Glad am I to give--were anything better lacking--even the most brief
and shorn testimony of Abraham Lincoln. Everything I heard about him
authentically, and every time I saw him (and it was my fortune through
1862 to '65 to see, or pass a word with, or watch him, personally,
perhaps twenty or thirty times,) added to and anneal'd my respect and
love at the moment. And as I dwell on what I myself heard or saw of the
mighty Westerner, and blend it with the history and literature of my
age, and of what I can get of all ages, and conclude it with his death,
it seems like some tragic play, superior to all else I know--vaster and
fierier and more convulsionary, for this America of ours, than Eschylus
or Shakspere ever drew for Athens or for England. And then the Moral
permeating, underlying all! the Lesson that none so remote--none so
illiterate--no age, no class--but may directly or indirectly read!
Abraham Lincoln's was really one of those characters, the best of which
is the result of long trains of cause and effect--needing a certain
spaciousness of time, and perhaps even remoteness, to properly enclose
them--having unequal'd influence on the shaping of this Republic (and
therefore the world) as to-day, and then far more important in
the future. Thus the time has by no means yet come for a thorough
measurement of him. Nevertheless, we who live in his era--who have
seen him, and heard him, face to face, and are in the midst of, or just
parting from, the strong and strange events which he and we have had
to do with--can in some respects bear valuable, perhaps indispensable
testimony concerning him.
I should first like to give a very fair and characteristic likeness of
Lincoln, as I saw him and watch'd him one afternoon in Washington, for
nearly half an hour, not long before his death. It was as he stood on
the balcony of the National Hotel, Pennsylvania avenue, making a short
speech to the crowd in front, on the occasion either of a set of
new colors presented to a famous Illinois regiment, or of the daring
capture, by the Western men, of some flags from "the enemy," (which
latter phrase, by the by, was not used by him at all in his remarks.)
How the picture happen'd to be made I do not know, but I bought it a few
days afterward in Washington, and it was endors'd by every one to whom I
show'd it. Though hundreds of portraits have been made, by painters and
photographers, (many to pass on, by copies, to future times,) I have
never seen one yet that in my opinion deserv'd to be called a perfectly
_good likeness_; nor do I believe there is really such a one in
existence. May I not say too, that, as there is no entirely competent
and emblematic likeness of Abraham Lincoln in picture or statue, there
is not--perhaps cannot be--any fully appropriate literary statement or
summing-up of him yet in existence?
The best way to estimate the value of Lincoln is to think what the
condition of America would be to-day, if he had never lived--never been
President. His nomination and first election were mainly accidents,
experiments. Severely view'd, one cannot think very much of American
Political Parties, from the beginning, after the Revolutionary War, down
to the present time. Doubtless, while they have had their uses--have
been and are "the grass on which the cow feeds"--and indispensable
economies of growth--it is undeniable that under flippant names they
have merely identified temporary passions, or freaks, or sometimes
prejudice, ignorance, or hatred. The only thing like a great and worthy
idea vitalizing a party, and making it heroic, was the enthusiasm in '64
for re-electing Abraham Lincoln, and the reason behind that enthusiasm.
How does this man compare with the acknowledg'd "Father of his country"?
Washington was model'd on the best Saxon, and Franklin--of the age of
the Stuarts (rooted in the Elizabethan period)--was essentially a noble
Englishman, and just the kind needed for the occasions and the times of
1776-'83. Lincoln, underneath his practicality, was far less European,
was quite thoroughly Western, original, essentially non-conventional,
and had a certain sort of out-door or prairie stamp. One of the best of
the late commentators on Shakspere, (Professor Dowden,) makes the height
and aggregate of his quality as a poet to be, that he thoroughly blended
the ideal with the practical or realistic. If this be so, I should
say that what Shakspere did in poetic expression, Abraham Lincoln
essentially did in his personal and official life. I should say the
invisible foundations and vertebra of his character, more than any man's
in history, were mystical, abstract, moral and spiritual--while upon all
of them was built, and out of all of them radiated, under the control of
the average of circumstances, what the vulgar call _horse-sense_, and a
life often bent by temporary but most urgent materialistic and political
reasons.
He seems to have been a man of indomitable firmness (even obstinacy) on
rare occasions, involving great points; but he was generally very easy,
flexible, tolerant, almost slouchy, respecting minor matters. I note
that even those reports and anecdotes intended to level him down, all
leave the tinge of a favorable impression of him. As to his religious
nature, it seems to me to have certainly been of the amplest,
deepest-rooted, loftiest kind.
Already a new generation begins to tread the stage, since the persons
and events of the secession war. I have more than once fancied to myself
the time when the present century has closed, and a new one open'd,
and the men and deeds of that contest have become somewhat vague and
mythical-fancied perhaps in some great Western city, or group collected
together, or public festival, where the days of old, of 1863, and '4 and
'5 are discuss'd--some ancient soldier sitting in the background as the
talk goes on, and betraying himself by his emotion and moist eyes--like
the journeying Ithacan at the banquet of King Alcinoiis, when the bard
sings the contending warriors and their battles on the plains of Troy:
"So from the sluices of Ulysses' eyes
Fast fell the tears, and sighs succeeded sighs."
I have fancied, I say, some such venerable relic of this time of ours,
preserv'd to the next or still the next generation of America. I have
fancied, on such occasion, the young men gathering around; the awe, the
eager questions: "What! have you seen Abraham Lincoln--and heard him
speak--and touch'd his hand? Have you, with your own eyes, look'd on
Grant, and Lee, and Sherman?"
Dear to Democracy, to the very last! And among the paradoxes generated
by America, not the least curious was that spectacle of all the kings
and queens and emperors of the earth, many from remote distances,
sending tributes of condolence and sorrow in memory of one rais'd
through the commonest average of life--a rail-splitter and flat-boatman!
Consider'd from contemporary points of view--who knows what the future
may decide?--and from the points of view of current Democracy and The
Union, (the only thing like passion or infatuation in the man was the
passion for the Union of These States,) Abraham Lincoln seems to me
the grandest figure yet, on all the crowded canvas of the Nineteenth
Century.