forth all the
means required for the performance of his
great task, he would have to take into ac-
count all the influences strongly affecting
the current of popular thought and feeling,
and to direct while appearing to obey.
This was the kind of leadership he intui-
tively conceived to be needed when a free
people were to be led forward ex masse
to overcome a great common danger under
circumstances of appalling difficulty, — the
leadership which does not dash ahead with
brilliant daring, no matter who follows, but
which is intent upon rallying all the avail-
able forces, gathering in the stragglers,
closing up the column, so that the front
may advance well supported. _ For this
leadership Abraham Lincoln was admirably
fitted, better than any other American
statesman of his day; for he understood
the plain people, with all their loves and
hates, their prejudices and their noble im-
pulses, their weaknesses and their strength,
as he understood himself, and his sympa.
Abraham Lincoln 65

 

thetic nature was apt to draw their sym-
pathy to him.

His inaugural address foreshadowed his
official course in characteristic manner.
Although yielding nothing in point of prin-
ciple, it was by no means a flaming anti-
slavery manifesto, such as would have
pleased the more ardent Republicans. It
was rather the entreaty of a sorrowing fa-
ther speaking to his wayward children. In >
the kindliest language he pointed out to
the secessionists how ill advised their at-
tempt at disunion was, and why, for their
own sakes, they should desist. Almost
plaintively, he told them that, while it was
not ¢hedr duty to destroy the Union, it was
his sworn duty to preserve it; that the
least he could do, under the obligations of
his oath, was to possess and hold the pro-
perty of the United States ; that he hoped
to do this peaceably ; that he abhorred war
for any purpose, and that they would have
none unless they themselves were the ag-
gressors. It was a masterpiece of persua-
66 Abraham Lincoln

 

siveness, and, while Lincoln had accepted
many valuable amendments suggested by
Seward, it was essentially his own. Prob-
ably Lincoln himself did not expect his
inaugural address to have any effect upon
the secessionists, for he must have known
them to be resolved upon disunion at any
cost. But it was an appeal to the wavering
minds in the North, and upon them it
made a profound impression. Every can-
did man, however timid and halting, had to
admit that the President was bound by his
oath to do his duty ; that under that oath
he could do no less than he said he would
do ; that if the secessionists resisted such
an appeal as the President had made, they
were bent upon mischief, and that the gov-
ernment must be supported against them.
The partisan sympathy with the South-
ern insurrection which still existed in the
North did indeed not disappear, but it di-
minished perceptibly under the influence of
such reasoning. Those who still resisted it

did so at the risk of appearing unpatriotic.
Abraham Lincoln 67

 

It must not be supposed, however, that
Lincoln at once succeeded ‘in pleasing
everybody, even among his friends, — even
among those nearest to him. In selecting
his cabinet, which he did substantially be-
fore he left Springfield for Washington, he
thought it wise to call to his assistance the
strong men of his party, especially those
who had given evidence of the support
they commanded as his competitors in the
Chicago convention. In them he found at
the same time representatives of the differ-
ent shades of opinion within the party,
and of the different elements — former
Whigs and former Democrats — from which
the party had recruited itself. This was
sound policy under the circumstances. It
might indeed have been foreseen that
among the members of a cabinet so com-
posed, troublesome disagreements and ri-
valries would break out. But it was better
for the President to have these strong and
ambitious men near him as his codperators
than to have them as his critics in Con-
68 -° Abraham Lincoln

 

gress, where their differences might have
been composed in a common opposition to
him. As members of his:cabinet he could
hope to control them, and to keep them
busily employed in the service of a com-
mon purpose, if he had the strength to do
so. Whether he did possess this strength
was soon tested by a singularly rude trial.
There can be no doubt that the fore-
most members of his cabinet, Seward and
Chase, the most eminent Republican states-
men, had felt themselves wronged by their
party when in its national convention it
preferred to them for the presidency a
man whom, not unnaturally, they thought
greatly their inferior in ability and expe-
rience as well as in service. The soreness
of that disappointment was intensified
when they saw this Western man in the
White House, with so much of rustic man-
ner and speech as still clung to him, meet-
ing his fellow-citizens, high and low, ona
footing of equality, with the simplicity of
his good nature unburdened by any con-
Abraham Lincoln 69

 

ventional dignity of deportment, and deal-
ing with the great business of state in an
easy-going, unmethodical, and apparently
somewhat irreverent way. They did not
understand such a man. Especially Sew-
ard, who, as Secretary of State, considered
himself next to the Chief Executive, and
who quickly accustomed himself to giving
orders and making arrangements upon his
own motion, thought it necessary that he
should rescue the direction of public affairs
from hands so unskilled, and take full
charge of them himself. At the end of
the first month of the administration he
submitted a “memorandum ” to President
Lincoln, which has been first brought to
light by Nicolay and Hay, and is one of
their most valuable contributions to the
history of those days. In that paper Sew-
ard actually told the President that, at the
end of a month’s administration, the gov-
ernment was still without a policy, either
domestic or foreign ; that the slavery ques-
tion should be eliminated from the struggle
70 Abraham Lincoln

 

about the Union; that the matter of the
maintenance of the forts and other posses-
sions in the South should be decided with
that view; that explanations should be
demanded categorically from the govern-
ments of Spain and France, which were
then preparing, one for the annexation of
San Domingo, and both for the invasion of
Mexico; that if no satisfactory explana-
tions were received war should be declared
against Spain and France by the United
States; that explanations should also be
sought from Russia and Great Britain, and
a vigorous continental spirit of indepen-
dence against European intervention be
aroused all over the American continent ;
that this policy should be incessantly pur-
sued and directed by somebody ; that either
the President should devote himself en-
tirely to it, or devolve the direction on
some member of his cabinet, whereupon
all debate on this policy must end. _

