On two tragic occasions, at a century's distance, the fate of the United
States has trembled in the balance: would they be a free nation? Would
they continue to be one nation? A leader was wanted on both occasions, a
very different one in each case. This boon was granted to the American
people, who had a Washington when a Washington was needed, and a Lincoln
when a Lincoln could save them. Neither would have adequately performed
the other's task.
A century of gradually increasing prosperity had elapsed when came the
hour of the nation's second trial. Though it may seem to us small,
compared with what we have seen in our days, the development had been
considerable, the scattered colonies of yore had become one of the great
Powers of the world, with domains reaching from one ocean to the other;
the immense continent had been explored; new cities were dotting the
wilderness of former days. When in 1803 France had, of her own will,
ceded the Louisiana territories, which have been divided since into
fourteen States, minds had been staggered; many in the Senate had shown
themselves averse to the ratification of the treaty, thinking that it
might prove rather a curse than a boon. "As to Louisiana, this new,
immense, unbounded world," Senator White, of Delaware, had said, "if it
should ever be incorporated into this Union ... I believe it will be the
greatest curse that could at present befall us; it may be productive of
innumerable evils, and especially of one that I fear even to look upon."
What the senator feared to look upon was the possibility, awful and
incredible as it might seem, of people being so rash as to go and live
beyond the Mississippi. Attempts would, of course, be made, he thought,
to prevent actions which would entail such grave responsibilities for
the government; but those meritorious attempts on the part of the
authorities would probably fail. "It would be as well to pretend to
inhibit the fish from swimming in the sea.... To every man acquainted
with the manner in which our Western country has been settled, such an
idea must be chimerical." People will go, "that very population will go,
that would otherwise occupy part of our present territory." The results
will be unspeakable: "Our citizens will be removed to the immense
distance of two or three thousand miles from the capital of the Union,
where they will scarcely ever feel the rays of the general government;
their affections will be alienated; they will gradually begin to view us
as strangers; they will form other commercial connections, and our
interests will become distinct."
The treaty had been ratified, however, and the prediction, not of
Senator White, of Delaware, but of Senator Jackson, of Georgia, has
proved true, the latter having stated in his answer that if they both
could "return at the proper period," that is, "in a century," they would
find that the region was not, as had been forecasted, "a howling
wilderness," but "the seat of science and civilization."[227] The fact
is that if the two senators had been able to return at the appointed
date, they would have seen the exposition of St. Louis.
Progress had been constant; modern inventions had brought the remotest
parts of the country nearer together. The telegraph had enabled "the
rays of the general government" to reach the farthest regions of the
territory. That extraordinary attempt, the first transcontinental
railroad, was soon to be begun (1863) and was to be finished six years
later.
And now all seemed to be in doubt again; the nation was young, wealthy,
powerful, prosperous; it had vast domains and resources, no enemies, and
yet it looked as though her fate would parallel that of the old empires
of which Tacitus speaks, and which, without foes, crumble to pieces
under their own weight.
Within her frontiers elements of destruction or disruption had been
growing; animosities were embittered among people equally brave, bold,
and sure of their rights. The edifice raised by Washington was shaking
on its base; a catastrophe was at hand, such a one as he had himself
foreseen as possible from the first. Slavery, he had thought, should be
gradually but thoroughly abolished. "Your late purchase," he had written
to Lafayette, "of an estate in the colony of Cayenne, with a view of
emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous and noble proof of
humanity. Would to God a like spirit would diffuse itself generally into
the minds of the people of this country, but I despair of seeing
it."[228] And to John Francis Mercer: "I never mean (unless some
particular circumstance should compel me to it) to possess another slave
by purchase, it being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by
which slavery in this country may be abolished by slow, sure, and
imperceptible degrees."[229] For many reasons the steadiness of the
new-born Union caused him anxiety. "We are known," he had written to
Doctor W. Gordon, "by no other character among nations than as the
United States.... When the bond of union gets once broken everything
ruinous to our future prospects is to be apprehended. The best that can
come of it, in my humble opinion, is that we shall sink into obscurity,
unless our civil broils should keep us in remembrance and fill the page
of history with the direful consequences of them."[230]
The dread hour had now struck, and civil broils meant to fill the page
of history were at hand. Then it was that, in a middle-sized city of one
hundred thousand inhabitants, not yet a world-famous one, Chicago by
name, the Republican convention, assembled there for the first time, met
to choose a candidate for the presidency, and on Friday, 18th of May,
1860, selected a man whom my predecessor of those days, announcing in an
unprinted report the news to his government, described as "a man almost
unknown, Mr. Abraham Lincoln." And so he was; his own party had
hesitated to nominate him; only on the third ballot, after two others in
which he did not lead, the convention decided that the fate of the
party, of abolitionism, and of the Union would be placed in the hands of
that "man almost unknown," Mr. Abraham Lincoln.
