PART IV. STUDIES

HIS SYMMETRY--THE PROBLEM OF BEAUTY

In Lincoln's character is a beautiful illustration of moral balance.

He stands before the eye unchangeably, like the Capitol dome at

Washington, a signal exhibition of firmness, harmony, and repose. As

he fills his place as president, he seems to face the whole horizon at

once. A study of his life leaves the impression that he is resting

upon a solid, ample base; that his weight is well distributed; that

his energies are united evenly; that all his parts agree together;

that throughout his structure he is at ease; while yet there swell and

rise within his breast proud, far-seeing hopes that only a Nation's

grandest magnitude could give complete embodiment. This massive poise,

and breadth, and balanced evenness are the seemly vesture of his

character. They well become his inner attitude. They are the open

intimation of the shapeliness and majesty of the unseen soul within.

And quite as worthy of study and admiration as our national dome, is

this well-poised nobility of Lincoln's personality.

With this intent one may well review this last inaugural, for it

enshrines superior beauty. Not unfittingly did it find first utterance

beneath the presence of that imposing masterpiece at our national

Capitol. As in that circling colonnade, so in the measured cadences of

this address, there is exalted harmony. Its phrases, rhythmic and

pleasurable, rank almost as music. Read however many times, its

sentences never tire. Minds the most refined are glad to point to

this address as to a noble monument, assured that its perusal will

awaken in any American high national pride, and in the minds of all

men a pure delight.

This commanding, gracious dignity is not alone a matter of even

rhythms and pleasing cadences. It is to its author's moral poise and

full harmony that this speech owes its symmetry. Indeed this is all

its substance. Of rhetorical decoration it is absolutely bare. Its

only title to its universal admiration is the patent fact that its

author has traced and set therein, as with an engraver's nicest art,

the princely fashion of his high-born soul. Its finished ethical

symmetry is all the art that gives this speech its everlasting charm.

What now is the inmost nature of the attractiveness that holds

possession of this last inaugural? In this inquiry is extended a

winsome invitation to any beauty-loving mind. As such a mind fixes its

inspection intently upon the vital structure of this address, he sees

within its shapely borders four princely virtues, standing together in

a courtly league. Each virtue stands mature in unrestrained virility,

no one of them overbearing the other three, nor being overborne. With

easy, manly grace each virtue does its part, while all harmoniously

combine, to support with Godlike sagacity and strength the problems of

a Nation's destiny in days and tasks that mock the sagest counsel and

baffle the proudest might of man.

Like stately columns beneath a stately dome, these virtues deserve

regard. Each one is integral in Lincoln's personal majesty, and in the

finely finished power of this address. The exhibition of personal

self-respect, the very eye of moral verity, as displayed in Lincoln's

own reliability, and idealized within his steadfast plan for national

consistency, is fashioned forth within the well-set features of this

address with all the well-poised grandeur of the Olympian Zeus. The

tones of kindliest friendliness towards detractors and defenders

alike, repelling all malignity, unfailingly benign, cannot in any

cadence be misunderstood. They fall like healing music, reminding

listeners of home, and hearthstone, and a father's heart. The lowly

attitude of penitent submissiveness towards God, with its wonderful

mingling of solemn awe, adoring worship, and conscious fellowship,

undeniably without hypocrisy, as without restraint, institutes in this

address nothing less than the model and inspiration of a reverent,

religious liturgy, fit to lead and voice a Nation's humble penitence

and praise. The kindled and enkindling zeal for the transcendent worth

of men above all other wealth, the burning hearth from whose free

flame springs up every passion glowing through this speech, is like

the fervent ardor of a prophet's heart, watching with a patient, eager

wistfulness towards the dawning of a day that shall never pass away.

These are signal qualities in this address, each one erect and free,

its signal beauty and virility undiminished and complete. But to be

noticed here is, not their individual comeliness, but the beauty of

their companionship. They consort together perfectly. And in that

unison is a peculiar, an individual attractiveness. Here is a symmetry

that pleads for appreciation. It is the beauty of this unison

throughout this speech that constitutes its eloquence. See how

Lincoln's very confession of error puts him in line with God. Feel how

his righteousness affiliates with tenderness. Mark how his heed for

earthly things provides a body for his idealism. Within the unyielding

rigor of his resolute will see how bending and genial is his attitude.

Here is marvelous symphony--sin and error and war, light and truth and

peace, so comprised and combined, so resolved and reconciled in this

speaker and in this address, as to show a Nation how in the discord of

arms heaven's own harmonies may be heard. To this fine blending of

tones that are distinct, to this pure consonance of notes that are

diverse, it were well for all our ears to become accustomed. This

would mean a true and real refinement. To this refinement Lincoln did

achieve. With this deep consonance his ear became familiar. Hence the

deep-toned fulness and carrying power in the moral resonance of this

address. It faces a manifold emergency with sentiments likewise

manifold, but so composed together as to lead all discordant voices

into lasting peace.

This moral equilibrium carried within it generous breadth. This is a

striking aspect of this inaugural. It comprehends and resolves

together, with an ease that seems an instinct, the total orbit of our

national life. Within its little compass is the easy movement of the

full momentum of our past. It holds in easy grasp the full

circumference of concurrent events. It evinces, though with amazing

brevity, that the ponderous issues of the coming day are a familiar

topic in his brooding thought. And all of this consists together

within his thought with even, equal recognition. Events are made to

balance. Causes and effects are so held face to face as to declare by

demonstration their true comparison. Great issues and mighty forces

are given their needed amplitude in his observation and review. The

weight of centuries is in his ponderings. This was the style and

attitude of his mental deliberations. He was predisposed to cast and

arrange his thoughts in national dimensions. Union, liberty, manhood,

Providence, were the themes to which his soul was drawn, as though by

gravity.

Thus Lincoln's influence attained solidity. The place of this

inaugural, and of its author's honor, in our American life, and in

the larger world of worthy civics is well-secured. The qualities

embodied in this address, each one so elemental, and all so eternally

allied, are more enduring, as they stand poised within those balanced

paragraphs, than any qualities resident in marble or bronze. The

proposition that the hostile interests of a mighty Nation be

reconciled into eternal friendliness and constancy under the awful

discipline of God through sacrificial baptisms of blood, contains

within its balanced and majestic terms an interior cohesion and

stability that nothing can ever disintegrate or move. It is without a

bias anywhere. Through all its massiveness the weight is even

absolutely. And its moral proportions are in perfect truth. It is a

monument of finished majesty, solidity, and grace. It is a masterpiece

of moral symmetry.

