to that which had grown up between the soldiers and their
Commander-in-chief. With the sympathy and love of the people to sustain
him, Lincoln had over them an almost unlimited influence. His capacity
for toil, his sublime patience, his wonderful endurance, his great mind
and heart, his out-reaching sympathies, his thoughtfulness for the needs
and requirements of all, had bound him to his fellow-citizens by an
attachment of genuine sentiment. His appellation throughout the country
had during the last year of the war become "Father Abraham." We may
recall in the thought of this relation to the people the record of
Washington. The first President has come into history as the "Father of
his Country," but for Washington this rôle of father is something of
historic development. During Washington's lifetime, or certainly at
least during the years of his responsibilities as General and as
President, there was no such general recognition of the leader and ruler
as the father of his country. He was dear to a small circle of
intimates; he was held in respectful regard by a larger number of those
with whom were carried on his responsibilities in the army, and later in
the nation's government. To many good Americans, however, Washington
represented for years an antagonistic principle of government. He was
regarded as an aristocrat and there were not a few political leaders,
with groups of voters behind them, who dreaded, and doubtless honestly
dreaded, that the influence of Washington might be utilised to build up
in this country some fresh form of the monarchy that had been
overthrown. The years of the Presidency had to be completed and the
bitter antagonisms of the seven years' fighting and of the issues of the
Constitution-building had to be outgrown, before the people were able to
recognise as a whole the perfect integrity of purpose and consistency of
action of their great leader, the first President. Even then when the
animosities and suspicions had died away, while the people were ready to
honour the high character and the accomplishments of Washington, the
feeling was one of reverence rather than of affection. This sentiment
gave rise later to the title of the "Father of his Country"; but there
was no such personal feeling towards Washington as warranted, at least
during his life, the term father of the people. Thirty years later, the
ruler of the nation is Andrew Jackson, a man who was, like Lincoln,
eminently a representative of the common people. His fellow-citizens
knew that Jackson understood their feelings and their methods and were
ready to have full confidence in Jackson's patriotism and honesty of
purpose. His nature lacked, however, the sweet sympathetic qualities
that characterised Lincoln; and while to a large body of his
fellow-citizens he commended himself for sturdiness, courage, and
devotion to the interests of the state, he was never able for himself to
overcome the feeling that a man who failed to agree with a Jackson
policy must be either a knave or a fool. He could not place himself in
the position from which the other fellow was thinking or acting. He
believed that it was his duty to maintain what he held to be the popular
cause against the "schemes of the aristocrats," the bugbear of that day.
He was a fighter from his youth up and his theory of government was that
of enforcing the control of the side for which he was the partisan. Such
a man could never be accepted as the father of the people.
Lincoln, coming from those whom he called the common people, feeling
with their feelings, sympathetic with their needs and ideals, was able
in the development of his powers to be accepted as the peer of the
largest intellects in the land. While knowing what was needed by the
poor whites of Kentucky, he could understand also the point of view of
Boston, New York, or Philadelphia. In place of emphasising antagonisms,
he held consistently that the highest interest of one section of the
country must be the real interest of the whole people, and that the
ruler of the nation had upon him the responsibility of so shaping the
national policy that all the people should recognise the government as
their government. It was this large understanding and width of sympathy
that made Lincoln in a sense which could be applied to no other ruler of
this country, the people's President, and no other ruler in the world
has ever been so sympathetically, so effectively in touch with all of
the fellow-citizens for whose welfare he made himself responsible. The
Latin writer, Aulus Gellius, uses for one of his heroes the term "a
classic character." These words seem to me fairly to apply to Abraham
Lincoln.