The search-light of history has since been turned on the most obscure
parts of his career; every incident of it is known; many sayings of his
to which neither he nor his hearers attributed any importance at the
moment have become household words. Biographies innumerable, in pamphlet
form or in many volumes, have told us of the deeds of Abraham Lincoln,
of his appearance, of his peculiarities, of his virtues, and of the part
he played in the history of the world, not alone the world of his day,
but that of after-time. For not only the souvenir of his personality and
of his examples, and the consequences of what he did, survive among us,
but so do also a number of his clean-cut, memorable, guiding sentences
which continue alive and active among men. His mind is still living.
Few suspected such a future at the time of his election. "We all
remember," wrote, years later, the French Academician, Prévost-Paradol,
"the anxiety with which we awaited the first words of that President
then unknown, upon whom a heavy task had fallen, and from whose advent
to power might be dated the ruin or regeneration of his country. All we
knew was that he had sprung from the humblest walks of life; that his
youth had been spent in manual labor; that he had then risen, by
degrees, in his town, in his county, and in his State. What was this
favorite of the people? Democratic societies are liable to errors which
are fatal to them. But as soon as Mr. Lincoln arrived in Washington, as
soon as he spoke, all our doubts and fears were dissipated, and it
seemed to us that destiny itself had pronounced in favor of the good
cause, since in such an emergency it had given to the country an honest
man."
Well indeed might people have wondered and felt anxious when they
remembered how little training in greatest affairs the new ruler had
had, and the incredible difficulty of the problems he would have to
solve: to solve, his heart bleeding at the very thought, for he had to
fight, "not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies!"
No romance of adventure reads more like a romance than the true story of
Lincoln's youth and of the wanderings of his family, from Virginia to
Kentucky, from Kentucky to Indiana, from Indiana to the newly-formed
State of Illinois, having first to clear a part of the forest, then to
build a doorless, windowless, floorless log cabin, with beds of leaves,
and one room for all the uses of the nine inmates: Lincoln, the
grandson of a man killed by the Indians, the son of a father who never
succeeded in anything, and whose utmost literary accomplishment, taught
him by his wife, and which he had in common with the father of
Shakespeare, consisted in "bunglingly writing his own name," the whole
family leading a life in comparison with which that of Robinson Crusoe
was one of sybaritic enjoyment. That in those trackless, neighborless,
bookless parts of the country the future President could learn and
educate himself was the first great wonder of his life. His school-days,
in schools as primitive as the rest of his surroundings, attended at
spare moments, did not amount, put together, to so much as one year,
during which he learned, as he stated afterward, how "to read, write,
and cipher to the rule of three, but that was all ... till within his
twenty-third year, he was almost constantly handling that most useful
instrument"--an axe, not a pen.[231] The event proved once more that
learning does not so much depend upon the master's teaching as upon the
pupil's desire. This desire never left him; as recorded by himself, he
"nearly mastered the six books of Euclid since he was a member of
Congress."
But no book, school, nor talk with refined men would have taught him
what this rough life did. Confronted every day and every hour of the day
with problems which had to be solved, problems of food, of clothing, of
shelter, of escaping disease--"ague and fever ... by which they [the
people of the place] were greatly discouraged"[232]--of developing mind
and body with scarcely any books but those borrowed from distant
neighbors, in doubt most of the time as to what was going on in the wide
world, he got the habit of seeing, deciding, and acting for himself.
