In his first Inaugural, he said: "I hold that in contemplation of
universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is
perpetual." In his reply to Fernando Wood, then Mayor of New York, he
said, "There is nothing that could ever bring me willingly to consent
to the destruction of the Union." By this rule he walked. The Union
was one for all time, and there was no authority for its division
lodged anywhere. He would use no force, would exercise no authority
not needed for this purpose. But what force _was_ needed, whether
moral or physical, should be employed. Hence the call for troops.
Hence the marching armies of the Republic, and the thunder of cannon
at the gates of Vicksburg, Charleston and Richmond. Hence the
suspension of the _habeas corpus_, the seizure and occasional
imprisonment of treason-shriekers and sympathizers, for which he has
been denounced as a tyrant by journals, which, slandering him while
living, have the effrontery to put on the semblance of grief and
throw lying emblems of mourning to the wind! For the exercise of that
authority, he went for trial to the American people, and they
triumphantly sustained him.
II. The second grand regulating idea of his administration may be
best stated in his own words: "GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE BY THE
PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE." He conceded the people _to be the
Government_. Their will was above the opinion of secretaries and
generals. He recognized their right to dictate the policy of the
administration. Their majesty was ever before him as an actual
presence. On the 11th of February, 1861, he said, in Indianapolis,
"Of the people when they rise in mass in behalf of the Union and the
liberties of their country, it may be said, 'The gates of hell shall
not prevail against them,'" and again, "I appeal to you to constantly
bear in mind that with you, and not with politicians, not with the
President, not with office-seekers, but _with you_ rests the
question, Shall the Union and shall the liberties of this country be
preserved to the latest generation?" Again, on that memorable journey
to Washington, he said, "It is with you, the people, to advance the
great cause of the Union and the Constitution." "I am sure I bring a
true heart to the work. For the ability to perform it, I must trust
in that Supreme Being who has never foresaken this favored land,
through the instrumentality of this great and intelligent people." In
his first Inaugural he said: "This country, with its institutions,
belongs to the people who inhabit it." "The Chief Magistrate derives
all his authority from the people." "Why should there not be a
patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there
any better or any equal hope in the world?"
These sentences were utterances of a faith within him. In the people
he had faith. He saw them only lower than the King of kings, and they
were to be trusted and obeyed.
Yet this man who thus trusted and honored the people, who so
reverenced their authority, and bowed before their majesty, has been
called "tyrant," "usurper," by men who now would make the world
forget their infamy by putting on badges of woe, and who seek to wash
out the record of their slander by such tears as crocodiles shed! Out
upon the miserable dissemblers!
When the people had spoken, he bowed to their mandate. When it
became necessary to anticipate their decision, he did so, calmly
trusting their integrity and intelligence. He considered their wishes
in the constitution of his cabinet, in the choice of military
commanders, in the appointment of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
of the United States, and in the measures he recommended to Congress.
The people proved worthy of the trust. They promptly took every loan
asked for the relief of the treasury and sustained the national
credit. They answered all his calls for men. They sprang into the
ranks, shouting
"We are coming, Father Abraham."
They cheerfully laid down life at his word. So far from this
conflict proving a republic unfit to make war, or that for its
prosecution there must be intensely centralized authority, it has
demonstrated that a democracy trusted, is mightier than a
dictatorship.
III. His third towering landmark was THE RIGHT OF ALL MEN TO
FREEDOM. And here with his practical sense and acute vision he rose
to a higher, and I think a healthier, elevation than that of many
heroic antislavery leaders. They _were_ anti-slavery. Their lives
were spent in attack. They sought to destroy a system; they told its
wrongs and categoried its iniquities.
He knew that light, let in, will cast out darkness, and that kindled
warmth will drive out cold. He knew that freedom was better than
slavery, and that when men see that it is so, they will decree
freedom instead of slavery. He therefore entered the lists FOR
FREEDOM. He spoke of its inestimable blessings, and then unrolling
the immortal Declaration of Independence claimed that, with all its
dignity and all its endowments, liberty is the birthright of ALL MEN.
He taught the American people that the inalienable right of all men
to liberty was the first utterance of the young Republic, and that
her voice must be stifled so long as slavery lives. In his Ottawa
speech he said: "Henry Clay--my beau-ideal of a statesman--the man
for whom I fought all my humble life, once said of a class of men who
would repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate emancipation,
that they must, if they would do this, go back to the era of our
independence and muzzle the cannon which thunders its annual joyous
return; they must blow out the moral lights around us, they must
penetrate the human soul and eradicate there the love of liberty, and
then, and not till then, could they perpetuate slavery in this
country."
