A few days after the fall of Richmond, he pointed out to a friend the
crowd of office-seekers besieging his door. "Look at that," said he.
"Now we have conquered the rebellion, but here you see something that
may become more dangerous to this republic than the rebellion itself."
It is true, Lincoln as President did not profess what we now call civil
service reform principles. He used the patronage of the government
in many cases avowedly to reward party work, in many others to form
combinations and to produce political effects advantageous to the Union
cause, and in still others simply to put the right man into the right
place. But in his endeavors to strengthen the Union cause, and in his
search for able and useful men for public duties, he frequently went
beyond the limits of his party, and gradually accustomed himself to the
thought that, while party service had its value, considerations of
the public interest were, as to appointments to office, of far greater
consequence. Moreover, there had been such a mingling of different
political elements in support of the Union during the civil war that
Lincoln, standing at the head of that temporarily united motley mass,
hardly felt himself, in the narrow sense of the term, a party man.
And as he became strongly impressed with the dangers brought upon the
republic by the use of public offices as party spoils, it is by no means
improbable that, had he survived the all-absorbing crisis and found time
to turn to other objects, one of the most important reforms of later
days would have been pioneered by his powerful authority. This was
not to be. But the measure of his achievements was full enough for
immortality.
To the younger generation Abraham Lincoln has already become a
half-mythical figure, which, in the haze of historic distance, grows
to more and more heroic proportions, but also loses in distinctness of
outline and feature. This is indeed the common lot of popular heroes;
but the Lincoln legend will be more than ordinarily apt to become
fanciful, as his individuality, assembling seemingly incongruous
qualities and forces in a character at the same time grand and most
lovable, was so unique, and his career so abounding in startling
contrasts. As the state of society in which Abraham Lincoln grew up
passes away, the world will read with increasing wonder of the man who,
not only of the humblest origin, but remaining the simplest and
most unpretending of citizens, was raised to a position of power
unprecedented in our history; who was the gentlest and most peace-loving
of mortals, unable to see any creature suffer without a pang in his own
breast, and suddenly found himself called to conduct the greatest and
bloodiest of our wars; who wielded the power of government when stern
resolution and relentless force were the order of the day and then won
and ruled the popular mind and heart by the tender sympathies of his
nature; who was a cautious conservative by temperament and mental habit,
and led the most sudden and sweeping social revolution of our time;
who, preserving his homely speech and rustic manner even in the most
conspicuous position of that period, drew upon himself the scoffs of
polite society, and then thrilled the soul of mankind with utterances of
wonderful beauty and grandeur; who, in his heart the best friend of the
defeated South, was murdered because a crazy fanatic took him for its
most cruel enemy; who, while in power, was beyond measure lampooned and
maligned by sectional passion and an excited party spirit, and around
whose bier friend and foe gathered to praise him which they have since
never ceased to do--as one of the greatest of Americans and the best of
men.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, BY JOSEPH H. CHOATE
[This Address was delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical
Institution, November 13, 1900. It is included in this set with the
courteous permission of the author and of Messrs. Thomas Y. Crowell &
Company.]
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
When you asked me to deliver the Inaugural Address on this occasion,
I recognized that I owed this compliment to the fact that I was the
official representative of America, and in selecting a subject I
ventured to think that I might interest you for an hour in a brief study
in popular government, as illustrated by the life of the most American
of all Americans. I therefore offer no apology for asking your attention
to Abraham Lincoln--to his unique character and the part he bore in
two important achievements of modern history: the preservation of the
integrity of the American Union and the emancipation of the colored
race.
During his brief term of power he was probably the object of more abuse,
vilification, and ridicule than any other man in the world; but when he
fell by the hand of an assassin, at the very moment of his stupendous
victory, all the nations of the earth vied with one another in paying
homage to his character, and the thirty-five years that have since
elapsed have established his place in history as one of the great
benefactors not of his own country alone, but of the human race.
One of many noble utterances upon the occasion of his death was that in
which 'Punch' made its magnanimous recantation of the spirit with which
it had pursued him:
"Beside this corpse that bears for winding sheet
The stars and stripes he lived to rear anew,
Between the mourners at his head and feet,
Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you?
...................
"Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer,
To lame my pencil, and confute my pen
To make me own this hind--of princes peer,
This rail-splitter--a true born king of men."
Fiction can furnish no match for the romance of his life, and biography
will be searched in vain for such startling vicissitudes of fortune,
so great power and glory won out of such humble beginnings and adverse
circumstances.