Accustomed from childhood to live surrounded by the unknown and to meet
the unexpected, in a region "with many bears," he wrote later, "and
other wild animals still in the woods," his soul learned to be
astonished at nothing and, instead of losing any time in useless
wondering, to seek at once the way out of the difficulty. What the
forest, what the swamp, what the river taught Lincoln cannot be
overestimated. After long years of it, and shorter years at now-vanished
New Salem, then at Springfield, at Vandalia, the former capital of
Illinois, where he met some descendants of his precursors in the forest,
the French "coureurs de bois,"[233] after years of political
apprenticeship which had given him but a limited notoriety, almost
suddenly he found himself transferred to the post of greatest honor and
greatest danger. And what then would say the "man almost unknown," the
backwoodsman of yesterday? What would he say? What did he say? The right
thing.
He was accustomed not to be surprised, but to ponder, decide, and act.
The pondering part was misunderstood by many who never ceased in his day
to complain and remonstrate about his supposed hesitancy; many of
Napoleon's generals, and for the same cause, spoke with disgust, at
times, of their chief's hesitations, as if a weak will were one of his
faults. Confronted with circumstances which were so extraordinary as to
be new to all, Lincoln was the man least astonished in the government.
His rough and shrewd instinct proved of better avail than the clever
minds of his more-refined and better-instructed seconds. It was
Lincoln's instinct which checked Seward's complicated schemes and
dangerous calculations. Lincoln could not calculate so cleverly, but he
could guess better.
In writing the words quoted above, Prévost-Paradol was alluding to the
now famous first inaugural address. But even before Lincoln had reached
Washington he had, so to say, given his measure. Passing through
Philadelphia on his way to the capital, he had been entertained at
Independence Hall and, addressing the audience gathered there, had told
how he had often meditated on the virtues and dangers of the men who
used to meet within those walls in the days when the existence of the
nation was at stake, and on the famous Declaration signed there by them.
The purport of it, said the new President, is "that in due time the
weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all
should have an equal chance." And he added: "Now, my friends, can this
country be saved on that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of
the happiest of men in the world if I can help to save it.... If it
cannot be saved upon that principle ... I would rather be assassinated
on this spot than to surrender it."[234]
France was then an empire, governed by Napoleon III. During the great
struggle of four years, part of the French people were for the North,
and part for the South; they should not be blamed: it was the same in
America.
But, to a man, the increasing numbers of French Liberals, making ready
for a definitive attempt at a republican form of government in their own
land, were for the abolition of slavery and the maintenance of the
Union. The American example was the great one which gave heart to our
most progressive men. Americans had proved that republican government
was possible in a great modern country by having one. If it broke to
pieces, so would break the hopes of those among us who trusted that one
day we would have one, too--as we have. These men followed with dire
anxiety the events in America.
They had all known Lafayette, who died only in 1834, a lifelong apostle
of liberty and of the American cause. The tradition left by him had been
continued by the best thinkers and the most enlightened and generous
minds France had produced in the course of the century, such men as
Tocqueville, Laboulaye, Gasparin, Pelletan, and many others. Constant
friends of the United States, and stanch supporters of the liberal
principles, they had, so to say, taken the torch from the hands of dying
Lafayette and passed it on to the new generation. Tocqueville, who was
not to see the great crisis, had published in 1835, with extraordinary
success, his work on American democracy, showing that individual
liberty, equality for all, and decentralization were the goal toward
which mankind was steadily moving, and that such a system, with all its
defects, was better than autocratic government with all its guarantees.
Although living under a monarchy, he could not help sneering at the
kindness of those omnipotent governments who, in their paternal desire
to spare the people they govern all trouble, would like to spare them
even the "trouble of thinking."
Those who felt like him eloquently defended in their books, pamphlets,
and articles, when the crisis came, the cause of the Union, and strongly
influenced public opinion in European countries. Such was the case, for
example, with the _America before Europe_ of Agénor de Gasparin, full of
enthusiasm for the States, and of confidence in the ultimate issue.
