We meet under the gloom of a calamity which darkens down over the
minds of good men in all civil society, as the fearful tidings travel
over sea, over land, from country to country, like the shadow of an
uncalculated eclipse over the planet. Old as history is, and manifold
as are its tragedies, I doubt if any death has caused so much pain to
mankind as this has caused, or will cause, on its announcement; and
this, not so much because nations are by modern arts brought so
closely together, as because of the mysterious hopes and fears which,
in the present day, are connected with the name and institutions of
America.
In this country, on Saturday, every one was struck dumb, and saw at
first only deep below deep, as he meditated on the ghastly blow. And
perhaps, at this hour, when the coffin which contains the dust of the
President sets forward on its long march through mourning States, on
its way to his home in Illinois, we might well be silent and suffer
the awful voices of the time to thunder to us. Yes, but that first
despair was brief: the man was not so to be mourned. He was the most
active and hopeful of men; and his work has not perished: but
acclamations of praise for the task he has accomplished burst out into
a song of triumph, which even tears for his death cannot keep down.
The President stood before us as a man of the people. He was
thoroughly American, had never crossed the sea, had never been spoiled
by English insularity or French dissipation; a quiet native,
aboriginal man, as an acorn from the oak; no aping of foreigners, no
frivolous accomplishments, Kentuckian born, working on a farm, a
flatboat-man, a captain in the Black Hawk war, a country lawyer, a
representative in the rural legislature of Illinois;--on such modest
foundations the broad structure of his fame was laid. How slowly, and
yet by happily prepared steps, he came to his place. All of us
remember--it is only a history of five or six years--the surprise and
the disappointment of the country at his first nomination by the
convention at Chicago. Mr. Seward, then in the culmination of his good
fame, was the favorite of the Eastern States. And when the new and
comparatively unknown name of Lincoln was announced (notwithstanding
the report of the acclamations of that convention), we heard the
result coldly and sadly. It seemed too rash, on a purely local
reputation, to build so grave a trust in such anxious times; and men
naturally talked of the chances in politics as incalculable. But it
turned out not to be chance. The profound good opinion which the
people of Illinois and of the West had conceived of him, and which
they had imparted to their colleagues, that they also might justify
themselves to their constituents at home, was not rash, though they
did not begin to know the riches of his worth.
A plain man of the people, an extraordinary fortune attended him. He
offered no shining qualities at the first encounter; he did not offend
by superiority. He had a face and manner which disarmed suspicion,
which inspired confidence, which confirmed good will. He was a man
without vices. He had a strong sense of duty, which it was very easy
for him to obey. Then he had what farmers call a long head; was
excellent in working out the sum for himself; in arguing his case and
convincing you fairly and firmly. Then it turned out that he was a
great worker; had prodigious faculty of performance; worked easily. A
good worker is so rare; everybody has some disabling quality. In a
host of young men that start together and promise so many brilliant
leaders for the next age, each fails on trial; one by bad health, one
by conceit, or by love of pleasure, or lethargy, or an ugly
temper,--each has some disqualifying fault that throws him out of the
career. But this man was sound to the core, cheerful, persistent, all
right for labor, and liked nothing so well.
Then he had a vast good nature, which made him tolerant and accessible
to all; fair minded, leaning to the claim of the petitioner; affable,
and not sensible to the affliction which the innumerable visits paid
to him when President would have brought to any one else. And how this
good nature became a noble humanity, in many a tragic case which the
events of the war brought to him, every one will remember; and with
what increasing tenderness he dealt when a whole race was thrown on
his compassion. The poor negro said of him, on an impressive occasion,
"Massa Linkum am ebery-where." Then his broad good humor, running
easily into jocular talk, in which he delighted and in which he
excelled, was a rich gift to this wise man. It enabled him to keep his
secret; to meet every kind of man and every rank in society; to take
off the edge of the severest decisions; to mask his own purpose and
sound his companion; and to catch with true instinct the temper of
every company he addressed. And, more than all, it is to a man of
severe labor, in anxious and exhausting crises, the natural
restorative, good as sleep, and is the protection of the overdriven
brain against rancor and insanity.
He is the author of a multitude of good sayings, so disguised as
pleasantries that it is certain they had no reputation at first but as
jests; and only later, by the very acceptance and adoption they find
in the mouths of millions, turn out to be the wisdom of the hour. I am
sure if this man had ruled in a period of less facility of printing,
he would have become mythological in a very few years, like Æsop or
Pilpay, or one of the Seven Wise Masters, by his fables and proverbs.
