The history of the North had virtually become, by April, 1861, the
history of Lincoln himself, and during the remaining four years of the
President's life it is difficult to separate his personality from the
trend of national history. Any attempt to understand the achievements
and the omissions of the Northern people without undertaking an
intelligent estimate of their leader would be only to duplicate the
story of "Hamlet" with Hamlet left out. According to the opinion of
English military experts*, "Against the great military genius of certain
Southern leaders fate opposed the unbroken resolution and passionate
devotion to the Union, which he worshiped, of the great Northern
President. As long as he lived and ruled the people of the North, there
could be no turning back."
* Wood and Edmonds. "The Civil War in the United States."
Lincoln has been ranked with Socrates; but he has also been compared
with Rabelais. He has been the target of abuse that knew no mercy; but
he has been worshiped as a demigod. The ten big volumes of his official
biography are a sustained, intemperate eulogy in which the hero does
nothing that is not admirable; but as large a book could be built up
out of contemporaneous Northern writings that would paint a picture of
unmitigated blackness--and the most eloquent portions of it would be
signed by Wendell Phillips.
The real Lincoln is, of course, neither the Lincoln of the official
biography nor the Lincoln of Wendell Phillips. He was neither a saint
nor a villain. What he actually was is not, however, so easily stated.
Prodigious men are never easy to sum up; and Lincoln was a prodigious
man. The more one studies him, the more individual he appears to be. By
degrees one comes to understand how it was possible for contemporaries
to hold contradictory views of him and for each to believe frantically
that his views were proved by facts. For anyone who thinks he can hit
off in a few neat generalities this complex, extraordinary personality,
a single warning may suffice. Walt Whitman, who was perhaps the most
original thinker and the most acute observer who ever saw Lincoln face
to face has left us his impression; but he adds that there was something
in Lincoln's face which defied description and which no picture had
caught. After Whitman's conclusion that "One of the great portrait
painters of two or three hundred years ago is needed," the mere
historian should proceed with caution.
There is historic significance in his very appearance. His huge,
loose-knit figure, six feet four inches high, lean, muscular, ungainly,
the evidence of his great physical strength, was a fit symbol of those
hard workers, the children of the soil, from whom he sprang. His face
was rugged like his figure, the complexion swarthy, cheek bones high,
and bushy black hair crowning a great forehead beneath which the eyes
were deep-set, gray, and dreaming. A sort of shambling powerfulness
formed the main suggestion of face and figure, softened strangely by the
mysterious expression of the eyes, and by the singular delicacy of the
skin. The motions of this awkward giant lacked grace; the top hat and
black frock coat, sometimes rusty, which had served him on the western
circuit continued to serve him when he was virtually the dictator of his
country. It was in such dress that he visited the army, where he towered
above his generals.
Even in a book of restricted scope, such as this, one must insist upon
the distinction between the private and public Lincoln, for there is
as yet no accepted conception of him. What comes nearest to an accepted
conception is contained probably in the version of the late Charles
Francis Adams. He tells us how his father, the elder Charles Francis
Adams, ambassador to London, found Lincoln in 1861 an offensive
personality, and he insists that Lincoln under strain passed through a
transformation which made the Lincoln of 1864 a different man from the
Lincoln of 1861. Perhaps; but without being frivolous, one is tempted
to quote certain old-fashioned American papers that used to label their
news items "important if true."
What then, was the public Lincoln? What explains his vast success? As
a force in American history, what does he count for? Perhaps the most
significant detail in an answer to these questions is the fact that he
had never held conspicuous public office until at the age of fifty-two
he became President. Psychologically his place is in that small group of
great geniuses whose whole significant period lies in what we commonly
think of as the decline of life. There are several such in history:
Rome had Caesar; America had both Lincoln and Lee. By contrasting these
instances with those of the other type, the egoistic geniuses such as
Alexander or Napoleon, we become aware of some dim but profound dividing
line separating the two groups. The theory that genius, at bottom, is
pure energy seems to fit Napoleon; but does it fit these other minds who
appear to meet life with a certain indifference, with a carelessness of
their own fate, a willingness to leave much to chance? That irresistible
passion for authority which Napoleon had is lacking in these others.
Their basal inspiration seems to resemble the impulse of the artist to
express, rather than the impulse of the man of action to possess. Had
it not been for secession, Lee would probably have ended his days as an
exemplary superintendent of West Point. And what of Lincoln? He dabbled
in politics, early and without success; he left politics for the law,
and to the law he gave during many years his chief devotion. But the
fortuitous break-up of parties, with the revival of the slavery issue,
touched some hidden spring; the able provincial lawyer felt again the
political impulse; he became a famous maker of political phrases; and on
this literary basis he became the leader of a party.