Doubtless you are all familiar with the salient points of his
extraordinary career. In the zenith of his fame he was the wise,
patient, courageous, successful ruler of men; exercising more power than
any monarch of his time, not for himself, but for the good of the people
who had placed it in his hands; commander-in-chief of a vast military
power, which waged with ultimate success the greatest war of the
century; the triumphant champion of popular government, the deliverer
of four millions of his fellowmen from bondage; honored by mankind as
Statesman, President, and Liberator.
Let us glance now at the first half of the brief life of which this was
the glorious and happy consummation. Nothing could be more squalid and
miserable than the home in which Abraham Lincoln was born--a one-roomed
cabin without floor or window in what was then the wilderness of
Kentucky, in the heart of that frontier life which swiftly moved
westward from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, always in advance of
schools and churches, of books and money, of railroads and newspapers,
of all things which are generally regarded as the comforts and even
necessaries of life. His father, ignorant, needy, and thriftless,
content if he could keep soul and body together for himself and his
family, was ever seeking, without success, to better his unhappy
condition by moving on from one such scene of dreary desolation to
another. The rude society which surrounded them was not much better. The
struggle for existence was hard, and absorbed all their energies. They
were fighting the forest, the wild beast, and the retreating savage.
From the time when he could barely handle tools until he attained his
majority, Lincoln's life was that of a simple farm laborer, poorly clad,
housed, and fed, at work either on his father's wretched farm or hired
out to neighboring farmers. But in spite, or perhaps by means, of this
rude environment, he grew to be a stalwart giant, reaching six feet four
at nineteen, and fabulous stories are told of his feats of strength.
With the growth of this mighty frame began that strange education which
in his ripening years was to qualify him for the great destiny that
awaited him, and the development of those mental faculties and moral
endowments which, by the time he reached middle life, were to make him
the sagacious, patient, and triumphant leader of a great nation in the
crisis of its fate. His whole schooling, obtained during such odd times
as could be spared from grinding labor, did not amount in all to as much
as one year, and the quality of the teaching was of the lowest possible
grade, including only the elements of reading, writing, and ciphering.
But out of these simple elements, when rightly used by the right man,
education is achieved, and Lincoln knew how to use them. As so often
happens, he seemed to take warning from his father's unfortunate
example. Untiring industry, an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and
an ever-growing desire to rise above his surroundings, were early
manifestations of his character.
Books were almost unknown in that community, but the Bible was in
every house, and somehow or other Pilgrim's Progress, AEsop's Fables,
a History of the United States, and a Life of Washington fell into his
hands. He trudged on foot many miles through the wilderness to borrow an
English Grammar, and is said to have devoured greedily the contents of
the Statutes of Indiana that fell in his way. These few volumes he read
and reread--and his power of assimilation was great. To be shut in with
a few books and to master them thoroughly sometimes does more for the
development of character than freedom to range at large, in a cursory
and indiscriminate way, through wide domains of literature. This youth's
mind, at any rate, was thoroughly saturated with Biblical knowledge and
Biblical language, which, in after life, he used with great readiness
and effect. But it was the constant use of the little knowledge which he
had that developed and exercised his mental powers. After the hard
day's work was done, while others slept, he toiled on, always reading or
writing. From an early age he did his own thinking and made up his own
mind--invaluable traits in the future President. Paper was such a scarce
commodity that, by the evening firelight, he would write and cipher
on the back of a wooden shovel, and then shave it off to make room for
more. By and by, as he approached manhood, he began speaking in the rude
gatherings of the neighborhood, and so laid the foundation of that art
of persuading his fellow-men which was one rich result of his education,
and one great secret of his subsequent success.
Accustomed as we are in these days of steam and telegraphs to have every
intelligent boy survey the whole world each morning before breakfast,
and inform himself as to what is going on in every nation, it is hardly
possible to conceive how benighted and isolated was the condition of the
community at Pigeon Creek in Indiana, of which the family of Lincoln's
father formed a part, or how eagerly an ambitious and high-spirited boy,
such as he, must have yearned to escape. The first glimpse that he ever
got of any world beyond the narrow confines of his home was in 1828, at
the age of nineteen, when a neighbor employed him to accompany his son
down the river to New Orleans to dispose of a flatboat of produce--a
commission which he discharged with great success.