He laid his spear in rest and went forth with armor on, the champion
of freedom. He claimed she should walk the world everywhere,
untrammeled and free to bless the lowest as well as the highest. It
was not right and never could be made right, to forbid working
lawfully that all men might be free. Slavery debased--freedom lifted
up. Slavery corrupted, freedom purified. Freedom might be abused, but
slavery was itself a colossal abuse.
He was no dreaming visionary, but stated with commanding clearness
the doctrine of equality before the law, or political equality,
distinguishing it from social equality. In old Independence Hall, in
1861, he said of the Colonies: "I have often enquired of myself what
great principle or idea it was that kept this confederacy so long
together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the
Colonies from the mother land, but the sentiment in the Declaration
of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this
country, but I hope to the world for all future time. It was that
which gave promise that in due time the weight should be lifted from
the shoulders of all men." He held that instrument to teach that
"nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the
world to be trodden on, degraded and imbruted by its fellows."
We search vainly for a clearer and terser statement of the true
theory of equality than he gave last autumn in an address to a
Western regiment. "We have, as all will agree, a free government,
where _every man has a right to be equal with every other man_." Has
a _right to be!_ Take the fetters from his limbs, take the load of
disability from his shoulders, give him room in the arena, and then
if he cannot succeed with others, the failure is his. _But he has the
right_ TO TRY. You have no right to forbid the trial. If he will try
for wealth, fame, political position, he has the right. Let him
exercise it and enjoy what he lawfully wins.
With such views he came to the presidency. Here he was an executive
officer, bound by the Constitution, and charged with its maintenance
and defense. He was to take the nation as the people placed it in his
hands, rule it under the Constitution and surrender it unbroken to
his successor. Accordingly he made to the Southern States all
conceivable propositions for peace. Slavery should be left without
federal interference. They madly rejected all. War came. He saw at
the outset that slavery was our bane. It confronted each regiment,
perplexed each commander. It was the Southern commisariat, dug
Southern trenches and piled Southern breastworks.
But certain Border States maintained a quasi loyalty and clung to
slavery. They were in sympathy with rebellion, but wore the semblance
of allegiance and with consequential airs assumed to dictate the
policy of the President. He was greatly embarrassed. He made them
every kind and conciliatory offer, but all was refused. Slavery on
the gulf and on the border, in Charleston and in Louisville, was the
same intolerant, incurable enemy of the Union. He struck it at last.
The Proclamation of Emancipation came, followed in due time by the
recommendation that the Constitution be so amended as forever to
render slavery impossible in State or Territory. For these acts, he
was arraigned before the American people on the 8th of last November,
and received their emphatic approval.
In a letter written to a citizen of Kentucky, the President gave an
exposition of his policy so transparent, that I reproduce it in this
place. It is his sufficient explanation and vindication.
Executive Mansion, Washington,
April 4, 1864.
A. G. Hodges, Esq., Frankfort, Ky.
"My Dear Sir:--You ask me to put in writing the substance of what
I verbally stated the other day, in your presence, to Governor
Bramlette and Senator Dixon. It was about as follows:
"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong nothing is
wrong. I cannot remember 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 officially in this judgment and feeling. It
was in the oath I took that I would to the best of my ability
preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. I
could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it in my
view that I might take the oath to get power, and break the oath in
using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil
administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my
primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had
publicly declared this many times and in many ways; and I aver that,
to this day I have done no official act in mere deference to my
abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand, however,
that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability
imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means,
that government, that nation, of which that Constitution was the
organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the
Constitution? By general law, life and limb must be protected; yet
often a limb must be amputated to save a life, but a life is never
wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise
unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming indispensable to
the preservation of the Constitution through the preservation of the
nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I
could not feel that to the best of my ability I had even tried to
preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery, or any minor matter,
I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution
altogether. When, early in the war, General Fremont attempted
military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it
an indispensable necessity. When, a little later, General Cameron,
then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I
objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity.
When, still later, General Hunter attempted military emancipation, I
forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity
had come. When, in March and May and July, 1862, I made earnest and
successive appeals to the Border States to favor compensated
emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military
emancipation and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that
measure. They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best
judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union,
and with it the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the
colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for
greater gain than loss; but of this I was not entirely confident.
More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign
relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white
military force--no loss by it anyhow or anywhere. On the contrary, it
shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen,
and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there
can be no caviling. We have the men; and we could not have had them
without the measure.
"And now let any Union man who complains of the measure test
himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the
rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking
three [one?] hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and
placing them where they would be but for the measure he condemns. If
he cannot face his case so stated, it is only because he cannot face
the truth.
"I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling
this tale, I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to
have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have
controlled me. Now, at the end of three years' struggle, the nation's
condition is not what either party or any man desired or expected.
God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now
wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the
North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our
complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new
causes to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.
"Yours truly,