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 had not perished: but acclamations of praise for the task he had
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 quite native, aboriginal man, as an
acorn from the oak; no aping of foreigners, no frivolous accomplishments,
Kentuckian born, working on a farm, a flatboatman, 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.[174]
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.[175] 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
eberywhere.”
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 he—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 practical 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.[176] 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.[177] 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.[178]