Too little attention has been paid to this progression of Lincoln
through literature into politics. The ease with which he drifted from
one to the other is also still to be evaluated. Did it show a certain
slackness, a certain aimlessness, at the bottom of his nature? Had
it, in a way, some sort of analogy--to compare homespun with things
Olympian--to the vein of frivolity in the great Caesar? One is
tempted to think so. Surely, here was one of those natures which need
circumstance to compel them to greatness and which are not foredoomed,
Napoleon-like, to seize greatness. Without encroaching upon the
biographical task, one may borrow from biography this insistent echo:
the anecdotes of Lincoln sound over and over the note of easy-going good
nature; but there is to be found in many of the Lincoln anecdotes an
overtone of melancholy which lingers after one's impression of his good
nature. Quite naturally, in such a biographical atmosphere, we find
ourselves thinking of him at first as a little too good-humored, a
little too easy-going, a little prone to fall into reverie. We are not
surprised when we find his favorite poem beginning "Oh, why should the
spirit of mortal be proud."
This enigmatical man became President in his fifty-second year. We
have already seen that his next period, the winter of 1860-61, has its
biographical problems. The impression which he made on the country as
President-elect was distinctly unfavorable. Good humor, or opportunism,
or what you will, brought together in Lincoln's Cabinet at least three
men more conspicuous in the ordinary sense than he was himself. We
forget, today, how insignificant he must have seemed in a Cabinet that
embraced Seward, Cameron, and Chase--all large national figures. What
would not history give for a page of self-revelation showing us how he
felt in the early days of that company! Was he troubled? Did he doubt
his ability to hold his own? Was he fatalistic? Was his sad smile his
refuge? Did he merely put things by, ignoring tomorrow until tomorrow
should arrive?
However we may guess at the answers to such questions, one thing now
becomes certain. His quality of good humor began to be his salvation.
It is doubtful if any President except Washington had to manage so
difficult a Cabinet. Washington had seen no solution to the problem but
to let Jefferson go. Lincoln found his Cabinet often on the verge of a
split, with two powerful factions struggling to control it and neither
ever gaining full control. Though there were numerous withdrawals, no
resigning secretary really split Lincoln's Cabinet. By what turns and
twists and skillful maneuvers Lincoln prevented such a division and
kept such inveterate enemies as Chase and Seward steadily at their
jobs--Chase during three years, Seward to the end--will partly appear
in the following pages; but the whole delicate achievement cannot be
properly appreciated except in detailed biography.
All criticism of Lincoln turns eventually on one question: Was he an
opportunist? Not only his enemies in his own time but many politicians
of a later day were eager to prove that he was the latter--indeed,
seeking to shelter their own opportunism behind the majesty of his
example. A modern instance will perhaps make vivid this long standing
debate upon Lincoln and his motives. Merely for historic illumination
and without becoming invidious, we may recall the instance of President
Wilson and the resignation of his Secretary of War in 1916 because
Congress would not meet the issue of preparedness. The President
accepted the resignation without forcing the issue, and Congress went
on fiddling while Rome burned. Now, was the President an opportunist,
merely waiting to see what course events would take, or was he a
political strategist, astutely biding his time? Similar in character
is this old debate upon Lincoln, which is perhaps best focussed in the
removal of Secretary Blair which we shall have to note in connection
with the election of 1864.
It is difficult for the most objective historian to deal with such
questions without obtruding his personal views, but there is nothing
merely individual in recording the fact that the steady drift of opinion
has been away from the conception of Lincoln as an opportunist. What
once caused him to be thus conceived appears now to have been a failure
to comprehend intelligently the nature of his undertaking. More and
more, the tendency nowadays is to conceive his career as one of
those few instances in which the precise faculties needed to solve a
particular problem were called into play at exactly the critical moment.
Our confusions with regard to Lincoln have grown out of our failure
to appreciate the singularity of the American people, and their
ultra-singularity during the years in which he lived. It remains to be
seen hereafter what strange elements of sensibility, of waywardness,
of lack of imagination, of undisciplined ardor, of selfishness, of
deceitfulness, of treachery, combined with heroic ideality, made up
the character of that complex populace which it was Lincoln's task to
control. But he did more than control it: he somehow compounded much of
it into something like a unit. To measure Lincoln's achievement in this
respect, two things must be remembered: on the one hand, his task was
not as arduous as it might have been, because the most intellectual part
of the North had definitely committed itself either irretrievably for,
or irreconcilably against, his policy. Lincoln, therefore, did not have
to trouble himself with this portion of the population. On the
other hand, that part which he had to master included such emotional
rhetoricians as Horace Greeley; such fierce zealots as Henry Winter
Davis of Maryland, who made him trouble indeed, and Benjamin Wade, whom
we have met already; such military egoists as McClellan and Pope; such
crafty double-dealers as his own Secretary of the Treasury; such astute
grafters as Cameron; such miserable creatures as certain powerful
capitalists who sacrificed his army to their own lust for profits
filched from army contracts.