This could be understood only as a
formal demand that the President should
Abraham Lincoln 71

 

acknowledge his own incompetency to per-
form his duties, content himself with the
amusement of distributing post offices, and
resign his power as to all important affairs
into the hands of his Secretary of State.
It seems to-day incomprehensible how a
statesman of Seward’s calibre could at that
period conceive a plan of policy in which
the slavery question had no place ; a policy
which rested upon the utterly delusive as-
sumption tkat the secessionists, who had
already formed their Southern Confederacy
and were with stern resolution preparing
to fight for its independence, could be
hoodwinked back into the Union by some
sentimental demonstration against Evro-
pean interference; a policy which, at that
critical moment, would have involved the
Union in a foreign war, thus inviting for-
eign intervention in favor of the Southern
Confederacy, and increasing tenfold its
chances in the struggle for independence.
But it is equally incomprehensible how
Seward could fail to see that this demand
72 Abraham Lincoln

 

of an unconditional surrender was a mor-
tal insult to the head of the government,
and that by putting his proposition on pa-
per he delivered himself into the hands of
the very man he had insulted; for, had Lin-
coln, as most Presidents would have done,
instantly dismissed Seward, and published
the true reason for that dismissal, it would
inevitably have been the end of Seward’s
career. But Lincoln did what not many of
the noblest and greatest men in history
would have been noble and great enough
to do. He considered that Seward was still
capable of rendering great service to his
country in the place in which he was, if.
rightly controlled. He ignored the insult,
but firmly established his superiority. In
his reply, which he forthwith dispatched,
he told Seward that the administration had
a domestic policy as laid down in the inau-
gural address with Seward’s approval; that
it had a foreign policy as traced in Sew-
ard’s dispatches with the President's ap-
proval; that if any policy was to be main-
Abraham Lincoln 73

 

tained or changed, he, the President, was
to direct that on his responsibility; and
that in performing that duty the President
had a right to the advice of his secretaries,
Seward’s fantastic schemes of foreign war
and continental policies Lincoln brushed
aside by passing them over in silence.
Nothing more was said. Seward must
have felt that he was at the mercy of a su-
perior man; that his offensive proposition
had been generously pardoned as a tempo-
rary aberration of a great mind, and that
he could atone for it only by devoted per-
sonal loyalty. This he did. He was thor-
oughly subdued, and thenceforth submit-.,
ted to Lincoln his dispatches for revision
and amendment without a murmur. The
war with European nations was no longer
thought of; the slavery question found in
due time its proper place in the struggle
for the Union ; and when, at a later period,
the dismissal of Seward was demanded by
dissatisfied Senators, who attributed to him
the shortcomings of the administration,
74 Abraham Lincoln

 

Lincoln stood stoutly by his faithful Secre-
tary of State.

Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, a
man of superb presence, of eminent ability
and ardent patriotism, of great natural dig-
nity and a certain outward coldness of
manner, which made him appear more dif-
ficult of approach than he really was, did
not permit his disappointment to burst out
in such extravagant demonstrations, But
Lincoln’s ways were so essentially differ-
ent from his that they never became quite
intelligible, and certainly not congenial to
him. It might, perhaps, have been better
had there been, at the beginning of the ad-
ministration, some decided clash between
Lincoln and Chase, as there was between
Lincoln and Seward, to bring on a full mu-
tual explanation, and to make Chase appre-
ciate the real seriousness of Lincoln’s na-
ture. But, as it was, their relations always
remained somewhat formal, and Chase
never felt quite at ease under a chief whom
he could not understand, and whose char-
Abraham Lincoln 75

 

acter and powers he never learned to es-
teem at their true value. At the same
time, he devoted himself zealously to the
duties of his department, and did the coun-
try arduous service under circumstances of
extreme difficulty. Nobody recognized this
more heartily than Lincoln himself, and
they managed to work together until near
the end of Lincoln’s first presidential term,
when Chase, after some disagreements
concerning appointments to office, resigned
from the treasury; and, after Taney’s
‘death, the President made him Chief Jus-
tice.

The rest of the cabinet consisted of men
of less eminence, who subordinated them-
selves more easily. In January, 1862, Lin-
coln found it necessary to bow Cameron
out of the war office, and to put in his place
Edwin M. Stanton, a man of intensely
practical mind, vehement impulses, fierce
positiveness, ruthless energy, immense
working power, lofty patriotism, and sever-
est devotion to duty. He accepted the war
76 Abraham Lincoln

 

office, not as a partisan, for he had never
been a Republican, but only to do all he
could in “helping to save the country.”
The manner in which Lincoln succeeded
in taming this lion to his will, by frankly
recognizing his great qualities, by giving
him the most generous confidence, by aid-
mg him in his work to the full of his power,
by kindly concession or affectionate per-
suasiveness in cases of differing opinions,
or, when it was necessary, by firm asser-
tions of superior authority, bears the high-
est testimony to his skill in the manage-
ment of men. Stanton, who had entered
the service with rather a mean opinion of
Lincoln’s character and capacity, became
one of his warmest, most devoted, and
most admiring friends, and with none of
his secretaries was Lincoln’s intercourse
_ more intimate. To take advice with can-
did readiness, and to weigh it without any
pride of his own opinion, was one of Lin-
coln’s preéminent virtues ; but he had not
long presided over his cabinet council when
Abraham Lincoln 77

 

his was felt by all its members to be the
ruling mind. :