This massive grandeur in Lincoln's moral character finds an exalted

illustration in the closing half of his message to Congress in

December of 1862. It forms in itself a document that may well be held

before the eye as a companion piece to his last inaugural. He is

making an elaborate argument for "compensated emancipation." He is

laboring to make clear that the issues pending in the center of the

war are no concern of mere geography, but rather a problem hanging

upon the free decisions of living citizens; and that in the interest

of universal liberty a full agreement by Congress and the chief

executive to tax the Nation peaceably, to remunerate all loss entailed

by freeing every slave, would surely win the requisite electoral

support, stay the war at once, establish lasting peace, and give

demonstration of a civic character and courage fit to brighten and

enhearten all the world. He closes his appeal with these following

words:--

"Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and

this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No

personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of

us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor

or in dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union.

The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the

Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We--even we

here--hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to

the slave, we assure freedom to the free--honorable alike in what we

give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the

last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not

fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just--a way which, if

followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."

There is in that message a document that has the scope and the

grandeur of the Alps. It offers an imposing illustration how politics,

so prone to become and to remain ignoble, may come to have surpassing

beauty; how statesmanship, vested in a worthy character, may wear

transcendent dignity. This appeal, as shaped by Lincoln, is a monument

fashioned by a master hand. Note its basis in equity, all the Nation

in common accepting their money cost of a common complicity in wrong.

Note its inscription to human goodwill, curtailing the period, and

staying the bloodshed of the war. Note its enduring substance and

composition, built up of human hearts, cemented in the action of

freedom in the human soul, a towering protest against all gains and

consequences where human liberty is denied. Note the humble reverence

in the soaring appeal to the benediction of God, with which the whole

address concludes. Note the conscience-stirring reference to

inevitable and over-ruling law, in the ominous intimation that the

light of history would luminously adjudge each several man. And note,

with all the imperial urgency of the appeal, its vesture of infinite

respect for the right of every congressman to make a free decision of

and by and for himself alone.

Here is something at once most imposing and most engaging. Here is

handicraft of the highest grade. The man that conceived and drafted

that political appeal was, in the realm of politics, no mean

architect. He is, in these arguments, measuring the forces elemental

in a great Republic, as Michael Angelo measured gravitation. He is

dealing with decades, and with centuries, with freedom and with

slaves, with a transient Congress and the course of history, as

builders deal with granite blocks. Embracing things dispersed and

widely variant, as also things mutually inclined towards fellowship,

he defines and demonstrates, as a master artisan, how they may all be

grasped and overcome and harmonized in a commanding unison. With a

skilled designer's easy grace he drafts a sketch of our transformed

career, as plain and open to the observing eye as are the massive,

graceful movements of deploying clouds across the sky. Here is

majesty, lofty, balanced, and secure. And all its excellence is

ethical. And it pleads to be made supreme in earthly politics. In such

a message is ideal courtliness. Its bearer must be a comely prince.

The man and author upon whose polished tongue those sentiments found

birth must be of royal lineage.

Thus Lincoln has given to civics ideal comeliness and dignity. In his

hand, and under his design, politics wears heavenly majesty. In his

conception of a State, though devised and traced in times when cruelty

and sordidness and unfairness and negligence of God were sadly

prevalent through the Nation's life, there rose to view, in his pure

patriotism, a civic standard in which, through holy fear of God, all

men were rated at their immortal worth, and treated with the love and

fairness that were the mutual due of freemen who were peers. Here is a

portrait of a patriot upon which no artist can easily improve--a

portrait which attests in Lincoln's soul a pure and a free idea of

what true art must ever be.

And it is not without profound significance for art that Lincoln's

statesmanship has become one of the finest objects in our modern world

for artists to idealize. The very features of his face, that were wont

to be esteemed most plain, have come to show a symmetry that is

beautiful. And his whole outward frame, that men so many times have

called ungainly, has come to bear and body forth a dignity such as

summons finest bronze and marble to their most exalted ministry.

Whence came to that plain face and plainer frame such symmetry and

dignity? Let artists contemplate and reply. For in Lincoln's manhood

stature, where utmost rudeness has become transmuted to refinement,

all men are taught that true beauty and true art are ethical. In moral

harmony is found ideal symmetry.

HIS COMPOSURE--THE PROBLEM OF PESSIMISM

In the foregoing pages reference has been made repeatedly to Lincoln's

poise. In the chapter just concluded this poise has been studied for

its beauty. This attitude will repay still further scrutiny. For

looked at again, and from another point of view, it reveals itself as

a reservoir of energy. Seen thus, Lincoln's notable poise becomes a

mighty store of potential, and indeed of active force. It may be

described as a mingling of energy and repose, of resourcefulness and

rest, showing and playing through all his influence among other men,

and largely explaining its potency.

Of just this personal habitude, through all the years of Lincoln's

participation in our national affairs, there was strenuous need and

requisition. His public course ran through an era in our national

career of unprecedented internal turbulence. The house was divided

against itself. The cause of the dissension was a diametrical

opposition and an irreconcilable contention of views touching a matter

so radical as the basis of our Declaration of Independence, and the

purport of our fundamental national document, the Constitution. To the

men on either side of this contention it seemed as though their

antagonists were bent upon uprooting and removing the very hills. This

obstinate and inveterate disagreement revolved about the single,

simple, fateful question of the right and wrong of holding men in

bonds. For a full generation before Lincoln entered the lists the

conflict had been bitterly intense, refusing to be composed or

assuaged. Near the beginning of the last decade of Lincoln's life he

put on his armor and chose his side. In 1858, while competing with

Douglas for a seat in the U. S. Senate, Lincoln made a declaration

that, for its bearing upon his own career and its influence in

national affairs, has become historic; while for its testimony to the

topic of this chapter it has the very first significance. The core of

that declaration was a quotation from words of Christ, when refuting

the charge that he was in league with Beelzebub:--"A house divided

against itself cannot stand." This quotation was cited by Lincoln to

edge his affirmation that the national agitation concerning slavery,

then in full course, and continually augmenting, would not cease until

a crisis should be reached and passed. This was his firm assurance. A

national crisis was at hand. But to this assurance, that the

government could not endure permanently half slave and half free, he

attested another confidence equally assured:--"I do not expect the

Union to be dissolved--I do not expect the house to fall--but I do

expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or

all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further

spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the

belief that is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates

will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the

States, old as well as new, North as well as South."

