I. THE MAN AND THE CONFIDENCE OF THE PEOPLE
Abraham Lincoln, as President of the United States and
Commander-in-Chief of its army and navy, never seemed to know that he
was any more bound to look out for the good opinion of the world than
at any time before. To him there was no such thing as presidential
attitude or pose. He did not see that he had any part to act out more
than he had always had. Life might be a stage, as Shakespeare had
described it, and Lincoln had played many parts, but it was always as
a man.
"Nothing was more marked in Lincoln's personal demeanor," says one of
his intimate friends, "than his utter unconsciousness of his position.
He never seemed aware that his place or his business was essentially
different from that in which he had always been engaged. All duties
were alike to him. All called equally upon him for the best service of
his mind and heart, and all were alike performed with a conscientious,
single-hearted devotion."
Mr. Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, says, "The great predominating
elements of Mr. Lincoln's peculiar character were: First, his great
capacity and power of reason; second, his excellent understanding;
third, an exalted idea of the sense of right and equity; and, fourth,
his intense veneration of what was true and good."
Thackery expresses a vision of character that might well be used to
describe the motive-interest of Lincoln, and every other youth who
desires to be worth while:
"Come wealth or want, come good or ill,
Let old and young accept their part,
And bow before this awful will,
And bear it with an honest heart.
Who misses or who wins the prize,--
Go, lose or conquer as you can;
But if you fail or if you rise,
Be each, pray God, a gentleman."
In that great address which he gave on the occasion of his being sworn
in the first time as President of the United States, toward the close,
he said, "Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate
justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?
In our present differences is either party without faith in being
right? If the Almighty ruler of nations, with his eternal truth and
justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that
truth and that justice will surely prevail, by the judgment of this
great tribunal of the American people."
[Illustration: Lincoln Monument--Springfield, Illinois.]
At the last of his inaugural address he said, referring to the people
of the South, "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and
not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will
not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the
aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the
government; while I have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect and
defend' it."
It was in 1840, when he set this standard that made him worthy of
being called the savior of his nation. In a great political address at
that time, he said, "Let it be my proud plume not that I was the last
to desert (my country), but that I never deserted her."
The result is a united and powerful America facing the centuries of
human posterity as a working place for the enlargement of freedom
accomplished as rapidly as is possible through the perfection of
character and civilization.
II. TYPICAL INCIDENTS FROM AMONG MOMENTOUS SCENES
Lincoln's many forms of kindness are exemplified in such a continuous
series of acts, during his period of almost unlimited political power,
that only a few typical instances need to be described.
One day a woman got past the doorkeeper and thrust herself into his
presence. Her husband was captured and condemned to be shot. He was
one of the hated Mosby guerillas. She had come to beg for his pardon.
She weepingly poured out the story of his kindness, his love for his
family and that they could hardly live without him. She said that she
was a Northern woman, that she would take him to their home, and, on
his parole and her promise, he should never again do harm to his
country. She had papers also setting forth these facts. Lincoln
examined them and decided to parole the husband in her care.
At hearing this, the woman sobbed with joy as if her heart would burst
with gratitude.
"My dear woman," said Lincoln, listening to her hysterical sobs, "if I
had known it would make you feel so bad as this, I would never have
pardoned him."
"You do not understand me," she cried, fearful that he might reverse
his decision.
"Yes, I do," he replied, "but if you do not go away at once I shall
soon be crying with you."
The Judge Advocate General was one day reviewing death sentences with
Lincoln when they came to one where a young soldier was to be shot for
"cowardice in the face of the enemy." He had hid behind a stump during
battle.
Lincoln drew out the paper and said, "This one I'll have to put with
my bunch of leg cases."
"'Leg cases,'" said Judge Holt; "what do you mean by 'leg cases?'"
"Do you see that bunch of papers in yonder pigeon-hole?" he replied.
"Well, they are cases marked 'Cowardice in the face of the enemy.' I
call them, for short, my leg cases. I'll put it up to you for
judgment: if Almighty God gives a boy a cowardly pair of legs, how can
he help their running away with him."