The cautious policy foreshadowed in his
inaugural address, and pursued during the
first period of the civil war, was far from
satisfying all his party friends. The ardent
spirits among the Union men thought that
the whole North should at once be called
to arms, to crush the rebellion by one
powerful blow. The ardent spirits among
the anti-slavery men insisted that, slavery
having brought forth the rebellion, this
powerful blow should at once -be aimed at
slavery. Both complained that the admin-
istration was spiritless, undecided, and la-
mentably slow in its proceedings. Lincoln
reasoned otherwise. The ways of thinking
and feeling of the masses, of the plain peo-
ple, were constantly present to his mind,
The masses, the plain people, had to fur-
nish the men for the fighting, if fighting
was to be done. He believed that the plain
people would be ready to fight when it
clearly appeared necessary, and that they
78 Abraham Lincoln

 

would feel that necessity when they felt
themselves attacked. He therefore waited
until the enemies of the Union struck the
first blow. As soon as, on the 12th of
April, 1861, the first gun was fired in
Charleston harbor on the Union flag upon
Fort Sumter, the call was sounded, and the
Northern people rushed to arms.

Lincoln knew that the plain people were
now indeed ready to fight in defense of the
Union, but not yet ready to fight for the
destruction of slavery. He declared openly
that he had a right to summon the people
to fight for the Union, but not to summon
them to fight for the abolition of slavery
as a primary object; and this declaration
gave him numberless soldiers for the Union
who at that period would have hesitated to
do battle against the institution of slavery.
For a time he succeeded in rendering harm-
less the cry of the partisan opposition that
the Republican administration were per-
verting the war for the Union into an
“abolition war.” But when he went so
Abraham Lincoln 79

 

far as to countermand the acts of some
generals in the field, looking to the eman-
cipation of the slaves in the districts cov-
ered by their commands, loud complaints
arose from earnest anti-slavery men, who
accused the President of turning his back
upon the anti-slavery cause. Many of these
anti-slavery men will now, after a calm re-
trospect, be willing to admit that it would
have been a hazardous policy to endan-
ger, by precipitating a demonstrative fight
against slavery, the success of the strug-
gle for the Union.

Lincoln’s views and feelings concerning
slavery had not changed. Those who con-
versed with him intimately upon the sub-
ject at that period know that he did not
expect slavery long to survive the triumph
of the Union, even if it were not immedi-
ately destroyed by the war. In this he was
right. Had the Union armies achieved a
decisive victory in an early period of the
conflict, and had the seceded States been
received back with slavery, the “slave
80 Abraham Lincoln

 

power” would then have been a defeated
power, — defeated in an attempt to carry
out its most effective threat. It would
have lost its prestige. Its menaces would
have been hollaw sound, and ceased to
make any one afraid. It could no longer
have hoped to expand, to maintain an equi-
librium in any branch of Congress, and to
control the government. The victorious
free States would have largely overbal-
anced it. It would no longer have been
able to withstand the onset of a hostile
age. It could no longer have ruled, — and
slavery had to rule in order to live. It
would have lingered for a while, but it
would surely have been ‘in the course of
ultimate extinction.” A prolonged war
precipitated the destruction of slavery; a
short war might only have prolonged its
death struggle. Lincoln saw this clearly ;
but he saw also that, in a protracted death
struggle, it might still have kept disloyal
sentiments alive, bred distracting commo-
tions, and caused great mischief to the
Abraham Lincoln 81

 

country. He therefore hoped that slavery
would not survive the war.

But the question how he could rightfully
employ his power to bring on its speedy
destruction was to him not a question of
mere sentiment. He himself set forth his
reasoning upon it, at a later period, in one
of his inimitable letters. “I am naturally
anti-slavery,” said he. “If slavery is not
wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remem-
ber the time when I did not so think and
feel. And yet I have never understood
that the presidency conferred upon me an
unrestricted right to act upon that judg-
ment and feeling. It was in the oath I
took that I would, to the best of my abil-
ity, preserve, protect, and defend the Con-
stitution of the United States. I could
not take the office without taking the oath.
Nor was it my view that I might take
an oath to get power, and break the oath
in using that power. I understood, too,
that, in ordinary civil administration, this
oath even forbade me practically to indulge
82 Abraham Lincoln

 

my private abstract judgment on the moral
question of slavery. I did understand,
however, also, that my oath imposed upon
me the duty of preserving, to the best of
my ability, by every indispensable means,
that government, that nation, of which the
Constitution was the organic law. I could
not feel that, to the best of my ability, I
had even vied to preserve the Constitution
if, to save slavery, or any minor matter, I
should permit the wreck of government,
country, and Constitution all together.”
In other words, if the salvation of the gov-
ernment, the Constitution, and the Union
demanded the destruction of slavery, he
felt it to be not only his right, but his
sworn duty to destroy it. Its destruction
became a necessity of the war for the
Union.

As the war dragged on and disaster fol-
lowed disaster, the sense of that necessity
steadily grew upon him, Early in 1862, as
some of his friends well remember, he saw,
what Seward seemed not to see, that to
Abraham Lincoln 83

 

give the war for the Union an anti-slavery
character was the surest means to prevent
the recognition of the Southern Confeder-
acy as an independent nation by European
powers; that, slavery being abhorred by
the moral sense of civilized mankind, na
European government would dare to offer
so gross an insult to the public opinion of
its people as openly to favor the creation
of a state founded upon slavery to the pre-
judice of an existing nation fighting against
slavery. He saw also that slavery un-
touched was to the rebellion an element of
power, and that in order to overcome that
power it was necessary to turn it into
an element of weakness. Still, he felt
no assurance that the plain people were
prepared for so radical a measure as
the emancipation of the slaves by act of
the government, and he anxiously consid-
ered that, if they were not, this great step
might, by exciting dissension at the North,
injure the cause of the Union in one quar-
ter more than it would help it in another.
84 Abraham Lincoln