That was said with resolute and imposing deliberation in July of 1858.

In that utterance Lincoln's attitude deserves analysis, and for many

reasons; but in particular for its revelation of his composure. He

knew full well what tremendous issues for himself and for the Nation

were involved in what he said. He knew that his appeal for the

senatorship at Washington was thereby gravely imperiled. He knew that

it foreboded national convulsions and throes. He knew that for himself

and for the government a mighty crisis was ahead. And he knew that in

that crisis the alternatives were for all humanity supreme. The issues

were nothing less than human freedom and equality, or human tyranny

and bonds. In the stress and strain of an age-long strife like this,

many a man has swerved to moral pessimism.

From the date of that speech Lincoln stood in the face of that

vicissitude. Indeed for his few remaining years he was, in all that

deepening commotion, an energetic and influential central force. And

he never yielded to despair. In this same month he issued to Senator

Douglas his doughty challenge to a series of debates. During those

debates Lincoln forged his way into a preeminence that amounted almost

to solitude, as champion of a people and a cause that, for weary

generations, had been under all but hopeless oppression and reproach.

Through all those debates Lincoln's single heart was nothing less

than a national theater of a solicitude nothing less than national.

Upon his lone shoulders lay the gravest burdens of his day. The ideals

of a Nation lay upon his anvil; the national temper was being forged

beneath his hand. Highest chivalry waged against him, bearing tempered

steel, and jealous of an old and proud prestige.

In the immediate outcome of those debates Lincoln met defeat. But

farther on he only found himself involved more deeply still in the

anguish of the crisis he had foretold. The national disagreement was

verging towards the Nation's dissolution, heightening at length into

secession and actual, long-drawn civil war. So tremendous was the

crisis Lincoln foresaw. And this was precipitated directly by his

election to the presidency. So vitally were his own fortune and fate

bound up in the crisis he foretold. So pitiless and fundamental was

the challenge to his hope. His total administration was spent in the

tumult of arms. By no possibility in any Nation's conscious life could

civil confusion be worse confounded than during the period of his

presidential terms. Beginning with seven states in open secession, and

brought to an end by assassination, the measure of his supreme

official life was full to either brim with perils and sorrows and

fears, such as any single human heart could hardly contain. But the

undiminished, overwhelming volume of those fears and sorrows and cares

was encompassed every day within his anxious, ample, patriot heart.

When facing in August of 1864 the national election, upon which this

last inaugural oath was based, he said:--"I cannot fly from my

thoughts--my solicitude for this great country follows me wherever I

go. I do not think it is personal vanity or ambition, though I am not

free from these infirmities; but I cannot but feel that the weal or

woe of this great Nation will be decided in November." So momentous

and grave seemed to him the meaning and weight of the contention that

drove the Nation into war. In this estimate, as said before, he stood

almost in solitude. "Our best and greatest men," he said in New Haven

in 1860, "have greatly underestimated the size of this question. They

have constantly brought forward small cures for great sores--plasters

too small to cover the wound." To Lincoln's credit it must forever be

said that he had a true prevision of the agony through which the

Nation must strive, as she reached and passed the crisis which he saw

in 1858 to be her predestined and impending fate.

And so it came to pass that in 1861, when Fort Sumter was assailed,

and the sharp imperious alternative of immediate dissolution or blood

faced the Nation's eye, he was not surprised or unprepared; as

likewise, when in 1865 at his second inaugural scene, after four full

years of awful war, he is still found waiting in sacrificial patience

to hail the culmination of his assured interpretation and hope. Here

in 1865 as there in 1858, there in 1858 as here in 1865, he is

cherishing the patriot-prophet's confidence that the crisis would be

passed, that the Nation would not be dissolved, that the house would

stand.

And to Lincoln's singular honor it must always be allowed that through

all the terrible hours while that crisis was being passed, it was

pre-eminently due to Lincoln's mighty moral optimism that our Union

was preserved. Amid all the turbulence of armies and arms, his

assurance of our national perpetuity was so deeply, firmly based, as

to be itself invested and informed with perpetuity. So commanding was

his posture of heroic, triumphant confidence, that it mightily availed

to guide and steady the Nation through the crisis into an era of

internal and international peace.

But not merely did Lincoln's composure prevail to secure that this

Nation should not dissolve. It also wrought prevailingly to perpetuate

our liberty. Throughout the crisis the issue held in stake was whether

the Nation should be wholly slave or wholly free. Those were the

alternatives between which Lincoln's care and fear, and the Nation's

fortune and fate were hung. Throughout the crisis Lincoln's hope was

that the Nation should be forever wholly free. His fear was that the

Nation might be wholly slave. But above that fear, that hope

steadfastly prevailed. One who studies Lincoln through those days

comes to feel unerringly that deep beneath an anxiety that seemed at

times almost to overwhelm his life, there lay a supreme assurance

that, when the crisis should have passed, it should stand clear beyond

debate, and sure beyond all doubt, that here in this favored land the

chance of all the sons of men should be forever equal, fair, and free.

Astutely heedful of the power of selfish, sordid greed; deeply

conscious of the blind defiance of scorn and pride; painfully aware of

the awful capacity of a human heart for cruelty and hate; and sharp to

see how reason yields to prejudice, when chivalry becomes a

counterfeit; he still found grounds to hold his anchored hope for

universal liberty and brotherhood.

This deep-based confidence deserves to be well understood. It is a

primary phenomenon in Lincoln's life. How in the deepest welter of

violence and strife could Lincoln's mood retain such level evenness?

How in all that continental turbulence could he keep so unperturbed?

How, through all that confusion was he never confused? In truth his

days were mostly dark and sad. Sorrows did overwhelm him. How did his

anchorage hold unchanged? When the very hills gave way, his

foundations seemed to stay. The assurance to which his soul was

attached seemed all but omnipotent. What was the secret, what the

ground of such phenomenal steadiness?

To answer these inquiries is but to rehearse again what has already

been repeatedly made plain. This massive sturdiness of Lincoln's

statesmanship, this unalterable political reliability lay inwrought in

the hardy fiber of his moral character.

