Immediately after Lincoln’s re-election to the Presidency, in an
off-hand speech, delivered in response to a serenade by some of his
admirers on the evening of November 10, 1864, he spoke as follows:
“It has long been a grave question whether any government not too strong
for the liberties of its people can be strong enough to maintain its
existence in great emergencies. On this point, the present rebellion
brought our republic to a severe test, and the Presidential election,
occurring in regular course during the rebellion, added not a little
to the strain.... The strife of the election is but human nature
practically applied to the facts in the case. What has occurred in this
case must ever occur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In
any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall
have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good.
Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn
wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.... Now that the
election is over, may not all having a common interest reunite in a
common fort to save our common country? For my own part, I have striven
and shall strive to avoid placing any 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 re-election
and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God for having directed my
countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think for their own good, it adds
nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed or
pained by the result.”
This speech has not attracted much general attention, yet it is in a
peculiar degree both illustrative and typical of the great statesman who
made it, alike in its strong common-sense and in its lofty standard of
morality. Lincoln’s life, Lincoln’s deeds and words, are not only of
consuming interest to the historian, but should be intimately known to
every man engaged in the hard practical work of American political life.
It is difficult to overstate how much it means to a nation to have as
the two foremost figures in its history men like Washington and Lincoln.
It is good for every man in any way concerned in public life to feel
that the highest ambition any American can possibly have will be
gratified just in proportion as he raises himself toward the standards
set by these two men.
It is a very poor thing, whether for nations or individuals, to advance
the history of great deeds done in the past as an excuse for doing
poorly in the present; but it is an excellent thing to study the history
of the great deeds of the past, and of the great men who did them, with
an earnest desire to profit thereby so as to render better service in
the present. In their essentials, the men of the present day are much
like the men of the past, and the live issues of the present can be
faced to better advantage by men who have in good faith studied how the
leaders of the nation faced the dead issues of the past. Such a study of
Lincoln’s life will enable us to avoid the twin gulfs of immorality and
inefficiency—the gulfs which always lie one on each side of the careers
alike of man and of nation. It helps nothing to have avoided one if
shipwreck is encountered in the other. The fanatic, the well-meaning
moralist of unbalanced mind, the parlor critic who condemns others but
has no power himself to do good and but little power to do ill—all
these were as alien to Lincoln as the vicious and unpatriotic
themselves. His life teaches our people that they must act with wisdom,
because otherwise adherence to right will be mere sound and fury without
substance; and that they must also act high-mindedly, or else what seems
to be wisdom will in the end turn out to be the most destructive kind of
folly.
Throughout his entire life, and especially after he rose to leadership
in his party, Lincoln was stirred to his depths by the sense of fealty
to a lofty ideal; but throughout his entire life, he also accepted human
nature as it is, and worked with keen, practical good sense to achieve
results with the instruments at hand. It is impossible to conceive of a
man farther removed from baseness, farther removed from corruption, from
mere self-seeking; but it is also impossible to conceive of a man of
more sane and healthy mind—a man less under the influence of that
fantastic and diseased morality (so fantastic and diseased as to be in
reality profoundly immoral) which makes a man in this work-a-day
world refuse to do what is possible because he cannot accomplish the
impossible.
In the fifth volume of Lecky’s History of England, the historian draws
an interesting distinction between the qualities needed for a successful
political career in modern society and those which lead to eminence in
the spheres of pure intellect or pure moral effort. He says:
“....the moral qualities that are required in the higher spheres
of statesmanship [are not] those of a hero or a saint. Passionate
earnestness and self-devotion, complete concentration of every faculty
on an unselfish aim, uncalculating daring, a delicacy of conscience and
a loftiness of aim far exceeding those of the average of men, are here
likely to prove rather a hindrance than an assistance. The politician
deals very largely with the superficial and the commonplace; his art is
in a great measure that of skilful compromise, and in the conditions
of modern life, the statesman is likely to succeed best who possesses
secondary qualities to an unusual degree, who is in the closest
intellectual and moral sympathy with the average of the intelligent
men of his time, and who pursues common ideals with more than common
ability.... Tact, business talent, knowledge of men, resolution,
promptitude and sagacity in dealing with immediate emergencies, a
character which lends itself easily to conciliation, diminishes friction
and inspires confidence, are especially needed, and they are more likely
to be found among shrewd and enlightened men of the world than among men
of great original genius or of an heroic type of character.”
The American people should feel profoundly grateful that the greatest
American statesman since Washington, the statesman who in this
absolutely democratic republic succeeded best, was the very man who
actually combined the two sets of qualities which the historian thus
puts in antithesis. Abraham Lincoln, the rail-splitter, the Western
country lawyer, was one of the shrewdest and most enlightened men of the
world, and he had all the practical qualities which enable such a man to
guide his countrymen; and yet he was also a genius of the heroic type,
a leader who rose level to the greatest crisis through which this nation
or any other nation had to pass in the nineteenth century.