One of the instances, which was far from being either desertion or
"Cowardice in the face of the enemy," came unexpectedly before him. A
little woman of poverty-stricken clothing and pinched features, after
several days trying, at last succeeded in getting through the press of
people waiting to see Lincoln, and told him that her only son was
about to be shot for desertion. His regiment had come by near their
home, and, being refused leave of absence, he had gone without
permission to see her. He had returned to his regiment but had been
arrested, tried and ordered shot, and there was only one more day. She
did not know where he was now confined.
Lincoln examined the papers verifying her statements. He hastily arose
from his chair, seized the woman by the hand, and, leaving the offices
without a word, hastened over to the Secretary of War.
Stanton, weary with Lincoln's constant interference against what the
War Secretary believed to be necessary discipline, begged Lincoln to
leave that matter to him.
But Lincoln insisted. He gave directions that immediate messages be
sent to every army headquarters till the boy be found and the
execution stayed for his further orders.
It was in a similar instance where mercy had been given to a New
England mother that she came out from the interview silent, as if
wrapped in thought.
Some friend interrupted her to know what had so impressed her.
"I have always been told," she said, "that Lincoln is one of the
ugliest of men. I now know that to be a lie. He is one of the
handsomest men I ever saw."
In another case, when Lincoln had relieved the distress of an old man
for his only son, the orders were that the soldier should not be
executed until further orders from Lincoln.
"But that is not pardon, is it?" said the fearing petitioner.
"Well, it's just as good," replied Lincoln. "He will be older than
Methuselah before I order his execution. Killing a man doesn't make
him any better or wipe out the act."
III. EXPERIENCES DEMANDING MERCY AND NOT SACRIFICE
The kindness so exemplified throughout his life never failed on the
side of mercy, as shown in many an incident of the war.
In one case a woman, whose son had run away from home at the age of
seventeen and joined the Confederacy, sought to have him released from
Fort McHenry, where he was in the hospital, a wounded prisoner.
She applied to Stanton, Secretary of War. He refused to listen to her,
saying, "I have no time to waste on you. If you have raised up a son
to rebel against the best Government under the sun, you and he must
take the consequences."
She attempted to plead with him, but he very peremptorily ordered her
to go, saying that he could do nothing for her.
Friends asked her to go to see Lincoln, but, sharing in the Southern
prejudice or misunderstanding of the President, she refused in
despair, believing him to be more fierce than Stanton. But she was at
last persuaded to try.
With fear and trembling she came into his presence, and in the
greatest joy any woman can have she came away.
"When I was permitted to go in to see him," she said, in describing
the scene, "he was alone. He immediately arose, with the most
reassuring respect, and, pointing to a chair by his side, said, 'Take
this seat, Madam, and tell me what I can do for you.'"
She handed him, without speaking, a letter telling the truth about her
son. He read it thoughtfully.
"Do you believe he will honor his parole if I permit him to go with
you," he said, with great kindness in his voice.
"I am ready, Mr. President," she replied, "to peril my personal
liberty that he will keep his parole."
"You shall have your boy, my dear Madam," he said. "To take him from
the ranks of rebellion and give him to a loyal mother is the best
investment that can be made by this government."
He handed her an order to give to the commanding officer at Fort
McHenry.
"May God grant," he fervently added, "that your boy may prove a
blessing to you and an honor to his country."
Lincoln's interest in the lowly and their sacrifices for the Union has
become classic in his letter to a Boston mother. A copy of this letter
hangs on the wall in Brasenose College, Oxford University, England, as
a model of pure and exquisite diction, which has never been excelled.
"Dear Madam:
"I have been shown in the files of the War Department a
statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are
the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field
of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of
mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a
loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you
the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic
they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage
the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the
cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride
that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the
altar of freedom.
"Yours sincerely and respectfully,
A. LINCOLN."
IV. HUMANITY AND THE GREAT SCHOOL OF EXPERIENCE
Many people in estimating Lincoln's scholarship do not sufficiently
recognize how much an eager student of life can learn in such wide
experience as his among men. To say that he was uneducated or that he
was self-made are alike erroneous. He was truly entered in the school
of experience in which he chose the wisest interest as his teacher,
and from which he graduated as a martyred president, one of the wisest
masters of humanity.