One factor here may be termed intellectual. Lincoln's study made him

steady. His untiring thoughtfulness secured to Lincoln's soul a fine

deposit of pure assurance. It was with him a jealous and guarded

custom to make examinations exhaustive. He was always seeking

certainty. Few men ever dealt more sparingly in conjecture. Always

eager towards the future, and often making statements touching things

to come, he was nevertheless a model of mental caution. It was this

passion to make his footing fully secure that kindled in him such zest

for history. It was this same passion that glowed in his eye, as he

inspected in common men their common humanity. And likewise it was

this that led him into the fear of God, and made him a student of the

Bible, and a man of prayer. The full capacity of his mind was taxed

unceasingly, in order to secure to his ripening judgments their

majestic equipoise.

But with saying this not enough is said to describe the grounds of his

composure. It was not merely that his mind, through thoughtful inquiry

and comparison, grew far-sighted, and balanced, and clear. What gained

for Lincoln his solid anchorage was his deep, strong hold upon all

that was inmost and permanent in the heart and nature of men. Every

inch a man himself, the one ambition of his mental research was to

make every responsible thought and deed conduce to guide every brother

man to the destiny which his nature decreed. This was the research

that made his eye so clear. This was the study that made his hope so

sure. Outcome of unsparing intellectual toil, this was the assurance

that won for Lincoln his unique and most honorable diploma and degree.

This was Lincoln's standing and this its warrant among all thoughtful

men, alike the learned and the unlettered. This was the secret of that

marvelous calmness, that was so potent to compose the fears of other

men. He studied man, until he attained a magisterial power to

understand and explain result and cause, issue and origin, amid

historic, surrounding, and impending events. In the field where

Lincoln stood and toiled he was an adept. He was a worthy master of

the humanities. He took a liberal course in the liberal arts. And out

of this broad course he constructed politics. He came to see

unerringly, and to believe unwaveringly, and to contend unwearyingly

that man, that all men should hold, in a universal equilibrium, their

regard for God, their self-respect, their brother love, and a true,

comparative esteem for things that perish and souls that survive. This

reasoned, hopeful faith, adopted with all his heart as the comely

pattern and well-set keystone of all his politics and statesmanship,

is what secured to Lincoln through all those tumultuous days his

far-commanding political equanimity. That all men were designed and

entitled by their Creator to be free, and that in this liberty, as in

the elemental right to life and self-earned happiness, all are

likewise created equal, Lincoln did devoutly, profoundly, and

invincibly believe. Confirmed by all his ranging observation and

incessant, pondering thought, this faith was also rooted beyond repeal

in his own deep reverence for God, in his own instinctive respect for

himself, in irrepressible friendliness, and in his unabashed

idealism.

Such a man could never be a pessimist. Such a faith in such a soul

could not be plucked away. Nor could its protestations be variable.

That each, as alike the handiwork of God, should alike be always fair,

and that all should always and alike be free, was the base of his

political philosophy, and the bond of his consistency. This was the

teaching of the past. This was the harbinger of the day to come. And

in this long-pondered wisdom and belief lay the explanation of his

underlying peacefulness through the war, and of his singular ability

to prevail above the fears of other men, when in other hearts every

hope gave way. He deeply saw that underneath all battlefields, and

within all antagonisms, these simple principles, so surely sovereign

and so certainly immortal, encompassed a breadth and strength

sufficient to circumvent and overcome all hate and doubt and fear,

doing to no freeman any vital harm, shielding from essential evil

every toil-bowed slave. This is the source and secret of Lincoln's

unexampled composure amid scenes of unexampled anxiety and unrest.

And this composure, being so inwrought with hope, was unfailingly

active and alert. It was never mere endurance, stolid and inert. It

enshrined a powerful momentum. It was alive with purpose, conscious,

vigorous, resolute. One of its fairest features was a seeing eye--an

eye transfixed upon a goal. Things as yet invisible, and still

unrealized, his earnest, unwearying eye prevailed to see. Hence his

optimism was astir with enterprise. Anticipation, quite as truly as

peacefulness, marked the constant attitude of his life. His composure

could be closely defined as confidence respecting things to come.

Always environed by difficulties, and all but blinded by their strife,

his faith struck through their turmoil, and his hope rose free and

strong into a jubilant salutation of man's undoubted destiny, and

into a victorious companionship with God's clear, certain will.

And so there throbbed in this habitual posture of Lincoln's heart a

mighty potency. His composure was prevailing. His deep and calm

security dissipated other men's dismay. Repeatedly beneath the

presence of his stately quietness the Nation felt its turbulence

subside. This efficiency can be felt at work in this last inaugural

address; and its action well deserves to be identified. In his

exposition of its theme, and in his registration of his presidential

pledge, he seems by one hand to have fast hold of things immutable,

while with the other hand he is helping to steady things that tremble

and change. Here is kingly mastery. Things mightily disturbed are

being mightily put to rest, as though from an immutable throne. The

open figure of that throne may well be scanned by all the Nation and

by all the world. It is built and stands foursquare. Its measure

conforms in every part with the measure of a man. It is shaped and set

to stand and abide where men consort, to unify their minds, and

tranquillize their strifes. With sobered and sobering insight into the

human soul, with resolute and expectant will before our human goal,

this address inscribes and upholds, as at once an outcome and an ideal

of human events, a universal amity compacted of loyal, friendly men

who walk in reverence before God, and cherish treasures that can never

fail. Purity, humility, charity, loyalty--these are the constituents

in the structure, and the explanation of the power of Lincoln's

composure. Fully illumined, firmly convinced, evenly at rest upon

principles that stand foursquare upon the balanced manhood of Godlike

men, his civic hopefulness stood in the midst of his practical

statesmanship, like an invincible, immovable throne.

HIS AUTHORITY--THE PROBLEM OF GOVERNMENT

The study in the preceding chapter of Lincoln's even-paced serenity,

culminating in the symbol of a throne, conducts directly to an

examination of his influence and mastery over other men. During those

troubled days in Washington, despite all the malice, defiance, and

active abuse which he daily bore, his power to persuade, conciliate,

and govern other men was, in all the land, without a parallel. In

fact, as well as in name, he was throughout those presidential days

the Nation's chief magistrate. And since his death that dominion has

increased, until it stands today above comparison. Here is an

opportunity, not easily matched, to explore a theme whose importance

in the field of ethics no other topic can surpass--the seat and nature

of moral authority. And here in this second inaugural is a transparent

illustration of the firm security in which that authority rests, and

of the method by which it prevails.