The wonder of Lincoln's achievement is that he contrived at last to
extend his hold over all these diverse elements; that he persuaded some,
outwitted others, and overcame them all. The subtlety of this task would
have ruined any statesman of the driving sort. Explain Lincoln by any
theory you will, his personality was the keystone of the Northern arch;
subtract it, and the arch falls. The popular element being as complex
and powerful as it was, how could the presiding statesman have mastered
the situation if he had not been of so peculiar a sort that he could
influence all these diverse and powerful interests, slowly, by degrees,
without heat, without the imperative note, almost in silence, with the
universal, enfolding irresistibility of the gradual things in nature,
of the sun and the rain. Such was the genius of Lincoln--all but
passionless, yet so quiet that one cannot but believe in the great depth
of his nature.
We are, even today, far from a definitive understanding of Lincoln's
statecraft, but there is perhaps justification for venturing upon one
prophecy. The farther from him we get and the more clearly we see him in
perspective, the more we shall realize his creative influence upon his
party. A Lincoln who is the moulder of events and the great creator of
public opinion will emerge at last into clear view. In the Lincoln
of his ultimate biographer there will be more of iron than of a less
enduring metal in the figure of the Lincoln of present tradition. Though
none of his gentleness will disappear, there will be more emphasis
placed upon his firmness, and upon such episodes as that of December,
1860, when his single will turned the scale against compromise; upon
his steadiness in the defeat of his party at the polls in 1862; or his
overruling of the will of Congress in the summer of 1864 on the question
of reconstruction; or his attitude in the autumn of that year when
he believed that he was losing his second election. Behind all his
gentleness, his slowness, behind his sadness, there will eventually
appear an inflexible purpose, strong as steel, unwavering as fate.
The Civil War was in truth Lincoln's war. Those modern pacifists who
claim him for their own are beside the mark. They will never get over
their illusions about Lincoln until they see, as all the world is
beginning to see, that his career has universal significance because of
its bearing on the universal modern problem of democracy. It will not do
ever to forget that he was a man of the people, always playing the hand
of the people, in the limited social sense of that word, though playing
it with none of the heat usually met with in the statesmen of successful
democracy from Cleon to Robespierre, from Andrew Jackson to Lloyd
George. His gentleness does not remove Lincoln from that stern category.
Throughout his life, besides his passion for the Union, besides his
antipathy to slavery, there dwelt in his very heart love of and faith
in the plain people. We shall never see him in true historic perspective
until we conceive him as the instrument of a vast social idea--the
determination to make a government based on the plain people successful
in war.
He did not scruple to seize power when he thought the cause of the
people demanded it, and his enemies were prompt to accuse him of holding
to the doctrine that the end justified the means--a hasty conclusion
which will have to be reconsidered; what concerns us more closely is the
definite conviction that he felt no sacrifice too great if it advanced
the happiness of the generality of mankind.
The final significance of Lincoln as a statesman of democracy is brought
out most clearly in his foreign relations. Fate put it into the hands of
England to determine whether his Government should stand or fall. Though
it is doubtful how far the turning of the scale of English policy in
Lincoln's favor was due to the influence of the rising power of English
democracy, it is plain that Lincoln thought of himself as having one
purpose with that movement which he regarded as an ally. Beyond all
doubt among the most grateful messages he ever received were the New
Year greetings of confidence and sympathy which were sent by English
workingmen in 1863. A few sentences in his "Letter to the Workingmen
of London" help us to look through his eyes and see his life and its
struggles as they appeared to him in relation to world history:
"As these sentiments [expressed by the English workmen] are manifestly
the enduring support of the free institutions of England, so am I sure
that they constitute the only reliable basis for free institutions
throughout the world.... The resources, advantages, and power of the
American people are very great, and they have consequently succeeded to
equally great responsibilities. It seems to have devolved upon them to
test whether a government established on the principles of human freedom
can be maintained against an effort to build one upon the exclusive
foundation of human bondage. They will rejoice with me in the new
evidence which your proceedings furnish that the magnanimity they
are exhibiting is justly estimated by the true friends of freedom and
humanity in foreign countries."
Written at the opening of that terrible year, 1863, these words are a
forward link with those more celebrated words spoken toward its close
at Gettysburg. Perhaps at no time during the war, except during the few
days immediately following his own reelection a year later, did Lincoln
come so near being free from care as then. Perhaps that explains why
his fundamental literary power reasserted itself so remarkably, why this
speech of his at the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg
on the 19th of November, 1863, remains one of the most memorable
orations ever delivered:
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met
on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion
of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their
lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper
that we should do this.
"But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we
cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled
here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The
world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can
never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to
be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have
thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to
the great task remaining before us: that from these honored dead we
take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall
not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new
birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and
for the people, shall not perish from the earth."