"No," said the author in the conclusion of his work, published early in
1862, "the sixteenth President of the Union will not be its last; no,
the eighty-fifth year of that nation will not prove her last; her flag
will come out of the war, rent by bullets, blackened by powder, but more
glorious than ever, and without having dropped in the storm any of its
thirty-four stars."[235]
To Gasparin Lincoln wrote thereupon: "You are much admired in America
for the ability of your writings, and much loved for your generosity to
us and your devotion to liberal principles generally.... I am very happy
to know that my course has not conflicted with your judgment of
propriety and policy. I can only say that I have acted upon my best
convictions without selfishness or malice, and that, by the help of God,
I shall continue to do so."[236]
But there were, withal, men among us who, remembering the trials of our
revolutionary years, the most terrible any nation had gone through,
inclined to consider that, as Tocqueville had said, "to think" was
indeed a real trouble, and that thinkers might prove very troublesome
people. Those men, too, watched with care what was going on in America;
the quiet development of the country under democratic institutions
caused them little enough joy, as being the actual condemnation of their
most cherished theories. They kept saying: the country has no neighbors,
it is exposed to no storm; any system is good enough under such
exceptional conditions. If there was any storm, the worthlessness of
such institutions would soon be obvious. And it had come to pass that
the storm had arisen, and that a man "almost unknown" had been placed at
the helm.
Then developed that famous struggle between equally brave opponents,
with its various fortunes, its miseries, its hecatombs, and the coming
of days so dark that it often seemed as though there remained little
chance for the survival of one great, powerful, united nation: the
hatreds were so deep, the losses so immense. One of the generals who
served the cause of the Union was French, and as a colonel first
commanded a regiment, the 55th New York, otherwise called the Lafayette
Guards, in which French blood predominated, and who wore the red
trousers, red képi, and blue coats of the French army. It was before the
war one of those regiments whose functions, owing to the prevalence of
peace, had for a long time been of the least warlike, mainly consisting
in parades and banquets, so much so that, with that tendency to irony
rarely lacking in Gauls, those Gardes Lafayette had nicknamed themselves
"Gardes La fourchette."[237] War came, the country was changed, a new
spirit pervaded the nation, and the Gardes La fourchette became
Lafayette again, and worthy of the name.
General de Trobriand has left a captivating account of the campaign[238]
and of what his first regiment did in it, beginning with military
instruction hastily imparted before the start by French sergeants,
"some of whom had made war in Algeria, others in the Crimea or Italy,
familiar, all of them, with field service"; then the coming of his
soldiers to Washington, as yet a small, sparsely peopled city, with
"Pennsylvania Avenue for its principal artery"; their following Rock
Creek, not yet a public park, "cadencing their march by singing the
_Marseillaise_ or the _Chant des Girondins_, hymns unknown to the echoes
of the region, which repeated them for the first time, perhaps the
last," and crossing Chain Bridge to camp beyond the Potomac.
On one memorable day, in the winter of 1862, the regiment, encamped then
at Tennallytown, entertained Lincoln himself. The occasion was the
presentation to it by the hands of the President of two flags, a French
and an American one. The day chosen had been the 8th of January, as
being the anniversary of the battle of New Orleans, won by Andrew
Jackson, some of whose troops were French creoles, who, they too, had
fought to the sound of the _Marseillaise_.
Mrs. Lincoln had accompanied the President. There was a banquet which
the regiment had had cooked by its own soldier-cooks, who surpassed
themselves. "The President heartily partook of the meal. Never, was he
pleased to say, had he eaten so well since he had entered the White
House. He wanted to taste of everything, and his gayety and good humor
showed well enough how much he enjoyed this diversion in the midst of
the anxious cares with which he was oppressed at that moment."[239]
There were toasts, of course; the then Colonel de Trobriand drank to the
"prompt re-establishment of the Union, not so prompt, however, that the
55th may not first have time to do something for it on the battlefield."
President Lincoln answered good-humoredly: "Since the Union is not to be
re-established before the 55th has had its battle, I drink to the battle
of the 55th, and wish that it may take place as soon as possible."
The 55th had its battle, and many others, too; the beautiful American
flag handed to it on the 8th of January was torn to shreds by
grape-shot; at Fredericksburg only the staff was left; during the course
of that terrible day even the staff was broken, and that was the end of
it. It was also the end of the 55th: reduced to 210 men, it was merged
into the 33d.
Lincoln's instinct, his good sense, his personal disinterestedness, his
warmth of heart for friend or foe, his high aims, led him through the
awful years of anguish and bloodshed during which, ceaselessly,
increased the number of fields dotted with tombs, and no one knew, so
great were the odds, whether there would be one powerful nation or two
less powerful, inimical to one another. They led him through the worst
and through the best hours; and that of triumph found him none other
than what he had ever been before, a shrewd man of sense, a convinced
man of duty, the devoted servant of his country, but with deeper furrows
on his face and more melancholy in his heart. "We must not be enemies."