Shortly after his return from this his first excursion into the outer
world, his father, tired of failure in Indiana, packed his family and
all his worldly goods into a single wagon drawn by two yoke of oxen, and
after a fourteen days' tramp through the wilderness, pitched his camp
once more, in Illinois. Here Abraham, having come of age and being now
his own master, rendered the last service of his minority by ploughing
the fifteen-acre lot and splitting from the tall walnut trees of the
primeval forest enough rails to surround the little clearing with a
fence. Such was the meagre outfit of this coming leader of men, at the
age when the future British Prime Minister or statesman emerges from the
university as a double first or senior wrangler, with every advantage
that high training and broad culture and association with the wisest and
the best of men and women can give, and enters upon some form of public
service on the road to usefulness and honor, the University course being
only the first stage of the public training. So Lincoln, at twenty-one,
had just begun his preparation for the public life to which he soon
began to aspire. For some years yet he must continue to earn his daily
bread by the sweat of his brow, having absolutely no means, no home,
no friend to consult. More farm work as a hired hand, a clerkship in a
village store, the running of a mill, another trip to New Orleans on a
flatboat of his own contriving, a pilot's berth on the river--these were
the means by which he subsisted until, in the summer of 1832, when he
was twenty-three years of age, an event occurred which gave him public
recognition.
The Black Hawk war broke out, and, the Governor of Illinois calling for
volunteers to repel the band of savages whose leader bore that name,
Lincoln enlisted and was elected captain by his comrades, among whom he
had already established his supremacy by signal feats of strength and
more than one successful single combat. During the brief hostilities
he was engaged in no battle and won no military glory, but his local
leadership was established. The same year he offered himself as a
candidate for the Legislature of Illinois, but failed at the polls. Yet
his vast popularity with those who knew him was manifest. The district
consisted of several counties, but the unanimous vote of the people
of his own county was for Lincoln. Another unsuccessful attempt at
store-keeping was followed by better luck at surveying, until his horse
and instruments were levied upon under execution for the debts of his
business adventure.
I have been thus detailed in sketching his early years because upon
these strange foundations the structure of his great fame and service
was built. In the place of a school and university training fortune
substituted these trials, hardships, and struggles as a preparation for
the great work which he had to do. It turned out to be exactly what
the emergency required. Ten years instead at the public school and the
university certainly never could have fitted this man for the unique
work which was to be thrown upon him. Some other Moses would have had to
lead us to our Jordan, to the sight of our promised land of liberty.
At the age of twenty-five he became a member of the Legislature of
Illinois, and so continued for eight years, and, in the meantime,
qualified himself by reading such law books as he could borrow at
random--for he was too poor to buy any to be called to the Bar. For
his second quarter of a century--during which a single term in Congress
introduced him into the arena of national questions--he gave himself up
to law and politics. In spite of his soaring ambition, his two years
in Congress gave him no premonition of the great destiny that awaited
him,--and at its close, in 1849, we find him an unsuccessful applicant
to the President for appointment as Commissioner of the General Land
Office--a purely administrative bureau; a fortunate escape for
himself and for his country. Year by year his knowledge and power, his
experience and reputation extended, and his mental faculties seemed to
grow by what they fed on. His power of persuasion, which had always been
marked, was developed to an extraordinary degree, now that he became
engaged in congenial questions and subjects. Little by little he rose to
prominence at the Bar, and became the most effective public speaker in
the West. Not that he possessed any of the graces of the orator; but his
logic was invincible, and his clearness and force of statement impressed
upon his hearers the convictions of his honest mind, while his broad
sympathies and sparkling and genial humor made him a universal favorite
as far and as fast as his acquaintance extended.
These twenty years that elapsed from the time of his establishment as
a lawyer and legislator in Springfield, the new capital of Illinois,
furnished a fitting theatre for the development and display of his great
faculties, and, with his new and enlarged opportunities, he obviously
grew in mental stature in this second period of his career, as if
to compensate for the absolute lack of advantages under which he had
suffered in youth. As his powers enlarged, his reputation extended,
for he was always before the people, felt a warm sympathy with all that
concerned them, took a zealous part in the discussion of every public
question, and made his personal influence ever more widely and deeply
felt.
My brethren of the legal profession will naturally ask me, how could
this rough backwoodsman, whose youth had been spent in the forest or
on the farm and the flatboat, without culture or training, education or
study, by the random reading, on the wing, of a few miscellaneous law
books, become a learned and accomplished lawyer? Well, he never did.