It can hardly be said that Lincoln arrived slowly at a leadership of
men. He was only twenty-eight when he was regarded as one of the most
influential men in his State. The nation was then in the midst of the
religious belief that God intended slavery or he would not have made
men black. Even at that early period Lincoln, with the boldness of a
Martin Luther, declared that "the institution of slavery is founded
both on injustice and bad policy," though the great reformation was
not yet at hand.
It is said that "those in glass houses should not throw stones."
Society and government have yet so many sins and wrongs to answer for
that the people of slavery days can hardly be blamed for not seeing as
we see now. Mankind seems to be only well started on the way to
civilization. Now and then we are given a great far-seeing man and the
vision of righteousness is made a little clearer. We see a little
farther through him into the promised land of a better world.
To any one looking down upon the stormy United States of that period
it could be seen that probably no one ever entered the presidency, and
more probably never would, who seemed so destitute of influential
associates and political supporters. It was Lincoln alone and his
faith in the unseen faithful of his ancient Israel. He knew the
people. He knew they understood what the great crisis in their
country's history meant for their ideals of America. They wanted a
leader from among themselves, because they no longer trusted the
politicians in high places.
In 1862 John James Piatt wrote:
"Stern be the Pilot in the Dreadful hour
When a great nation, like a ship at sea,
With the wroth breakers whitening at her lea,
Feels her last shudder if the Helmsman cower;
A God-like manhood be his mighty dower!"
This seems to show that the patriotic men of the literary East were
not yet sure of him. In fact, it was not yet sure that there was any
man anywhere who could remain sane and true through the rampant
treason and raging strife.
A year later Frank Moore wrote:
"Stand like the rock that looks defiant
Far o'er the surging seas that lash its form!
Composed, determined, watchful, self-reliant,
Be master of thyself and rule the storm."
If the Americans who tried to destroy Washington could now appear
among us and see what we and the world think of him, they would hardly
attempt to justify what they said and did to ruin him. Many lived to
realize their error in defaming Lincoln and to appreciate their
pitiful malignity in spreading the gossip and slander about him. And
yet a few strove on to save some of their reputation for intelligence
or personal honor and honesty, until research and cumulative evidence
established the unassailable truth of his standing and character as
one of the noblest and greatest of Americans.
The lesson of personal justice and integrity is learned slowly where
freedom has long seemed to mean political license to distort and
defame party opponents. But election slanders die out as the people
emerge from party possession and mastery. After the election is over,
still increasing numbers become conscious that most of the evils told
of the opposition have either been lies or the distorted halftruths
that are more misleading to the honest-intentioned minds.
But, fortunately, one of Lincoln's great sayings has been proven true
even in the miscellaneous freedom of Americans. To an insignificant
interruption on an insignificant occasion, one of those famous sayings
popped up, as it were from the mass of thinking in Lincoln's mind,
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the
people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of
the time."
Lincoln's great passion for friendship in the midst of his prophetic
vision is shown in the last paragraph of his first inaugural address.
He said, "I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We
must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not
break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching
from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and
hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the
Union, when again touched as they surely will be, by the better angels
of our nature."
V. SIMPLE INTERESTS THAT NEVER GROW OLD
Lincoln's great sympathy for those who mourn is expressed in a letter
of condolence to a friend whose father had just died.
"Dear Fanny:
"In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all, and to the
young it comes with bittered agony because it takes them
unawares. The older have learned ever to expect it. You cannot
now realize that you will ever feel happier. Is this not so?
And yet, it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To
know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less
miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say,
and you need only to believe it to feel better at once. The
memory of your dear father, instead of an agony, will be a sad,
sweet feeling in your heart of a purer and holier sort than
you have known before.
"Your sincere friend,
A. LINCOLN."
His fatherly feeling toward childhood is shown in many stories of his
younger son Tad.
Little Tad had all the impetuosity of energetic childhood. His
father's example of kindness once led him into conflict with the White
House cook. Tad never saw a hungry-looking boy that he didn't invite
him in to have something to eat. This generosity was a light that
could not be hid under a bushel. The number of hungry boys increased
surprisingly. At last Peter, the cook, thought that Mrs. Lincoln must
be told. He accordingly refused entrance to a hungry bunch that Tad
brought in. Tad was very angry that his benevolence and his authority
should be thus disputed. He flew upstairs to see his mother, but she
was nowhere to be found. At this crisis he saw his father coming up
the yard with Secretary Seward. They were discussing some important
affairs of state, but that was insignificant in comparison with Tad's
grievance. He ran out to carry his complaint to the head of the
nation.