A French traveller who saw him at his second inauguration has thus
described him: "I shall never forget the deep impression I felt when I
saw come on to the platform the strange-looking great man to whom the
American people had been so happy as to intrust their destinies. The
gait was heavy, slow, irregular; the body long, lean, over six feet,
with stooping shoulders, the long arms of a boatman, the large hands of
a carpenter, extraordinary hands, with feet in proportion.... The
turned-down shirt-collar uncovered the protruding muscles of a yellow
neck, above which shot forth a mass of black hair, thick, and bristling
as a bunch of pine-boughs; a face of irresistible attraction.
"From this coarse bark emerged a forehead and eyes belonging to a
superior nature. In this body was sheathed a soul wondrous by its
greatness and moral beauty. On the brow, deep-furrowed with lines, could
be detected the thoughts and anxieties of the statesman; and in the
large black eyes, deep and penetrating, whose dominant expression was
good-will and kindness mixed with melancholy, one discovered an
inexhaustible charity, giving to the word its highest meaning, that is,
perfect love for mankind."[240]
The nation was saved, and when the work was done Lincoln went to his
doom and fell, as he had long foreseen, a victim to the cause for which
he had fought.
When the news of his tragic death reached France, the emotion was
intense; party lines at that solemn hour disappeared for a moment, and
the country was unanimous in the expression of her horror. The Emperor
and Empress telegraphed their condolences to Mrs. Lincoln; the Senate
and Chamber voted addresses of sympathy; M. Rouher, the premier,
interrupted by applause at every word, expressed himself as follows in
proposing the vote: "Mr. Abraham Lincoln has displayed in the afflicting
struggle which convulses his country that calm firmness which is a
necessary condition for the accomplishment of great duties. After
victory he had shown himself generous, moderate, and conciliatory." Then
followed these remarkable words: "The first chastisement that Providence
inflicts on crime is to render it powerless to retard the march of
good.... The work of appeasement commenced by a great citizen will be
completed by the national will."
Addressing the Chamber in the same strain, its President, Mr. Schneider,
said: "That execrable crime has revolted all that is noble in the heart
of France. Nowhere has more profound or more universal emotion been felt
than in our country.... After having shown his immovable firmness in the
struggle, Mr. Lincoln, by the wisdom of his language and of his views,
seemed destined to bring about a fruitful and durable reconciliation
between the sons of America.... France ardently desires the
re-establishment of peace in the midst of that great nation, her ally
and her friend."
But more noteworthy than all was the feeling of unofficial France, that
of the whole people. Trying to describe it, the American minister to
France, but recently taken from among us, Mr. Bigelow, wrote home: "The
press of the metropolis shows sufficiently how overwhelming is the
public sentiment"; and sending, only as samples, a number of
testimonials of sympathy received by him, he added: "They will suffice
to show not only how profoundly the nation was shocked by the dreadful
crime which terminated President Lincoln's earthly career, but how deep
a hold he had taken upon the respect and affections of the French
people."
Once more, owing to the death of a great American, the whole nation had
been moved. From thirty-one French cities came addresses of condolence;
students held meetings, unfavorably seen by the imperial police, little
pleased to find how closely associated in the sentiments expressed
therein were admiration for Lincoln's work and the longing for a
republic similar to that over which he had presided. The youthful
president of such a meeting thus conveyed to Mr. Bigelow the expression
of what was felt by "the young men of the schools": "In President
Lincoln we mourn a fellow citizen; for no country is now inaccessible,
and we consider as ours that country where there are neither masters nor
slaves, where every man is free or is fighting to become free.
"We are the fellow citizens of John Brown, of Abraham Lincoln, and of
Mr. Seward. We young people, to whom the future belongs, must have the
courage to found a true democracy, and we will have to look beyond the
ocean to learn how a people who have made themselves free can preserve
their freedom....
"The President of the great republic is dead, but the republic itself
shall live forever."