An appreciative Englishman, writing in the London _Nation_ at the time
of the Centennial commemoration, says of Lincoln:
The greatness of Lincoln was that of a common man raised to a high
dimension. The possibility, still more the existence, of such a man
is itself a justification of democracy. We do not say that so
independent, so natural, so complete a man cannot in older societies
come to wield so large a power over the affairs and the minds of
men; we can only say that amid all the stirring movements of the
nineteenth century he has not so done. The existence of what may be
called a widespread commonalty explains the rarity of personal
eminence in America. There has been and still remains a higher
general level of personality than in any European country, and the
degree of eminence is correspondingly reduced. It is just because
America has stood for opportunity that conspicuous individuals have
been comparatively rare. Strong personality, however, has not been
rare; it is the abundance of such personality that has built up
silently into the rising fabric of the American Commonwealth,
pioneers, roadmakers, traders, lawyers, soldiers, teachers, toiling
terribly over the material and moral foundation of the country, few
of whose names have emerged or survived. Lincoln was of this stock,
was reared among these rude energetic folk, had lived all those
sorts of lives. He was no "sport"; his career is a triumphant
refutation of the traditional views of genius. He had no special
gift or quality to distinguish him; he was simply the best type of
American at a historic juncture when the national safety wanted such
a man. The confidence which all Americans express that their country
will be equal to any emergency which may threaten it, is not so
entirely superstitious as it seems at first sight. For the career of
Lincoln shows how it has been done in a country where the "necessary
man" can be drawn not from a few leading families, or an educated
class, but from the millions.
Rabbi Schechter, in an eloquent address delivered at the Centennial
celebration, speaks of Lincoln's personality as follows:
The half century that has elapsed since Lincoln's death has
dispelled the mists that encompassed him on earth. Men now not only
recognise the right which he championed, but behold in him the
standard of righteousness, of liberty, of conciliation, and truth.
In him, as it were personified, stands the Union, all that is best
and noblest and enduring in its principles in which he devoutly
believed and served mightily to save. When to-day, the world
celebrates the century of his existence, he has become the ideal of
both North and South, of a common country, composed not only of the
factions that once confronted each other in war's dreadful array,
but of the myriad thousands that have since found in the American
nation the hope of the future and the refuge from age-entrenched
wrong and absolutism. To them, Lincoln, his life, his history, his
character, his entire personality, with all its wondrous charm and
grace, its sobriety, patience, self-abnegation, and sweetness, has
come to be the very prototype of a rising humanity.
Carl Schurz, himself a man of large nature and wide and sympathetic
comprehension, says of Lincoln:
In the most conspicuous position of the period, Lincoln drew upon
himself the scoffs of polite society; but even then he filled the
souls of mankind with utterances of wonderful beauty and grandeur.
It was distinctly the weird mixture in him of qualities and forces,
of the lofty with the common, the ideal with the uncouth, of that
which he had become with that which he had not ceased to be, that
made him so fascinating a character among his fellow-men, that gave
him his singular power over minds and hearts, that fitted him to be
the greatest leader in the greatest crisis of our national life.
He possessed the courage to stand alone--that courage which is the
first requisite of leadership in a great cause. The charm of
Lincoln's oratory flooded all the rare depth and genuineness of his
convictions and his sympathetic feelings were the strongest element
in his nature. He was one of the greatest Americans and the best of
men.
The poet Whittier writes:
The weary form that rested not
Save in a martyr's grave;
The care-worn face that none forgot,
Turned to the kneeling slave.
We rest in peace where his sad eyes
Saw peril, strife, and pain;
His was the awful sacrifice,
And ours the priceless gain.
Says Bryant:
That task is done, the bound are free,
We bear thee to an honoured grave,
Whose noblest monument shall be
The broken fetters of the slave.
Pure was thy life; its bloody close
Hath blessed thee with the sons of light,
Among the noble host of those
Who perished in the cause of right.
Says Lowell:
Our children shall behold his fame,
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame;
New birth of our new soil, the first American.
Ordinary men die when their physical life is brought to a close, if
perhaps not at once, yet in a brief space, with the passing of the
little circle of those to whom they were dear.