 

He heartily welcomed an effort made in
New York to mould and stimulate public
sentiment on the slavery question by pub-
lic meetings boldly pronouncing for emanci-
pation. At the same time he himself cau-
tiously advanced with a recommendation,
expressed in a special message to Congress,
that the United States should codperate
with any State which might adopt the
gradual abolishment of slavery, giving such
State pecuniary aid to compensate the
former owners of emancipated slaves. The
discussion was started, and spread rapidly.
Congress adopted the resolution recom-
mended, and soon went a step farther in
passing a bill to abolish slavery in the Dis-
trict of Columbia. The plain people began
to look at emancipation on a larger scale,
as a thing to be considered seriously by pa-
triotic citizens ; and soon Lincoln thought
that the time was ripe, and that the edict
of freedom could be ventured upon without
danger of serious confusion in the Union
ranks,
Abraham Lincoln 85

 

The failure of McClellan’s movement
upon Richmond increased immensely the
prestige of the enemy. The need of some
great act to stimulate the vitality of the
Union cause seemed to grow daily more
pressing. On July 21, 1862, Lincoln sur-
prised his cabinet with the draught of a
proclamation declaring free the slaves in
all the States that should be still in rebel-
lion against the United States on the Ist
of January, 1863. As to the matter itself
he announced that he had fully made up
his mind; he invited advice only concern-
ing the form and the time of publication.
Seward suggested that the proclamation,
if then brought out, amidst disaster and
distress, would sound like the last shriek
of a perishing cause. Lincoln accepted
the suggestion, and the proclamation was
postponed. Another defeat followed, the
second at Bull Run. But when, after that
battle, the Confederate army, under Lee,
crossed the Potomac and invaded Mary-
land, Lincoln vowed in his heart that, if
86 Abraham Lincoln

 

the Union army were now blessed with
success, the decree of freedom should
surely be issued. The victory of Antietam
was won on September 17, and the pre-
liminary Emancipation Proclamation came
forth on the 22d. It was Lincoln’s own
resolution and act ; but practically it bound
the nation, and permitted no step back-
ward. In spite of its limitations, it was
the actual abolition of slavery. Thus he
wrote his name upon the books of history
with the title dearest to his heart, — the
liberator of the slave.

It is true, the great proclamation, which
stamped the war as one for “union and
freedom,” did not at once mark the turn-
ing of the tide on the field of military
operations. There were more disasters, —
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. But
with Gettysburg and Vicksburg the whole
aspect of the war changed. Step by step,
now more slowly, then more rapidly, but
with increasing steadiness, the flag of the
Union advanced from field to field toward
Abraham Lincoln 87

 

the final consummation. The decree of
emancipation was naturally followed by the
enlistment of emancipated negroes in the
Union armies. This measure had a far-
ther reaching effect than merely giving
the Union armies an increased supply of
men. The laboring force of the rebellion
was hopelessly disorganized. The war be-
came like a problem of arithmetic. As
the Union armies pushed forward, the area
from which the Southern Confederacy
could draw recruits and supplies constantly
grew smaller, while the area from which
the Union recruited its strength constantly
grew larger; and everywhere, even within
the Southern lines, the Union had its al-
lies. The fate of the rebellion was then
virtually decided; but it still required
much bloody work to convince the brave
warriors who fought for it that they were
really beaten.

Neither did the Emancipation Proclama-
tion forthwith command universal assent
among the people who were loyal to the
88 Abraham ‘Lincoln

 

Union. There were even signs of a reac-
tion against the administration in the fall
elections of 1862, seemingly justifying the
opinion, entertained by many, that the
President had really anticipated the devel-
opment of popular feeling. The cry that
the war for the Union had been turned
into an “abolition war” was raised again
by the opposition, and more loudly than
ever. But the good sense and patriotic in-
stincts of the plain people gradually mar-
shaled themselves on Lincoln’s side, and
he lost no opportunity to help on this pro-
cess by personal argument and admoni-
tion. There never has been a President in
such constant and active contact with the
public opinion of the country, as there
never has been a President who, while at
the head of the government, remained so
near to the people. Beyond the circle of
those who had long known him, the feeling
steadily grew that the man in the White

House was “honest Abe Lincoln’’ still,
and that every citizen might approach him
Abraham Lincoln 89

 

with complaint, expostulation, or advice,
without danger of meeting a rebuff from
power-proud authority, or humiliating con-
descension ; and this privilege was used by
so many and with such unsparing freedom
that only superhuman patience could have
endured it all, There are men now living
who would to-day read with amazement, if
not regret, what they then ventured to say
or write to him. . But Lincoln repelled no
one whom he believed to speak to him in
good faith and with patriotic purpose. No
good advice would go unheeded. No can-
did criticism would offend him. No hon-
est opposition, while it might pain him,
would produce a lasting alienation of feel-
ing between him and the opponent. It
may truly be said that few men in power
have ever been exposed to more daring
attempts to direct their course, to severer
censure of their acts, and to more cruel mis-
representation of their motives. And all
this he met with that good-natured humor
peculiarly his own, and with untiring effort
90 Abraham Lincoln

 

to see the right and to impress it upon
_ those who differed from him. The conver-
sations he had and the correspondence
he carried on upon matters of public inter-
est, not only with men in official position,
but with private citizens, were almost un-
ceasing, and in a large number of public
letters, written ostensibly to meetings, or
committees, or persons of importance, he
addressed himself directly to the popular
mind. Most of these letters stand among
the finest monuments of our political lit-
erature. Thus he presented the singular
spectacle of a President who, in the midst
of a great civil war, with unprecedented
duties weighing upon him, was constantly
in person debating the great features of
his policy with the people.