He never would have earned his salt as a 'Writer' for the 'Signet',
nor have won a place as advocate in the Court of Session, where the
technique of the profession has reached its highest perfection, and
centuries of learning and precedent are involved in the equipment of a
lawyer. Dr. Holmes, when asked by an anxious young mother, "When should
the education of a child begin?" replied, "Madam, at least two centuries
before it is born!" and so I am sure it is with the Scots lawyer.
But not so in Illinois in 1840. Between 1830 and 1880 its population
increased twenty-fold, and when Lincoln began practising law in
Springfield in 1837, life in Illinois was very crude and simple, and so
were the courts and the administration of justice. Books and libraries
were scarce. But the people loved justice, upheld the law, and followed
the courts, and soon found their favorites among the advocates. The
fundamental principles of the common law, as set forth by Blackstone
and Chitty, were not so difficult to acquire; and brains, common sense,
force of character, tenacity of purpose, ready wit and power of speech
did the rest, and supplied all the deficiencies of learning.
The lawsuits of those days were extremely simple, and the principles of
natural justice were mainly relied on to dispose of them at the Bar
and on the Bench, without resort to technical learning. Railroads,
corporations absorbing the chief business of the community, combined
and inherited wealth, with all the subtle and intricate questions they
breed, had not yet come in--and so the professional agents and the
equipment which they require were not needed. But there were many highly
educated and powerful men at the Bar of Illinois, even in those early
days, whom the spirit of enterprise had carried there in search of fame
and fortune. It was by constant contact and conflict with these that
Lincoln acquired professional strength and skill. Every community and
every age creates its own Bar, entirely adequate for its present uses
and necessities. So in Illinois, as the population and wealth of the
State kept on doubling and quadrupling, its Bar presented a growing
abundance of learning and science and technical skill. The early
practitioners grew with its growth and mastered the requisite knowledge.
Chicago soon grew to be one of the largest and richest and certainly
the most intensely active city on the continent, and if any of my
professional friends here had gone there in Lincoln's later years, to
try or argue a cause, or transact other business, with any idea that
Edinburgh or London had a monopoly of legal learning, science, or
subtlety, they would certainly have found their mistake.
In those early days in the West, every lawyer, especially every court
lawyer, was necessarily a politician, constantly engaged in the public
discussion of the many questions evolved from the rapid development
of town, county, State, and Federal affairs. Then and there, in this
regard, public discussion supplied the place which the universal
activity of the press has since monopolized, and the public speaker who,
by clearness, force, earnestness, and wit; could make himself felt on
the questions of the day would rapidly come to the front. In the absence
of that immense variety of popular entertainments which now feed the
public taste and appetite, the people found their chief amusement in
frequenting the courts and public and political assemblies. In either
place, he who impressed, entertained, and amused them most was the
hero of the hour. They did not discriminate very carefully between the
eloquence of the forum and the eloquence of the hustings. Human nature
ruled in both alike, and he who was the most effective speaker in a
political harangue was often retained as most likely to win in a cause
to be tried or argued. And I have no doubt in this way many retainers
came to Lincoln. Fees, money in any form, had no charms for him--in
his eager pursuit of fame he could not afford to make money. He was
ambitious to distinguish himself by some great service to mankind, and
this ambition for fame and real public service left no room for avarice
in his composition. However much he earned, he seems to have ended every
year hardly richer than he began it, and yet, as the years passed,
fees came to him freely. One of L 1,000 is recorded--a very large
professional fee at that time, even in any part of America, the paradise
of lawyers. I lay great stress on Lincoln's career as a lawyer--much
more than his biographers do because in America a state of things
exists wholly different from that which prevails in Great Britain. The
profession of the law always has been and is to this day the principal
avenue to public life; and I am sure that his training and experience
in the courts had much to do with the development of those forces of
intellect and character which he soon displayed on a broader arena.
It was in political controversy, of course, that he acquired his wide
reputation, and made his deep and lasting impression upon the people of
what had now become the powerful State of Illinois, and upon the people
of the Great West, to whom the political power and control of the United
States were already surely and swiftly passing from the older Eastern
States. It was this reputation and this impression, and the familiar
knowledge of his character which had come to them from his local
leadership, that happily inspired the people of the West to present him
as their candidate, and to press him upon the Republican convention of
1860 as the fit and necessary leader in the struggle for life which was
before the nation.