The man of distinction lives for a time after death. His achievements
and his character are held in appreciative remembrance by the community
and the generation he has served. The waves of his influence ripple out
in a somewhat wider circle before being lost in the ocean of time. We
call that man great to whom it is given so to impress himself upon his
fellow-men by deed, by creation, by service to the community, by
character, by the inspiration from on high that has been breathed
through his soul, that he is not permitted to die. Such a man secures
immortality in this world. The knowledge and the influence of his life
are extended throughout mankind and his memory gathers increasing fame
from generation to generation.
It is thus that men are to-day honouring the memory of Abraham Lincoln.
To-day, one hundred years after his birth, and nearly half a century
since the dramatic close of his life's work, Lincoln stands enshrined in
the thought and in the hearts of his countrymen. He is our "Father
Abraham," belonging to us, his fellow-citizens, for ideals, for
inspiration, and for affectionate regard; but he belongs now also to all
mankind, for he has been canonised among the noblest of the world's
heroes.
APPENDIX
THE ADDRESS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Delivered at Cooper Institute, New York,
February 27, 1860.
With Introduction by Charles C. Nott; Historical and Analytical Notes by
Charles C. Nott and Cephas Brainerd, and with the Correspondence between
Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Nott as Representative of the Committee of the Young
Men's Republican Union.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The address delivered by Lincoln at the Cooper Institute in February,
1860 in response to the invitation of certain representative New
Yorkers, was, as well in its character as in its results, the most
important of all of his utterances.
The conscientious study of the historical and constitutional record, and
the arguments and conclusions based upon the analysis of this record,
were accepted by the Republican leaders as constituting the principles
and the policy to be maintained during the Presidential campaign of
1860, a campaign in which was involved not merely the election of a
President, but the continued existence of the republic.
Under the wise counsels represented by the words of Lincoln, the
election was fought out substantially on two contentions:
First, that the compact entered into by the Fathers and by their
immediate successors should be loyally carried out, and that slavery
should not be interfered with in the original slave States, or in the
additional territory that had been conceded to it under the Missouri
Compromise; and, secondly, that not a single further square mile of
soil, that was still free, should be left available, or should be made
available, for the incursion of slavery.
It was the conviction of Lincoln and of his associates, as it had been
the conviction of the Fathers, that under such a restriction slavery
must certainly in the near future come to an end. It was because these
convictions, both in the debates with Douglas and in the Cooper
Institute speech, were presented by Lincoln more forcibly and more
conclusively than had been done by any other political leader, that
Lincoln secured the nomination and the presidency. The February address
was assuredly a deciding factor in the great issue of the time, and it
certainly belongs, therefore, with the historic documents of the
republic.
G.H.P.
NEW YORK, September 1, 1909.
CORRESPONDENCE WITH LINCOLN, NOTT, AND BRAINERD
(_From Robert Lincoln_)
MANCHESTER, VERMONT,
July 27, 1909.
DEAR MAJOR PUTNAM:
Your letter of July 23rd reaches me here, and I beg to express my
thanks for your kind remembrances of me in London.... I am much
interested in learning that you were present at the time my father
made his speech at Cooper Institute. I, of course, remember the
occasion very well, although I was not present. I was at that time
in the middle of my year at Phillips Exeter Academy, preparing for
the Harvard entrance examination of the summer of 1860.... After the
Cooper Institute address, my father came to Exeter to see how I was
getting along, and this visit resulted in his making a number of
speeches in New England on his way and on his return, and at Exeter
he wrote to my mother a letter which was mainly concerned with me,
but which did make reference to these speeches.... He said that he
had had some embarrassment with these New England speeches, because
in coming East he had anticipated making no speech excepting the
one at the Cooper Institute, and he had not prepared himself for
anything else.... In the later speeches, he was addressing reading
audiences who had, as he thought probable, seen the report of his
Cooper Institute speech, and he was obliged, therefore, from day to
day (he made about a dozen speeches in New England in all) to bear
that fact in mind.