"Father," he cried, running up to the Executive in Chief of the United
States, "Peter won't let me feed these hungry boys. Two of them are
boys of soldiers. Isn't it our kitchen? I'm going to discharge Peter.
He doesn't obey orders."
Secretary Seward was very much amused.
The President turned to him as if much perplexed.
"Seward," he said, "advise with me. This case requires great
diplomacy."
Mr. Seward patted Tad on the head and said, "My boy, be careful that
you don't run the government into debt."
Then Lincoln took his little boy's hand in his, saying, "Tell Peter
that you really have to obey the Bible which tells you to feed the
hungry, and that he ought to be a better Christian."
Tad went to Peter with the astonishing news that his father didn't
believe the White House cook was a Christian.
The religious problem of "feeding the hungry" won quickly over the
economic problem of White House expenses. Childhood was not defeated
in its sympathies, and, like every other moral question, it was solved
in the spirit of social democracy.
Secretary Seward writes of this that in less than an hour they passed
back through the yard on their way to a Cabinet meeting and about a
dozen small boys were sitting on the kitchen steps having a state
dinner at the expense of the government.
VI. SOME INCIDENTS FROM THE GREAT YEARS
Little incidents of appreciative consideration marked all of Lincoln's
way.
One afternoon in Chicago, while many noted visitors were gathered
about him, a little boy entered the room, and, seeing Lincoln, took
off his cap, whirled it over his head and shouted, "Hurrah for
Lincoln!"
Mr. Lincoln gently made his way through the crowd, picked the little
boy up in his arms, held him out at arm's length, studied him a moment
seriously, and then shouted, in like enthusiasm, as he set the boy
down, "Hurrah for you!"
Honorable W. D. Kell tells an incident that occurred in asking Lincoln
to do something for Willie Bladen.
This boy had served a year on the gunboat Ottawa and had gone through
two important battles. Willie lived in the district of Congressman
Kell and he asked Kell to help him get a place in the Naval School.
The testimony of the gunners on the _Ottawa_ was that Willie had
carried powder to them in the midst of the hottest engagements with
all the coolness and bravery of any of the sailors, and Congressman
Kell's sympathy was thoroughly enlisted for the boy's ambition.
Lincoln was much interested in the case and at once wrote to the
Secretary of the Navy to appoint Willie Bladen to the school, if there
was yet a place for him.
The appointment was made and the boy was ordered to report in July.
But Congressman Kell found, on going back home, that Willie would not
be fourteen till September, and no one could be accepted in the Naval
School under fourteen.
Willie was terribly distressed.
"Never mind," said Mr. Kell, "I'll take you to see the President about
this and I am sure he will manage it some way."
A few days later, Congressman Kell, holding Willie Bladen by the hand,
walked in to where Lincoln sat, and introduced the boy.
Willie made a profound bow.
"Why, bless me," responded Lincoln, "is this the boy who did so
gallantly in those two great battles! I feel that I should bow to
him."
And, with that, Lincoln arose and made a bow to the little hero.
The President then made out papers directing that the boy be allowed
until September to report, then putting his hand on the boy's head, he
said, "Now, my boy, go home and play for the next two months. They may
be the last holidays you will ever get."
Lincoln's knowledge of the Bible is shown by many an incident.
In one of the darkest hours of the war a mass convention was called of
Union men to protest against the President's "imbecile policy in the
conduct of the war." It was also intended to start a boom for "Fremont
the Pathfinder" to succeed Lincoln to the Presidency. Instead of a
great mass convention of many thousands, only four hundred disgruntled
politicians were present.
When this news was brought to Lincoln, he reached for the Bible that
always lay on his desk, and, turning to the first book of Samuel, the
twenty-second chapter, read aloud, "And every one that was in
distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was
discontented gathered themselves unto him; and he became a Captain
over them: and there were with him about four hundred men."
The old saying, originating from the Bible, "To have friends you must
show yourself friendly," was always true in Lincoln's case. One of
these friends once said of Lincoln that "he had nothing, only
friends." His enemies did not know him or they would not have been
enemies.