Deputations flocked to the American legation, "so demonstrative" that
the police more than once interfered, as if to remind the delegates that
they were not living as yet in a land of liberty. "I have been occupied
most of the afternoon," Bigelow wrote to Seward, "in receiving
deputations of students and others who have called to testify their
sorrow and sympathy. Unfortunately, their feelings were so demonstrative
in some instances as to provoke the intervention of the police, who
would only allow them in very limited numbers through the streets.... I
am sorry to hear that some have been sent to prison in consequence of an
intemperate expression of their feelings. I can now count sixteen
policemen from my window patrolling about in the neighborhood, who
occasionally stop persons calling to see me, and in some instances, I am
told, send them away."[241]
A unique thing happened, unparalleled anywhere else. A subscription was
opened to offer a commemorative medal in gold to the unfortunate widow,
and this again did not overplease the police. The idea had occurred to a
provincial paper, the _Phare de la Loire_; its success was immediate.
All the great names in the Liberal party appeared on the list of the
committee, Victor Hugo's conspicuous among them, and with his those of
Etienne Arago, Louis Blanc, Littré, Michelet, Pelletan, Edgar Quinet,
and others. In order to allow the poorer classes to take part, and so as
to show that the offering was a truly national one, the maximum for each
subscriber was limited to two cents.
The poorer classes took part, indeed, with alacrity; the necessary sum
was promptly collected; the medal was struck, and it was presented by
Eugene Pelletan to Mr. Bigelow, with these words: "Tell Mrs. Lincoln
that in this little box is the heart of France." The inscription, in
French, is an excellent summing up of Lincoln's character and career:
"Dedicated by French Democracy to Lincoln, President, twice elected, of
the United States--Lincoln, honest man, who abolished slavery,
re-established the Union, saved the Republic, without veiling the statue
of liberty."[242]
The French press had been unanimous; from the Royalist _Gazette de
France_ to the Liberal _Journal des Débats_ came expressions of
admiration and sorrow, by the writers of greatest repute, present or
future members, in many cases, of the French Academy, Prévost-Paradol,
John Lemoine, Emile de Girardin, the historian Henri Martin, the
publicist and future member of the National Assembly of 1871, Peyrat,
and with them some ardent Catholics, like Montalembert.
"Who among us," said the _Gazette de France_, "would think of pitying
Lincoln? A public man, he enters by the death which he has received in
the midst of the work of pacification after victory into that body of
the _élite_ of the historic army which Mr. Guizot once called the
battalion of Plutarch. A Christian, he has just ascended before the
throne of the final Judge, accompanied by the souls of four million
slaves created, like ours, in the image of God, and who by a word from
him have been endowed with freedom."[243]
In his _La Victoire du Nord aux Etats Unis_, Montalembert expressed,
with his usual eloquence and warmth of heart, the same sorrow at
Lincoln's death, and the same joy also at the "success of a good cause
served by honorable means and won by honest people.... God is to be
thanked because, according to the surest accounts, victory has remained
pure, unsullied by crimes or excesses.... That nation rises now to the
first rank among the great peoples of the world.... Some used to say:
Don't talk to us of your America with its slavery. She is now without
slaves; let us talk of her."
But happy as he was at the results, Montalembert rendered, nevertheless,
full justice to the South and its great leaders: "The two parties, the
two camps, have shown an equal courage, the same indomitable tenacity,
the same wonderful energy ... the same spirit of sacrifice. All our
sympathies are for the North, but they in no way diminish our admiration
for the South.... How not to admire the Southerners, while regretting
that such rare and high qualities had not been dedicated to an
irreproachable cause! What men, and also, and especially, what women!
Daughters, wives, mothers, those women of the South have revived, in
the midst of the nineteenth century, the patriotism, devotion,
abnegation of the Roman ones in the heyday of the republic. Clelia,
Cornelia, Portia have found their equals in many a hamlet, many a
plantation of Louisiana or Virginia."[244]
Many among the Liberals seized this opportunity to praise the American
system of government as opposed to European ones: "Democracy," said
Peyrat, "is not incompatible with great extent of territory or the power
and duration of a great government. This has been demonstrated on the
other side of the Atlantic, and that is the service which the United
States have rendered to liberty.
"They have rendered another, equally important to human dignity, in
showing that the citizen has become among them great and powerful,
precisely because he has been little governed; they have proved that the
real grandeur of the state depends upon the high personal qualities of
the individuals. In our old societies, power put man into tutelage, or
rather, man put himself in that position at the hands of the government,
to which he looked for everything he wanted in life and for solutions
which no government, whether monarchical or republican, could give.