« While in this manner he exercised an
ever-increasing influence upon the popular
understanding, his sympathetic nature en-
deared him more and more to the popular
heart. In vain did journals and speakers
of the opposition represent him as a light-
Abraham Lincoln ot

 

minded trifler, who amused himself with
frivolous story-telling and coarse jokes,
while the blood of the people was flowing
in streams. The people knew that the
man at the head of affairs, on whose hag-
gard face the twinkle of humor so fre-
quently changed into an expression of pro-
foundest sadness, was more than any other
deeply distressed by the suffering he wit-
nessed: that he felt the pain of every
wound that was inflicted on the battlefield,
and the anguish of every woman or child
who had lost husband or father; that when-
ever he could he was eager to alleviate sor-
row, and that his mercy was never implored
in vain. They looked to him as one who
was with them and of them in all their
hopes and fears, their joys and sorrows, —
who laughed with them and wept with
them ; and as his heart was theirs, so their
hearts turned to him. His popularity was
far different from that of Washington, who
was revered with awe, or that of Jackson,
the unconquerable hero, for whom party
92 Abraham Lincoln

 

enthusiasm never grew weary of shouting.
To Abraham Lincoln the people became
bound by a genuine sentimental attach-
ment. It was not a matter of respect, or
confidence, or party pride, for this feeling
spread far beyond the boundary lines of
his party ; it was an affair of the heart, in-
dependent of mere reasoning. When the
soldiers in the field or their folks at home
spoke of “ Father Abraham,” there was no
cant init. They felt that their President
was really caring for them as a father
would, and that they could go to him, every
one of them, as they would go to a father,
and talk to him of what troubled them,
sure to find a willing ear and tender sym-
pathy. Thus, their President, and his
cause, and his endeavors, and his success
gradually became to them almost matters
of family concern. And this popularity
carried him triumphantly through the pre-
sidential election of 1864, in spite of an
Opposition within his own party which at
first seemed very formidable.
Abraham Lincoln 93

 

Many of the radical anti-slavery men
were never quite satisfied with Lincoln’s
ways of meeting the problems of the time.
They were very earnest and mostly very
able men, who had positive ideas as to
“how this rebellion should be put down.”
They would not recognize the necessity of
measuring the steps of the government
according to the progress of opinion among
the plain people. They criticised Lincoln’s
cautious management as irresolute, halt-
ing, lacking in definite purpose and in en-
ergy; he should not have delayed emanci-
pation so long; he should not have confided
important commands to men of doubtful
views as to slavery; he should have au-
thorized military commanders to set the
slaves free as they went on; he dealt too
leniently with unsuccessful generals; he
should have put down all factious opposi-
tion with a strong hand instead of trying
to pacify it; he should have given the peo-
ple accomplished facts instead of arguing
with them, and so on. It is true, these
94 Abraham Lincoln

 

criticisms were not always entirely un-
founded. Lincoln’s policy had, with the
virtues of democratic government, some of
its weaknesses, which in the presence of
pressing exigencies were apt to deprive
governmental action of the necessary vigor ;
and his kindness of heart, his disposition
always to respect the feelings of others,
frequently made him recoil from anything
like severity, even when severity was ur-
gently called for. But many of his radical
critics have since then revised their judg-
ment sufficiently to admit that Lincoln’s
policy was, on the whole, the wisest and
safest ; that a policy of heroic methods,
while it has sometimes accomplished great
results, could in a democracy like ours be
maintained only by constant success ; that
it would have quickly broken down under
the weight of disaster; that it might have
been successful from the start, had the
Union, at the beginning of the conflict,
had its Grants and Shermans and Sheri-
dans, its Farraguts and Porters, fully ma-
Abraham Lincoln 95

 

tured at the head of its forces; but that,
as the great commanders had to be evolved
slowly from the developments of the war,
constant success could not- be counted
upon, and it was best to follow a policy
which was in friendly contact with the
popular force, and therefore more fit to
stand the trial of misfortune on the battle-
field. But at that period they thought dif-
ferently, and their dissatisfaction with Lin-
coln’s doings was greatly increased by the
steps he took toward the reconstruction of
rebel States then partially in possession of
the Union forces.

In December, 1863, Lincoln issued an
amnesty proclamation, offering pardon to
all implicated in the rebellion, with certain
specified exceptions, on condition of their
taking and maintaining an oath to support
the Constitution and obey the laws of the
United States and the proclamations of the
President with regard to slaves; and also
promising that when, in any of the rebel
States, a number of citizens equal to one
96 Abraham Lincoln

 

tenth of the voters in 1860 should reéstab-
lish a state government in conformity with
the oath above mentioned, such should be
recognized by the Executive as the true
government of the State. The proclamation
seemed at first to be received with general
favor. But soon another scheme of recon-
struction, much more stringent in its pro-
visions, was put forward in the House of
Representatives by Henry Winter Davis.
Benjamin Wade championed it in the Sen-
ate. It passed in the closing moments of
the session in July, 1864, and Lincoln, in-
stead of making it a law by his signature,
embodied the text of it in a proclamation
as a plan of reconstruction worthy of being
earnestly considered. The differences of
opinion concerning this subject had only
intensified the feeling against Lincoln
which had long been nursed among the
radicals, and some of them openly declared
their purpose of resisting his reélection to
the presidency. Similar sentiments were
manifested by the advanced anti-slavery
Abraham Lincoln 97