Sincerely yours,
ROBERT LINCOLN.
(_From Judge Nott_)
WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS.,
July 26, 1909.
DEAR PUTNAM:
I consider it very desirable that the report of Mr. Lincoln's
speech, embodying the final revision, should be preserved in book
form.... The text in the pamphlet now in your hands is authentic and
conclusive. Mr. Lincoln read the proof both of the address and of
the notes. I am glad that you are to include in your reprint the
letters from Mr. Lincoln, as these letters authenticate this copy of
the address as the copy which was corrected by him with his own
hand....
The preface to the address, written in September, 1860, has interest
because it shows what we thought of the address at that time....
Your worthy father was, if I remember rightly, one of the
vice-presidents of the meeting....
Yours faithfully,
CHARLES C. NOTT.
_(From Cephas Brainerd)_
NEW YORK, August 18, 1909.
DEAR MAJOR PUTNAM:
I am very glad to learn that there is good prospect that the real
Lincoln Cooper Institute address, with the evidence in regard to it,
will now be available for the public.... I am glad also that with
the address you are proposing to print the letters received by Judge
Nott from Mr. Lincoln. One or two of these have, unfortunately, not
been preserved. I recall in one an observation made by Lincoln to
the effect that he "was not much of a literary man."
I did not see much of Mr. Lincoln when he was in New York, as my
most active responsibility in regard to the meeting was in getting
up an audience.... I remember in handing some weeks earlier to John
Sherman, who, like Lincoln, had never before spoken in New York,
five ten-dollar gold pieces, that he said he "had not expected his
expenses to be paid." At a lunch that was given to Sherman a long
time afterward, I referred to that meeting. Sherman cocked his eye
at me and said: "Yes, I remember it very well; I never was so scar't
in all my life." ...
The observations of Judge Nott in regard to the meeting are about
as just as anything that has ever been put into print, and as I
concur fully in the accuracy of these recollections, I do not
undertake to give my own impressions at any length. I was expecting
to hear some specimen of Western stump-speaking as it was then
understood. You will, of course, observe that the speech contains
nothing of the kind. I do remember, however, that Lincoln spoke of
the condition of feeling between the North and the South.... He
refers to the treatment which Northern men received in the South,
and he remarked, parenthetically, that he had never known of a man
who had been able "to whip his wife into loving him," an observation
that produced laughter.
In making up the notes, we ransacked, as you may be sure, all the
material available in the libraries in New York, and I also had
interviews as to one special point with Mr. Bancroft, with Mr.
Hildreth, and with Dr. William Goodell, who was in those times a
famous anti-slavery man.
Your father[3] and William Curtis Noyes were possibly more
completely in sympathy than any other two men in New York, with the
efforts of these younger men; they impressed me as standing in that
respect on the same plane. The next man to them was Charles Wyllis
Elliott, the author of a _History of New England_. We never went to
your father for advice or assistance when he failed to help us, and
he was always so kindly and gentle in what he did and said that
every one of us youngsters acquired for him a very great affection.
He always had time to see us and was always on hand when he was
wanted, and if we desired to have anything, we got it if he had it.
Neither your father, nor Mr. Noyes, nor for that matter Mr. Elliott,
ever suggested that we were "young" or "fresh" or anything of that
sort. The enthusiasm which young fellows have was always recognised
by these men as an exceedingly valuable asset in the cause....
Pardon all this from a "veteran," and believe me,
Sincerely yours,
CEPHAS BRAINERD.
INTRODUCTION
BY CHARLES C. NOTT
The Cooper Institute address is one of the most important addresses ever
delivered in the life of this nation, for at an eventful time it changed
the course of history. When Mr. Lincoln rose to speak on the evening of
February 27, 1860, he had held no administrative office; he had
endeavoured to be appointed Commissioner of Patents, and had failed; he
had sought to be elected United States Senator, and had been defeated;
he had been a member of Congress, yet it was not even remembered; he was
a lawyer in humble circumstances, persuasive of juries, but had not
reached the front rank of the Illinois Bar. The record which Mr. Lincoln
himself placed in the Congressional Directory in 1847 might still be
taken as the record of his public and official life: "Born February
12th, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. Education defective. Profession
a lawyer. Have been a captain of volunteers in the Black Hawk War.