As in his own inner reverence for law, so in his sway of other men,

his posture towards the national Constitution demands attention first.

"The supreme law of the land"--thus the Constitution of the United

States, in its sixth article, defines itself. In its fifth article,

the same fundamental document provides that "Amendments," properly

made, "shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of this

Constitution." This primary authority for the rule of the land is

further affirmed to have been ordained and established by "the people

of the United States." Here are three noteworthy features of this "law

of the land:"--it is supreme; it is amendable; it arises from the

people.

This written standard of our national life, its amendability, and its

primal origin in the people's will, were matters much in Lincoln's

eye. Each separate one of these three features of our national civic

life had reverent respect in Lincoln's mind, in all his conception and

exercise of authority over other men. It was this "supreme law" that

he swore in both inaugurations to "preserve, protect, and defend." An

amendment to the Constitution, that was pending at the time of his

first inaugural oath, he took unusual pains in that address to mention

and approve. And it was to "the people," on both occasions of his

inauguration as president, and at all other times of public and

responsible address, that he paid supreme respect, in his most

finished and earnest eloquence and appeal. Here was a threefold

ultimate standard to which Lincoln always made final appeal--the

original Constitution; its amenability to due revision; and the

people's free and deliberate decree. This triangular base-line was for

Lincoln's politics and jurisprudence and statesmanship the supreme and

finished standard of last appeal. He deferred to it submissively,

habitually, and with reverence.

All this can be truly said. And yet all this does not say all the

truth. Respectful as Lincoln was for all that he found thus

fundamentally prescribed, and heedful as he was to indulge in no

executive liberty inconsonant with those express decrees, he found his

fortune as chief executive forcing him to move where all explicit

regulations failed to specify the path. The Constitution does not

include all details. It does not vouchsafe specific counsel for

specific needs. Its guidance is as to principles. "No foresight can

anticipate, nor any document of reasonable length contain, express

provisions for all possible questions." This he declared in his first

inaugural. Then he mentions three such unprescribed details:--the

method of returning fugitive slaves; the power of Congress to

prohibit; and the duty of Congress to protect slavery in the

Territories. Touching those three civic interests, civic duties and

civic standards were undirected and undefined. But even while he

spoke, those three unsettled problems in the Nation's life were

kindling the national pulse to an uncontrollable heat. Nothing less

than civil war was certainly impending, over controversies touching

which the sovereign standards of the civic life did not expressly

speak.

Upon these momentous, undecided questions Lincoln, in his high

authority as president, had to bring his judgment, his action, and his

influence into settled shape. Deep in the heart of these unsettled

regions he set his camp, and toiled away his life. This heroic and

patriotic act may be called a detail of constitutional interpretation.

But it was for Lincoln a labor of Hercules. It opened a gigantic

controversy. The land was convulsed with contending explications.

Views, held essential to the vital honor of separate sections of the

land, were in essential hostility. As the dissension deepened, two

questions rose, outstanding above the rest:--the Constitutional

integrity of the several States (might States secede?); and the

Constitutional rights of slavery (should slavery spread?). Both these

problems were mortally acute in 1861. Both were still in hand in 1865.

Under the Constitution could the Union be legitimately dissolved?

Under the Constitution should slavery be permanently approved? To both

these questions Southern leaders answered, Yes. To both these

questions Lincoln answered, No.

Of these two questions and asseverations, it is plain to see that the

second is the more profound. So this second inaugural affirms:

"Somehow" slavery was the cause of the secession and the war. This

"all knew." Upon this pivot, all the chances and contentions of the

great debate were compelled to turn. Here lay all the meaning of the

war. All those awful battles were trembling, struggling arguments;

thrilling, impassioned affirmations striving to finally and forever

decide whether human slavery was justified to spread.

Here was a supreme divergence of conviction, and a supreme debate. In

all the realm of social morals, no divergence and no debate could be

more radical. Into this supreme contention Lincoln was compelled to

enter. To some conclusion that should be supreme he was, by his

official station and responsibility, compelled to lead. To find his

way through such a controversy, and to guide the land through all that

strife to some sovereign reconciliation, involved this common citizen

in the presidential chair in an assumption and exercise of authority

nothing less than sovereign.

Face to face with this impending and decisive agony, Lincoln took his

stand in his first inaugural, not flinching even from war, if war must

come. A mighty wrestler in the awful throes of mortal civic strife, he

held his determined stand in the act of his second inaugural oath,

after war had raged for four full years. The great debate is unsettled

still. Still Lincoln has to bear the awful burden of responsible

advice. He is still the Nation's chief magistrate. An authority

pregnant to predetermine continental issues for unnumbered years to

come, however dread its weight, and however frail and faint his mortal

strength, he may not demit. Within the darkness and amid the din, he

must think and speak, he must judge and act, he must rise and lead,

while a Nation and a future both too vast for human eye to scan and

estimate, stand waiting on his word and deed.

It was a time for omens. But never did Lincoln's ways show fuller

sanity. In such a day, and for such a responsibility this, his second

inaugural address, is Lincoln's perfect vindication. Here the true

civilian's true democracy stands vested with an authority both

sovereign and beautiful. Here political expertness becomes consummate.

Here the very throne of civil authority is unveiled. Here leadership

and fellowship combine. Here a master, though none more modest in all

the land, demonstrates his mastery in the mighty field of national

politics. Here it may be fully seen how in a true democracy a true

dominion operates.

Here emerges, in the ripened, rugged, mellowed, moral character of

Lincoln, and in the finished, immortal formulation of his uttermost

contention and appeal, a marvelous illumination of an inquiry, that is

always alike the last and the first, the first and the last in ethical

research--the inquiry about ethical authority. Where did Lincoln

finally rest his final appeal? He is assuming to venture a

preponderant claim. He is speaking as a Nation's president. And in a

conflict of radical views that for four dread years has been a

conflict of relentless arms, he argues still, and without a quaver,

for the thorough prosecution of the war. Divergence of judgment on

moral grounds could never be brought to a sharper edge. Contention

over issues in the moral realm could never be harder pressed. On what

authority could Lincoln push a moral argument unto blood? Is there

moral warrant for such a deed? If ever there be, then where is its

base, and whence its awful sanctity?