 

men of Missouri, who, in their hot faction-
fight with the ‘ conservatives” of that
State, had not received from Lincoln the
active support they demanded. Still an-
other class of Union men, mainly in the
East, gravely shook their heads when con-
sidering the question whether Lincoln
should be reélected. They were those who
cherished in their minds an ideal of states.
manship and of personal bearing in high
office with which, in their opinion, Lin-
coln’s individuality was much out. of ac-
cord. They were shocked when they heard
him cap an argument upon grave affairs
of state with a story about “a man out in
Sangamon County,’ —a story, to be sure,
strikingly clinching his point, but sadly
lacking in dignity. They could not under-
stand the man who was capable, in opening
a cabinet meeting, of reading to his secre-
taries a funny chapter from a recent book
of Artemus Ward, with which in an un-
occupied moment he had relieved his care-
burdened mind, and who then solemnly in-
98 Abraham Lincoln

 

formed the executive council that he had
vowed in his heart to issue a proclamation
emancipating the slaves as soon as God
blessed the Union arms with another vic-
tory. They were alarmed at the weakness
of a President who would indeed resist the
urgent remonstrances of statesmen against
his policy, but could not resist the prayer
of an old woman for the pardon of a sol-
dier who was sentenced to be shot for
desertion. Such men, mostly sincere and
ardent patriots, not only wished, but ear-
nestly set to work, to prevent Lincoln’s re-
nomination. Not a few of them actually
believed, in 1863, that, if the national con-
vention of the Union party were held then,
Lincoln would not be supported by the
delegation of a single State. But when
the convention met at Baltimore, in June,
1864, the voice of the people was heard.
On the first ballot Lincoln received the
votes of the delegations from all the States
except Missouri; and even the Missourians
turned over their votes to him before the
result of the ballot was declared.
Abraham Lincoln 99

 

But even after his renomination the op-
position to Lincoln within the ranks of the
Union party did not subside. A conven-
tion, called by the dissatisfied radicals in
Missouri, and favored by men of a similar
way of thinking in other States, had been
held already in May, and had nominated as
its candidate for the presidency General
Frémont. He, indeed, did not attract a
strong following, but opposition movements
from different quarters appeared more
formidable. Henry Winter Davis and
Benjamin Wade assailed Lincoln in a flam-
ing manifesto. Other Union men, of un-
doubted patriotism and high standing, per-
suaded themselves, and sought to persuade
the people, that Lincoln’s renomination
was ill advised and dangerous to the Union
cause. As the Democrats had put off their
convention until the 29th of August, the
Union party had, during the larger part of
the summer, no opposing candidate and
piatform to attack, and the political cam-
paign languished. Neither were the tid.
100 Abraham Lincoln

 

ings from the theatre of war of a cheer-
ing character. The terrible losses suffered
by Grant’s army in the battles of the Wil-
derness spread general gloom. Sherman
seemed for a while to be in a precarious
position before Atlanta. The opposition
to Lincoln within the Union party grew
louder in its complaints and discourag-
ing predictions. Earnest demands were
heard that his candidacy should be with-
drawn. Lincoln himself, not knowing how
strongly the masses were attached to him,
was haunted by dark forebodings of de-
feat. Then the scene suddenly changed
as if by magic. The Democrats, in their
national convention, declared the war a
failure, demanded, substantially, peace at
any price, and nominated on such a plat-
form General McClellan as their candidate.
Their convention had hardly adjourned
when the capture of Atlanta gave a new
aspect to the military situation. It was
like a sun-ray bursting through a dark
cloud. The rank and file of the Union
Abraham Lincoln IOL

 

party rose with rapidly growing enthusi-
asm. The song “We are coming, Father
Abraham, three hundred thousand strong,”
resounded all over the land. Long before
the decisive day arrived, the result was be-
yond doubt, and Lincoln was reélected
President by overwhelming majorities.
The election over, even his severest critics
found themselves forced to admit that Lin-
coln was the only possible candidate for
the Union party in 1864, and that nei-
ther political combinations nor campaign
speeches, nor even victories in the field,
were needed to insure his success. The
plain people had all the while been satisfied
with Abraham Lincoln: they confided in
him ; they loved him ; they felt themselves
near to him; they saw personified in him
the cause of Union and freedom; and they
went to the ballot-box for him in their
strength.

The hour of triumph called out the char-
acteristic impulses of his nature. The op-
position within the Union party had stung
102 Abraham Lincoln

 

him to the quick. Now he had his oppo-
nents before him, baffled and humiliated.
Not a moment did he lose to stretch out
the hand of friendship to all. ‘Now that
the election is over,” he said, in response
to a serenade, ‘‘may not all, having a com-
mon interest, reunite in a common effort to
save our common country? For my own
part, I have striven, and will strive, to place
no obstacle in the way. So long as I have
been here I have not willingly planted a
thorn in any man’s bosom, While I am
deeply sensible to the high compliment of
a reélection, it adds nothing to my satis-
faction that any other man may be pained
or disappointed by the result. May I ask
those who were with me to join with me
in the same spirit toward those who were
against me?” This was Abraham Lin-
coln’s character as tested in the furnace of
prosperity.

The war was virtually decided, but not
yet ended. Sherman was irresistibly car-
rying the Union flag through the South.
Abraham Lincoln 103

 

Grant had his iron hand upon the ramparts
of Richmond. The days of the Confeder-
acy were evidently numbered. Only the
last blow remained to be struck. Then
Lincoln’s second inauguration came, and
with it his second inaugural address. Lin-
coln’s famous “Gettysburg speech” has
been much and justly admired. But far
greater, as well as far more characteristic,
was that inaugural in which he poured out
the whole devotion and tenderness of his
great soul. It had all the solemnity of a
father’s last admonition and blessing to his
children before he lay down to die. These
were its closing words: “Fondly do we
hope, fervently do we pray, that this
mighty scourge of war may speedily pass
away. Yet if God wills that it continue
until all the wealth piled up by the bond-
man’s two hundred and fifty years of unre-
quited toil shall be sunk, and until every
drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be
paid by another drawn with the sword, as
was said three thousand years ago, so still
104 Abraham Lincoln

 

it must be said, ‘The judgments of the
Lord are true and righteous altogether.’
With malice toward none, with charity for
all, with firmness in the right as God gives
us to see the right, let us strive to finish
the work we are in; to bind up the na-
tion’s wounds; to care for him who shall
have borne the battle, and for his widow
and his orphan; to do all which may
achieve and cherish a just and lasting
peace among ourselves and with all na-
tions.”

