One often thinks of his life as cut off, but no great man since Cæsar
has seen his life work ended as did Lincoln. Napoleon died upon a desert
rock, but not until Austerlitz and Wagram had become memories, and the
dust of the empire even as all dust. Cromwell knew that England had not
at heart materially altered. Washington did not know that he had created
one of the great, perhaps the greatest, empires to be known to man. But
Lincoln had a specific task to do--to save his country and to make it
free--and on that fateful 14th of April he knew that he had accomplished
both things.
There are those who would say that chance put this man where he was to
do this work. To the thoughtful mind it was not chance, however, but
design, and that the design of which all greatness is a part. War is
indeed the crucible of the nations. It is the student of a century hence
who shall properly place the civil war in American history. But, whatever
that place be, there can be no doubt of the position in it of the war
President. Like William the Silent, his domination of all about him was
a matter not of personal desire, but of absolute and constant growth.
There are few more interesting characters in history than Lincoln. There
is none who in quite the same manner fits himself so absolutely into
his circumstances. It is the highest form of genius that so produces as
to make production seem effortless, and it is perhaps the greatest of
all tributes to Lincoln that what he did seems sometimes only what the
average man would have done in his place.