To shape reply to this is but to shape more sharply still the naked

substance of the debate--the crying issue of the war. The core of that

insistent strife concerned the essential nature of man. Was slavery

legitimate? Might a white man enslave a black? Could a strong man

enslave the weak? Dare some men forswear toil? May any men who toil

be pillaged of the food their hands have earned? Are some men entitled

to a luxury and ease they never earned, while to other men the luxury

and ease they have fairly won may be denied? Are some men so inferior

that they can have no right to life, and liberty, and happiness,

however much they strive and long for such a simple, common boon? Are

other men so super-excellent that life, and liberty, and happiness are

theirs by right, though never earned or even struggled for at all?

This was the central issue of that war; and this the central theme of

this inaugural. Are common people to be forever kept beneath, and

traded on, and eyed with scorn; while favored men are to be forever

set on high, and filled with wealth, and fed with flattery? This was

the quivering question that was brought on Lincoln's lips to its

sharpest edge. Well he knew its momentousness and its antiquity.

In its very formulation, as Lincoln gave it shape, there loomed the

formulation of its reply, perhaps still to be bitterly defied, perhaps

to be still long deferred; but inevitable at last, and sure finally to

find agreement everywhere. This final answer Lincoln's vision saw. In

that clear vision he discerned the certain meaning of the battles of

the war. In the great debate they were the solemn, measured arguments.

Amid those awful arguments this inaugural took its place, the oracle

of a moral prophet, explaining how the war arose, by whose high hand

the war was being led, and in what high issue the war must attain its

end. As the arguments of this address advance, one grows to feel that

Lincoln's thought is forging a reply, in which emerges a moral law

whose authority no man may ever dare rebuke.

But as that authority comes to view in Lincoln's speech, its form is

shorn of every shred of arrogance. Never was mortal man more modest

than in the tone and substance of this address. This modesty is indeed

throughout devoid of wavering. His tones ring with confidence and

decisiveness. But in that confidence, though girt for war, there are

folded signs of deference and gentleness and solemn awe, as though

confessing error and confronting rebuke. Even of slavery, that most

palpable and abhorrent evil, as he forever avers; and of slaveholders,

who wring their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, and then

dare to pray for heaven's favor on their arms, he says in this

address:--"let us not judge that we be not judged;" as though the germ

of that dark error might then be swelling in his and all men's hearts.

And as to the war itself, for which he bade the Nation stand with

sword full-drawn, the central passage in this speech more than

intimates, what in an earlier part he fully concedes, that he and all

the people had availed but poorly to understand the Almighty's plans.

In all of this Lincoln seems to say that he found himself, in common

with all the land, but imperfectly in harmony with God, as to his

judgment concerning the sin inwrought in holding slaves, and as to the

primacy of the Union among the interests pending in the war. He seems

in this address, so far from affirming his right to judge and govern

arbitrarily, instead confessing that love of ease, greed for gain, the

mood of scorn, and proneness to be cruel--those inhuman roots that

rear up slavery--were apt to find hidden nutriment in his and all

men's hearts, yielding everywhere the baleful harvest of inhumanity;

confessing further that this deep-rooted tendency in human hearts to

undo God's primal decree of freedom and equality was far more needful

to eradicate than any proneness to secede within any confederacy of

States; and confessing in consequence and finally that it was for all

Americans to accept the war as God's rebuke of their common

propensity to be unkind, and as God's correction of their false rating

of their national concerns. This then seems to be Lincoln's posture in

this address--no lofty arrogance of authority to decree and execute

the right; but a humble confession of error and guilt; an acquiescent

submission to God's correction and reproof. This modest hue must

tincture this address through all its web.

And yet the dominant note of this inaugural is clear decisiveness, an

unwavering firmness in his own opinion, a classic illustration of

persuasion and appeal, as though from the vantage ground of

convictions perfectly assured. Where now, in full view of all that has

been said, is the basis of Lincoln's argument and authority to be

placed? In an argument where conviction seems to be transmuted into

penitence, and where confession seems transfigured into confidence,

how can the logic be resolved; and where at last can the authority

repose?

The full reply to this inquiry can be found only when we find where

Lincoln's conviction and confession coalesce. Touching this, one thing

is clear. Both bear upon the same concern. Deep within them both

slavery is the common theme. Assured that slavery is wrong, he

confesses that its roots run everywhere. Honest to the core, he bows

beneath the scourge of war, convinced that it is heaven's penalty upon

all the land. Throughout he is pleading and suffering consistently

that all men may be free. This is the sum of the address. In this it

all coheres. Thus he divines and understands the ways of God. And so

he stands, as poised in this address, in ideal fellowship, at once

with men who have held slaves, with slaves in their distress, with the

Creator in his primal decree, and with the Providential meaning of the

war.

To all this problem, vexing so many generations, the clear and

witting touch of Lincoln's sacrificial penitence is the master key. In

this all contradictions, all hostilities, all sufferings, all

transgressions, and all pure longings are harmonized. In assurance and

repentance he has found how truth and grace, blending together in

humble heed for God and for undying souls, hold complete dominion in

the moral realm. These pure principles, congenial alike to God and

men, he welcomes to himself, and commends to all his fellowmen in

sacrificial partnership.

Here is Lincoln's prevailing faith. This is the secret of his

strength. Herein vests his commanding and enduring power. This is

Lincoln's self--his very manhood. This is the man in this address whom

the world beheld, and still beholds--the man he was, the man he aimed

and strove to be, the man he recommended all the Nation to combine to

reproduce, the man in whom the fear of God, the love of men, the zeal

for life, and true reliability, mingle evenly, at whatever cost. This

is the man, and this the mighty influence over other men, enthroned

imperishably in this address.

Here is the throne, the scepter, and the key to Lincoln's vast

authority. It is patterned and informed from the cardinal constituents

of a balanced moral character. It is inwrought within a life that

heeds harmoniously, and with heroic earnestness, his own integrity,

his God, his fellowman, and things immortal. Holding souls above

goods, holding his fellow as himself, holding himself in true respect,

and holding God above all, he stands and pleads, with a cogency that

is unanswerable, for verities as self-evident to any man as any man's

self-consciousness. All his claims in the heart of this address are

self-apparent. They are original convictions. They prove and approve

themselves. They make no call for substantiation. They confront every

man within himself, the light in his eye, the life in his heart, the

spring in his hope. They confront every man again within his neighbor.