Postmaster in a very small office. Four times a member of the Illinois
Legislature and a member of the lower house of Congress." Was this the
record of a man who should be made the head of a nation in troubled
times? In the estimation of thoughtful Americans east of the Alleghanies
all that they knew of Mr. Lincoln justified them in regarding him as
only "a Western stump orator"--successful, distinguished, but nothing
higher than that--a Western stump orator, who had dared to brave one of
the strongest men in the Western States, and who had done so with
wonderful ability and moral success. When Mr. Lincoln closed his address
he had risen to the rank of statesman, and had stamped himself a
statesman peculiarly fitted for the exigency of the hour.
Mr. William Cullen Bryant presided at the meeting; and a number of the
first and ablest citizens of New York were present, among them Horace
Greeley. Mr. Greeley was pronounced in his appreciation of the address;
it was the ablest, the greatest, the wisest speech that had yet been
made; it would reassure the conservative Northerner; it was just what
was wanted to conciliate the excited Southerner; it was conclusive in
its argument, and would assure the overthrow of Douglas. Mr. Horace
White has recently written: "I chanced to open the other day his Cooper
Institute speech. This is one of the few printed speeches that I did not
hear him deliver in person. As I read the concluding pages of that
speech, the conflict of opinion that preceded the conflict of arms then
sweeping upon the country like an approaching solar eclipse seemed
prefigured like a chapter of the Book of Fate. Here again he was the
Old Testament prophet, before whom Horace Greeley bowed his head, saying
that he had never listened to a greater speech, although he had heard
several of Webster's best." Later, Mr. Greeley became the leader of the
Republican forces opposed to the nomination of Mr. Seward and was
instrumental in concentrating those forces upon Mr. Lincoln.
Furthermore, the great New York press on the following morning carried
the address to the country, and before Mr. Lincoln left New York he was
telegraphed from Connecticut to come and aid in the campaign of the
approaching spring election. He went, and when the fateful moment came
in the Convention, Connecticut was one of the Eastern States which first
broke away from the Seward column and went over to Mr. Lincoln. When
Connecticut did this, the die was cast.
It is difficult for younger generations of Americans to believe that
three months before Mr. Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency he was
neither appreciated nor known in New York. That fact can be better
established by a single incident than by the opinions and assurances of
a dozen men.
After the address had been delivered, Mr. Lincoln was taken by two
members of the Young Men's Central Republican Union--Mr. Hiram Barney,
afterward Collector of the Port of New York, and Mr. Nott, one of the
subsequent editors of the address--to their club, The Athenæum, where
a very simple supper was ordered, and five or six Republican members of
the club who chanced to be in the building were invited in. The supper
was informal--as informal as anything could be; the conversation was
easy and familiar; the prospects of the Republican party in the coming
struggle were talked over, and so little was it supposed by the
gentlemen who had not heard the address that Mr. Lincoln could possibly
be the candidate that one of them, Mr. Charles W. Elliott, asked,
artlessly: "Mr. Lincoln, what candidate do you really think would be
most likely to carry Illinois?" Mr. Lincoln answered by illustration:
"Illinois is a peculiar State, in three parts. In northern Illinois, Mr.
Seward would have a larger majority than I could get. In middle
Illinois, I think I could call out a larger vote than Mr. Seward. In
southern Illinois, it would make no difference who was the candidate."
This answer was taken to be merely illustrative by everybody except,
perhaps, Mr. Barney and Mr. Nott, each of whom, it subsequently
appeared, had particularly noted Mr. Lincoln's reply.