This was like a sacred poem. No Ameri-
can President had ever spoken words like
these to the American people. America
never had a President who found such
words in the depth of his heart.

Now followed the closing scenes of the
war. The Southern armies fought bravely
to the last, but all in vain. Richmond fell.
Lincoln himself entered the city on foot,
accompanied only by a few officers and
a squad of sailors who had rowed him
ashore from the flotilla in the James River,
Abraham Lincoln 105

 

a negro picked up on the way serving as a
guide. Never had the world seen a more
modest conqueror and a more characteristic
triumphal procession, — no army with ban-
ners and drums, only a throng of those
who had been slaves, hastily run together,
escorting the victorious chief into the capi-
tal of the vanquished foe. We are told
that they pressed around him, kissed his
hands and his garments, and shouted and
danced for joy, while tears ran down the
President’s care-furrowed cheeks.

A few days more brought the surren-
der of Lee’s army, and peace was assured.
The people of the North were wild with
joy. Everywhere festive guns were boom-
ing, bells pealing, the churches ringing
with thanksgivings, and jubilant multitudes
thronging the thoroughfares, when sud-
denly the news flashed over the land that
Abraham Lincoln had been murdered.
The people were stunned by the blow.
Then a wail of sorrow went up such as
America had never heard before. Thou-
106 Abraham Lincotn

 

sands of Northern households grieved as if
they had lost their dearest member. Many
a Southern man cried out in his heart that
his people had been robbed of their best
friend in their humiliation and distress,
when Abraham Lincoln was struck down.
It was as if the tender affection which his
countrymen bore him had inspired all na-
tions with acommon sentiment. All civi-
lized mankind stood mourning around the
coffin of the dead President. Many of
those, here and abroad, who not long be-
fore had ridiculed and reviled him were
among the first to hasten on with their
flowers of eulogy, and in that universal
chorus of lamentation and praise there was
not a voice that did not tremble with gen-
uine emotion. Never since Washington’s
death had there been such unanimity of
judgment as to a man’s virtues and great-
ness; and even Washington’s death, al-
though his name was held in greater rever-
ence, did not touch so sympathetic a chord
in the people’s hearts.
Abraham Lincoln 107

 

Nor can it be said that this was owing
to the tragic character of Lincoln’s end. It
is true, the death of this gentlest and most
merciful of rulers by the hand of a mad
fanatic was well apt to exalt him beyond
his merits in the estimation of those who
loved him, and to make his renown the ob-
ject of peculiarly tender solicitude. But it
is also true that the verdict pronounced
upon him in those days has been affected
little by time, and that historical inquiry
has served rather to increase than to lessen
the appreciation of his virtues, his abilities,
his services. Giving the fullest measure
of credit to his great ministers, — to Sew-
ard for his conduct of foreign affairs, to
Chase for the management of the finances
under terrible difficulties, to Stanton for
the performance of his tremendous task
as war secretary, —and readily acknow-
ledging that without the skill and fortitude
of the great commanders, and the heroism
of the soldiers and sailors under them, suc-
cess could not have been achieved, the his-
108 Abraham Lincoln

 

torian still finds that Lincoln’s judgment
and will were by no means governed by
those around him; that the most impor-
tant steps were owing to his initiative; that
his was the deciding and directing mind ;
and that it was preéminently he whose sa-
gacity and whose character enlisted for the
administration in its struggles the counte-
nance, the sympathy, and the support of
the people. It is found, even, that his
judgment on military matters was aston-
ishingly acute, and that the advice and
instructions he gave to the generals com-
manding in the field would not seldom
have done honor to the ablest of them.
History, therefore, without overlooking, or
palliating, or excusing any of his short-
comings or mistakes, continues to place
him foremost among the saviours of the
Union and the liberators of the slave.
More than that, it awards to him the merit
of having accomplished what but few polit-
ical philosophers would have recognized as
possible, — of leading the republic through
Abraham Lincoln 109

 

four years of furious civil conflict without
any serious detriment to its free institu-
tions.

He was, indeed, while President, vio-
lently denounced by the opposition as a
tyrant and a usurper, for having gone be-
yond his constitutional powers in author-
izing or permitting the temporary sup-
pression of newspapers, and in wantonly
suspending the writ of habeas corpus and
resorting to arbitrary arrests. Nobody
should be blamed who, when such things
are done, in good faith and from patriotic
motives protests against them. Ina repub-
lic, arbitrary stretches of power, even when
demanded by necessity, should never be
permitted to pass without a protest on the
one hand, and without an apology on the
other. It is well they did not so pass dur-
ing our civil war. That arbitrary measures
were resorted to is true. That they were
resorted to most sparingly, and only when
the government thought them absolutely

required by the safety of the republic, will
110 Abraham Lincoln

 

now hardly be denied. But certain it is
that the history of the world does not fur-
nish a single example of a government
passing through so tremendous a crisis as
our civil war was with so small a record of
arbitrary acts, and so little interference
with the ordinary course of law outside the
field of military operations. No American
President ever wielded such power as that
which was thrust into Lincoln’s hands. It
is to be hoped that no American President
ever will have to be entrusted with such
power again. But no man was ever en-
trusted with it to whom its seductions were
less dangerous than they proved to be to
Abraham Lincoln. With scrupulous care
he endeavored, even under the most trying
circumstances, to remain strictly within
the constitutional limitations of his author-
ity; and whenever the boundary became
indistinct, or when the dangers of the situ-
ation forced him to cross it, he was equally
careful to mark his acts as exceptional
measures, justifiable only by the imperative
Abraham Lincoln 11!