They confront both men again, when together they look up to God. And

far within all forms that change, they confront all men forevermore in

things that immortally abide.

This is the truth to which Lincoln pledged his troth, and in which he

besought all other men to plight their faith, in this address. The

vivid, ever-living dignity in man, discoverable by every man within

himself, to be greeted by every one in his brother-man, at once the

image and the handiwork of God--this defined all his faith, fired all

his zeal, woke all his eloquence, shaped all his argument, winged all

his hope. That such a being should be a slave, that such a being

should have a slave, was in his central conviction, of all wrong

deeds, the least defensible. It was the primal moral falsity, cruelty,

insult, and debasement. That such a sin should be atoned, at whatever

cost, was the primal task of purity, reverence, tenderness, and truth.

Holding such convictions, handling such concerns, for him to make the

statement was to give it demonstration. Against such convictions, and

in scorn of such concerns, no man could seriously contend without

assailing and, in the end, undoing himself. This was the citadel and

the weaponry of Lincoln's authority.

And Lincoln found within these views the pledge of permanence. He saw

them bulwarked and corroborated by all the lessons and revelations of

history. All devices of human society, contending against these

rudimentary verities, had been proved pernicious and self-defeating a

thousand times. Only such behavior of man with man as harmonized with

the creative design, and sprang from endowments that were common to

all, could ever hope to last. Here is the sovereign lesson from all

the centuries past, and a sovereign challenge for all the centuries

to come. As Lincoln viewed it, he was handling a matter beyond debate,

when he talked of two centuries and a half of unrequited toil. If that

was not wrong, then nothing was wrong. There is the whole of Lincoln's

argument, and the whole of his authority. It stood true two hundred

and fifty years ago. It will hold fast two hundred and fifty years

hence. To deny this is to dethrone all law, turn every freeman's

highest boast to shame, and finally banish moral order from human

government and from human thought. That this could never be suffered

or confessed was the substance of Lincoln's argument, and the sum of

his authority. This and this alone was the sovereign lesson that the

sacrificial sorrows of the war were searing so legibly, that all the

world could read, upon the sinful Nation's breast. And in saying this,

Lincoln's voice was pleading as the voice of God.

HIS VERSATILITY--THE PROBLEM OF MERCY

The study of Lincoln's authority, as it wields dominion in the last

inaugural, has brought to prominence his humble readiness to share

repentantly with all the Nation, in the bitter sorrows of the war, the

divine rebuke for sin. That sin was the wrong of holding slaves. But

in all the land, if any man was innocent of that iniquity, it was

Lincoln. And yet the honest Lincoln was never more sincere, more nobly

true and honest with himself, than in this deep-wrought co-partnership

with guilt. Surely here is call for thought.

Lincoln's character was fertile. The principles that governed his

development were living and prolific. In his ethics, as in his bodily

tissues, he was alive. As the days and years went on, he grew. Like

vines and trees, he added to his stature constantly. New twigs and

tendrils were continually putting out, searching towards the sunshine

and the springs, and embracing all the field. And in all this increase

he was supremely pliable. While always firm and strong, he had a

wonderful capacity to bend.

The primary, towering impulse working in Lincoln's life was ethical.

Amid the continual medley and confusion of things, he was continually

reaching and searching to find and plainly designate the right and the

wrong. This stands evident everywhere. Nowhere does this stand plainer

than in the period, when, at his second inaugural, he faced a second

presidential term. Still straining in the toil and turmoil, in the

intense and blinding passion of the war, he halts upon the threshold

of a second quadrennium of supreme responsibility, to see if he can

surely trace God's indication of what is right. The eternally right

was what he sought. He was after no mere expediency, no ephemeral

shift for ephemeral needs. The judgments of the Almighty Ruler of

Nations, true and righteous altogether and evermore, were what he

prayed to find and know. Then, if ever, Lincoln's earnestness was

moral.

And for this search at just this time his eye was peculiarly sobered

and grave. Portentous problems were emerging, as the finish of the war

drew near. And these problems were new. What should the Nation, when

it laid aside its arms, decide to do with the seceded States, and with

those millions of untutored slaves? For that no precedent was at hand,

no direction in the laws. The conclusion must be original. And it must

be supreme. And its issues must hold wide sway for generations of

imperial, expanding growth. There loomed an impending peril, and a

test of statesmanship, demanding the wisdom, and integrity, and deep

foresight of a moral prince--a peril and a moral test but poorly met

by the men whom his untimely death thrust into Lincoln's place. For

bringing to perfection his ripening judgment upon that task, and so

for displaying another historic demonstration of Lincoln's moral

adaptability, the few short requisite years were mysteriously to be

denied.

But upon other problems and in other days, there was ample revelation

of Lincoln's agile moral strength. His entire career in national

prominence provides outstanding demonstration of the continual full

mobility and plastic freedom of his moral powers. The civil war, which

he was conducting with such determination to its predestined end, as

he stood the central figure in this second inaugural scene, was but

the central vortex of a moral agitation in which all our national

principles and precedents were challenged and defied; and in which

statesmen of supremely facile, virile, moral sense were in exigent

demand. Problems were propounded constantly upon which our

Constitution shed no certain light, and the Constitution itself was in

a way to be overturned.

Throughout this period of national discord and moral instability,

Lincoln was a leading, creative mind. The circuit of that career was

brief indeed, scarcely more than one decade. But in those dark, swift

years shine and cluster many illustrations of the rich and ready

fertility of his ethical postulates in the political realm. Man of the

people though he was, and acutely sensitive of his responsibility to

the people for every responsible act, he was in every judgment and

resolve every inch a king, openminded, original, free. Again, and

again, and again, he was the man for the hour.

One demonstration of this is shown in his surprising readiness. With

whatever situation, he behaved as though familiar. Undisciplined in

diplomacy, he proved himself almost instantly a finished diplomat.

Totally untutored in all the acts and practices of war, but compelled

by his office to take sovereign command of the Nation's arms, and that

so suddenly that even the arms themselves could not be found, he

became one of the foremost critics and counselors of perilous and

intricate military campaigns. Unaccustomed to authority, but advanced

at a leap to the Nation's head, beleaguered by deadly animosities

among cliques and sections and States, encompassed by shameless

cabinet intrigues, he developed, as in one day, into manager, adviser,

administrator of political affairs, the most astute in all the land.