But the weight and penetration of many passages in his letters,
messages, and speeches, hidden now by the very closeness of their
application to the moment, are destined hereafter to wide fame. What
pregnant definitions; what unerring common sense; what foresight; and,
on great occasion, what lofty, and more than national, what humane
tone! His brief speech at Gettysburg will not easily be surpassed by
words on any recorded occasion. This, and one other American speech,
that of John Brown to the court that tried him, and a part of
Kossuth's speech at Birmingham, can only be compared with each other,
and with no fourth.
His occupying the chair of State was a triumph of the good sense of
mankind, and of the public conscience. This middle-class country had
got a middle-class President, at last. Yes, in manners and sympathies,
but not in powers, for his powers were superior. This man grew
according to the need. His mind mastered the problem of the day; and
as the problem grew, so did his comprehension of it. Rarely was man so
fitted to the event. In the midst of fears and jealousies, in the
Babel of counsels and parties, this man wrought incessantly with all
his might and all his honesty, laboring to find what the people
wanted, and how to obtain that. It cannot be said there is any
exaggeration of his worth. If ever a man was fairly tested, he was.
There was no lack of resistance, nor of slander, nor of ridicule. The
times have allowed no state secrets; the nation has been in such
ferment, such multitudes had to be trusted, that no secret could be
kept. Every door was ajar, and we know all that befell.
Then, what an occasion was the whirlwind of the war. Here was place
for no holiday magistrate, no fair-weather sailor; the new pilot was
hurried to the helm in a tornado. In four years,--four years of
battle-days,--his endurance, his fertility of resources, his
magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found wanting. There, by his
courage, his justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his
humanity, he stood a heroic figure in the centre of a heroic epoch. He
is the true history of the American people in his time. Step by step
he walked before them; slow with their slowness, quickening his march
by theirs, the true representative of this continent; an entirely
public man; father of his country, the pulse of twenty-millions
throbbing in his heart, the thought of their minds articulated by his
tongue.
Adam Smith remarks that the axe, which in Houbraken's portraits of
British kings and worthies is engraved under those who have suffered
at the block, adds a certain lofty charm to the picture. And who does
not see, even in this tragedy so recent, how fast the terror and ruin
of the massacre are already burning into glory around the victim? Far
happier this fate than to have lived to be wished away; to have
watched the decay of his own faculties; to have seen--perhaps even
be--the proverbial ingratitude of statesmen; to have seen mean men
preferred. Had he not lived long enough to keep the greatest promise
that ever man made to his fellow men,--the practicable abolition of
slavery? He had seen Tennessee, Missouri, and Maryland emancipate
their slaves. He had seen Savannah, Charleston, and Richmond
surrendered; had seen the main army of the rebellion lay down its
arms. He had conquered the public opinion of Canada, England, and
France. Only Washington can compare with him in fortune.
And what if it should turn out, in the unfolding of the web, that he
had reached the term; that this heroic deliverer could no longer serve
us; that the rebellion had touched its natural conclusion, and what
remained to be done required new and uncommitted hands,--a new spirit
born out of the ashes of the war; and that Heaven, wishing to show
the world a completed benefactor, shall make him serve his country
even more by his death than by his life? Nations, like kings, are not
good by facility and complaisance. "The kindness of kings consists in
justice and strength." Easy good nature has been the dangerous foible
of the Republic, and it was necessary that its enemies should outrage
it, and drive us to unwonted firmness, to secure the salvation of this
country in the next ages.
The ancients believed in a serene and beautiful Genius which ruled in
the affairs of nations; which, with a slow but stern justice, carried
forward the fortunes of certain chosen houses, weeding out single
offenders or offending families, and securing at last the firm
prosperity of the favorites of Heaven. It was too narrow a view of the
Eternal Nemesis. There is a serene Providence which rules the fate of
nations, which makes little account of time, little of one generation
or race, makes no account of disasters, conquers alike by what is
called defeat or by what is called victory, thrusts aside enemy and
obstruction, crushes everything immoral as inhuman, and obtains the
ultimate triumph of the best race by the sacrifice of everything which
resists the moral laws of the world. It makes its own instruments,
creates the man for the time, trains him in poverty, inspires his
genius, and arms him for his task. It has given every race its own
talent, and ordains that only that race which combines perfectly with
the virtues of all shall endure.
[18] _By permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Company._