"The United States, on the contrary, have granted to public power just
what it is fit that that power should possess, neither more nor
less."[245]
In the _Journal des Débats_, Prévost-Paradol, one of the best writers of
the day, said: "The political instinct which caused enlightened
Frenchmen to be interested in the maintenance of American power, more
and more necessary to the equilibrium of the world, the desire to see a
great democratic state surmount terrible trials and continue to give an
example of the most perfect liberty united with the most absolute
equality, assured to the cause of the North a number of friends among
us.... Lincoln was indeed an honest man, if we give to the word its full
meaning, or rather, the sublime sense which belongs to it when honesty
has to contend with the severest trials which can agitate states and
with events which have an influence on the fate of the world.... Mr.
Lincoln had but one object in view from the day of his election to that
of his death, namely, the fulfilment of his duty, and his imagination
never carried him beyond it. He has fallen at the very foot of the
altar, covering it with his blood. But his work was done, and the
spectacle of a rescued republic was what he could look upon with
consolation when his eyes were closing in death. Moreover, he has not
lived for his country alone, since he leaves to every one in the world
to whom liberty and justice are dear a great remembrance and a great
example."[246]
Accounts of Lincoln's career multiplied in order to answer popular
demand. The earliest one, by Achille Arnaud, was printed immediately
after his death, and concluded thus: "There is in him a more august
character than even that of the statesman and reformer, namely that of
the man of duty. He lived by duty and for duty.... No mistake is
possible; what Europe honors in Lincoln, whether or not she is aware of
it, is _duty_. She thus affirms that there are not two morals, one for
the masters, the other for the slaves; one for men in public life, the
other for obscure citizens; that there is only one way to be great:
never to lie to oneself, nor to others, and to be just."[247]
Régis de Trobriand, whose loyalty to Lincoln never wavered, and who had
believed in him even in the darkest hours, well saw the importance for
the whole world of the issue of the great conflict, and justly stated
that, though more directly concerning the United States, the fight had
been for "those grand principles of progress and liberty toward which
modern societies naturally tend, and to which civilized nations
legitimately aspire. Such a cause is worth every sacrifice. By
defending it at all costs the United States have done more than fulfil a
task worthy of their power and patriotism, for their triumph is a
victory for mankind."
Lectures were delivered in France on Lincoln and America, one, under the
chairmanship of Laboulaye, by Augustin Cochin, a member of the
Institute, showing that Lincoln was "not only a superior type of the
American race, but one of the highest and most respected of the human
race," something more than a great man: a great honest man.[248]
As a sort of pendant and counterpart for the funeral ceremony held in
the Invalides at the death of Washington, the French Academy gave as the
subject of its grand prize in poetry: _La mort du Président Lincoln_.
Selected in the year following the event, the subject excited immense
interest; almost a hundred poets (some of whom, truth to say, were only
would-be poets) took part in the competition, which was decided in 1867;
several of the productions proved of great literary merit. The prize
went to a former secretary of embassy, Edouard Grenier, who had already
made his mark as a gifted literary artist, and whom many of us still
remember: a lovable old man, of upright ideas, a model of courtesy,
counting only friends in the very large circle of his acquaintances. He
ended with these admirable lines:
Tous ces fléaux célestes,
Ces ravageurs d'États dont les pieds triomphants
Sur les pères broyés écrasent les enfants,
Grâce à toi, désormais, pâliront dans l'histoire....
L'humanité te doit l'esclavage aboli....
L'Amérique sa force et la paix revenue,
L'Europe un idéal de grandeur inconnue,
Et l'avenir mettra ton image et ton nom
Plus haut que les Césars--auprès de Washington.
When, in a log cabin of Kentucky, over a century ago, that child was
born who was named after his grandfather killed by the Indians, Abraham
Lincoln, Napoleon I swayed Europe, Jefferson was President of the United
States, and the second War of Independence had not yet come to pass. It
seems all very remote. But the memory of the great man to whom these
lines are dedicated is as fresh in everybody's mind as if he had only
just left us; more people, indeed, know of him now than was the case in
his own day. "It is," says Plutarch, "the fortune of all good men that
their virtue rises in glory after their death, and that the envy which
any evil man may have conceived against them never survives the
envious." Such was the fate of Lincoln.