 

necessities of the civil war, so that they
might not pass into history as precedents
for similar acts in time of peace. It is an
unquestionable fact that during the recon-
struction period which followed the war,
more things were done capable of serving
as dangerous precedents than during the
war itself. Thus it may truly be said of
‘him not only that under his guidance the
republic was saved from disruption and the
country was purified of the blot of slavery,
but that, during the stormiest and most
perilous crisis in our history, he so con-
ducted the government and so wielded his
almost dictatorial power as to leave essen-
tially intact our free institutions in all
things that concern the rights and liberties
of the citizen. He understood well the
nature of the problem. In his first mes-
sage to Congress he defined it in admirably
pointed language: ‘“ Must a government
be of necessity too strong for the liberties
of its own people, or too weak to maintain
its own existence? Is there in all repub-
112 Abraham Lincoln

 

lics this inherent weakness?” This ques-
tion he answered in the name of the great
American republic, as no man could have
answered it better, with a triumphant
“No.”

It has been said that Abraham Lincoln
died at the right moment for his fame.
However that may be, he had, at the time
of his death, certainly not exhausted his
usefulness to his country. He was proba-
bly the only man who could have guided
the nation through the perplexities of the
reconstruction period in such a manner as
to prevent in the work of peace the revival
of the passions of the war. He would in-
deed not have escaped serious controversy
as to details of policy; but he could have
weathered it far better than any other
statesman of his time, for his prestige with
the active politicians had been immensely
strengthened by his triumphant reélection ;
and, what is more important, he would
have been supported by the confidence of
the victorious Northern people that he
Abraham Lincoln 113

 

would do all to secure the safety of the
‘Union and the rights of the emancipated
negro, and at the same time by the con-
fidence of the defeated Southern people
that nothing would be done by him from
‘motives of vindictiveness, or of unreason-
ing fanaticism, or of a selfish party spirit.
“With malice toward none, with charity
for all,” the foremost of the victors would
have personified in himself the genius of
reconciliation.

He might have rendered the country a
great service in another direction. A few
days after the fall of Richmond, he pointed
out to a friend the crowd of office-seekers
besieging his door. “ Look at that,” said
he. ‘Now we have conquered the rebel-
lion, but here you see something that may
become more dangerous to this republic
than the rebellion itself.” It is true, Lin-
coln as President did not profess what we
now call civil service reform principles.
He used the patronage of the government
in many cases avowedly to reward party
114 Abraham Lincoln

 

work, in many others to form combinations
and to produce political effects advantage-
ous to the Union cause, and in still others
simply to put the right man into the right
place. But in his endeavors to strengthen
the Union cause, and in his search for able
and useful men for public duties, he fre-
quently went beyond the limits of his
party, and gradually accustomed nimself to
the thought that, while party service had
its value, considerations of the public in-
terest were, as to appointments to office,
of far greater consequence. Moreover,
there had been such a mingling of different
political elements in support of the Union
during the civil war that Lincoln, standing
at the head of that temporarily united mot-
ley mass, hardly felt himself, in the narrow
sense of the term, a party man. And as
he became strongly impressed with the
dangers brought upon the republic by the
use of public offices as party spoils, it is by
no means improbable that, had he survived

the all-absorbing crisis and found time to
Abraham Lincoln Ils

 

turn to other objects, one of the most im-
portant reforms of later days would have
been pioneered by his powerful authority.
This was not to be. But the measure of
his achievements was full enough for im-
mortality.

To the younger generation Abraham
Lincoln has already become a half-mythical
figure, which, in the haze of historic dis-
tance, grows to more and more heroic pro-
portions, but also loses in distinctness of
outline and feature. This is indeed the
common lot of popular heroes; but the
Lincoln legend will be more than ordina-
rily apt to become fanciful, as his individ-
uality, assembling seemingly incongruous
qualities and forces in a character at the
same time grand and most lovable, was so
unique, and his career so abounding in
startling contrasts. As the state of society
in which Abraham Lincoln grew up passes
away, the world will read with increasing
wonder of the man who, not only of the
humblest origin, but remaining the sim-
116 Abraham Lincoln

 

plest and most unpretending of citizens,
was raised to a position of power unprece-
dented in our history; who was the gen-
tlest and most peace-loving of mortals, un-
able to see any creature suffer without a
pang in his own breast, and suddenly
found himself called to conduct the great-
est and bloodiest of our wars ; who wielded
the power of government when stern reso-
lution and relentless force were the order
of the day, and then won and ruled the
popular mind and heart by the tender sym-
pathies of his nature; who was a cautious
conservative by temperament and mental
habit, and led the most sudden and sweep-
ing social revolution of our time; who,
preserving his homely speech and rustic
manner even in the most conspicuous posi-
tion of that period, drew upon himself the
scoffs of polite society, and then thrilled
the soul of mankind with utterances of
wonderful beauty and grandeur; who, in
his heart the best friend of the defeated
South, was murdered because a crazy fa-
Abraham Lincoln 117

 

natic took him for its most cruel enemy ;
who, while in power, was beyond measure
lampooned and maligned by sectional pas-
sion and an excited party spirit, and around
whose bier friend and foe gathered to
praise him — which they have since never
ceased to do—as one of the greatest of
Americans and the best of men.

 
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