In the talk (which I welcome) about the need of men of training,
thoroughly school'd and experienced men, for statesmen, I would present
the following as an offset. It was written by me twenty years ago--and
has been curiously verified since:
I say no body of men are fit to make Presidents, Judges, and Generals,
unless they themselves supply the best specimens of the same; and that
supplying one or two such specimens illuminates the whole body for a
thousand years. I expect to see the day when the like of the present
personnel of the governments, Federal, State, municipal, military, and
naval, will be look'd upon with derision, and when qualified mechanics
and young men will reach Congress and other official stations, sent
in their working costumes, fresh from their benches and tools, and
returning to them again with dignity. The young fellows must prepare
to do credit to this destiny, for the stuff is in them. Nothing gives
place, recollect, and never ought to give place, except to its clean
superiors. There is more rude and undevelopt bravery, friendship,
conscientiousness, clear-sightedness, and practical genius for any
scope of action, even the broadest and highest, now among the American
mechanics and young men, than in all the official persons in these
States, legislative, executive, judicial, military, and naval, and more
than among all the literary persons. I would be much pleas'd to see some
heroic, shrewd, fully-inform'd, healthy-bodied, middle-aged, beard-faced
American blacksmith or boatman come down from the West across the
Alleghanies, and walk into the Presidency, dress'd in a clean suit of
working attire, and with the tan all over his face, breast, and arms;
I would certainly vote for that sort of man, possessing the due
requirements, before any other candidate.
(The facts of rank-and-file workingmen, mechanics, Lincoln, Johnson,
Grant, Garfield, brought forward from the masses and placed in the
Presidency, and swaying its mighty powers with firm hand--really with
more sway than any king in history, and with better capacity in using
that sway--can we not see that these facts have bearings far, far beyond
their political or party ones?)