A most impressive example of this adjustability is seen in his

manifold capacity for moral patience. It reveals how he could keep his

full integrity, while binding up his life and fortune inseparably with

men whose moral standards swayed far from his. Lincoln's first

inaugural gave luminous definition of his designs and hopes. The

principles there propounded were the ripe and firm convictions of a

thoughtful, honest life. They had been pronounced repeatedly before.

To their defense and consummation his heart and honor were pledged

irrevocably. Those propositions were the irreducible rudiments of his

faith, the permanent constituents of his hope. Surrender those

convictions and desires he never did, he never could. Within the ample

compass and easy play of those glowing sentiments there was no room

for secession, nor for war, nor for any bitterness, but only for

loyalty, fellowship, peace. But as he turned from that inauguration

and its declaration of his policy toward the execution of his trust,

he had to face and handle secession, war, and malicious defamation. He

had to see the Nation's holiest dignity desecrated, all his brotherly

offices disdained, the souls of men still held as rightful objects of

common trade, and the plainest decrees of God defied. This as shown

in the spirit and uprising of the impatient, imperious South.

And within the North, in the very armies assembled for the Union's

defence, he had to find the very leaders and plotters of his campaigns

absorbed and overcome by petty jealousies, too despicable and

unpatriotic to be believed, and yet so real and vicious as to defeat

their battles before they were fought. And back among the Union

multitudes around his base, were men of might and standing, and men in

multitudes, who maligned his motives, and entangled his plans, until

antagonism the most malignant and resolved to all his views and

undertakings seemed to environ him on every side.

To such conditions it was Lincoln's bitter obligation to conform. Many

men were ready with many fond prescriptions for the case; but they all

were marked by weak futility. They either brought the Nation no

complete relief, or else surrendered the Nation's very life. Within

the strain and pull from every side Lincoln felt the obligation of his

oath.

The mood and method he employed (and let not the phrase be

misunderstood) was moral relaxation. This did not mean that he altered

aught of his pronounced belief, or varied by a single hair from his

announced design. He remembered his inaugural oath. He retained his

faith and hope, and held to his prime resolve unchanged. But he gave

the opposition time. He suffered malignants to malign, seceders to

rebel, detractors to impugn; and bore their taunts and blows and

wounds patiently, still abiding by his word. His very war was simply

for defense. The honor of the Union he would not yield up. His

brotherly friendliness he would not forego. His rating of freemen he

would not discount. The mandates of God he would not disobey. But

while on every hand these might be assailed and abjured, he repressed

all violence and vehemence of heart, and endured, and indulged, and

was still.

Herein, however, his convictions and hopes wore a modified guise.

Their rigor softened; their lustre mellowed; their angles broadened;

their rudeness ripened; and his aspect passed through change; the

while his honor brightened and became more clear. This adjustment of

such a nature to such a fate is a massive illustration of moral

versatility. It is like keeping the steed to the course, while yet

laying the rein upon his neck.

Through experience such as this it must have been that Lincoln

traversed his profoundest sorrow. Just here his critics and traducers

had their firmest hold. To the world at large his tactics did seem

slack, his method dilatory, his mood indifferent. Men wearied past

endurance at his delay, and charged repeatedly that he had betrayed

his trust. Such accusations must have been to his pure loyalty like

gall. And yet he must perforce be mute. It was not he, it was the

awful situation in which his noble life was manacled, that was so

incorrigible. With God and man he pleaded day and night that bloodshed

might be stayed, and peace possess the land. But an enemy was in the

land, determined not to leave his guns until the Union was dissolved,

and slavery vindicated as right. Rather than forsake the Union, and

own that men were as the brutes, he would die a thousand times. And

with a patience that no malice and no misfortune could wear away, he

held his post and kept his word, through torments too severe for

unheroic men to bear, producing thus upon his silent, sorrowful face a

humble replica of the divine long-suffering of the meek and lowly

Christ. And so he taught the world how in patience the righteousness

that abhors all wrong may turn its face toward sin with humble

meekness, through years that seem like centuries, and cause thereby

that pure and Godlike truth and love shall only be more glorious.

But even with this the description of this case stands incomplete. To

understand it rightly further statements are required. After all his

patience, the South was obdurate. Even while in this last inaugural

Lincoln was pleading for universal charity, and seeking to banish

malice everywhere, the leaders of the armies in the South were

rallying their unrecruited ranks in a very desperation of hatred for

his principles, and of scorn for his forbearance. While he was

interpreting the desolations and sorrows of the war as God's

all-powerful punishment of slavery, our common national sin, they

resented with impassioned vehemence such an explanation, disclaimed

all guilt, and denied that slavery was wrong.

Here emerged in Lincoln's thought Lincoln's supreme perplexity. He was

dealing with right and wrong, both only the more intensely real,

because so really concrete. Liberty and loyalty, loyalty to liberty,

the dignity of man, and the good pleasure of God--these were the

eternal principles, and the personal interests at stake. Antagonisms

were deadly virulent; and they were unrelenting. Compulsion was not

availing. Patience likewise failed. Here was a desperate call for

moral mastership. The man to meet the crisis, to join the cleft, to

reduce to moral harmony this discord of right and wrong, the man who

could resolve and morally unify this moral disagreement must have a

soul and an understanding whose insight and moral comprehension were

complete.

Here Lincoln's moral grandeur gains its full dimension. And in this

consummation it comes clear to see how in very deed right and wrong,

evil and good, can be encompassed in a moral unison such that evil

remains the all-abhorrent thing, and good is proved to be alone

desired. This marvelous explication is found within the words and

tone of this last inaugural. It stands contained in perfect poise

within the mutual balancings of his princely pledge to abjure all

malice, show universal charity, and still pursue the awful guidance of

Almighty God in the prosecution of the war. Herein moral rigor,

forbearance, and gentleness do majestically coalesce.

The breath and voice of this same moral mystery are felt and heard

again within this same inaugural in that bold prophetic exposition of

the Providential purport of the war. In the burning furnace of those

last four years, Lincoln's eyes had been purged to see how the ways of

God transcend the ways and thoughts of men. Both North and South, in

battle and in prayer, had failed to comprehend the thoughts of God.

All the movements of all their armies were being mightily over-ruled.

The purposes of the Almighty were his own. Both North and South had

gone astray. Neither side was wholly right. The land was under

discipline. The Nation had committed sin. That sin was destined for

requital. That requital was to be complete. The ways of God were true

and righteous altogether. All this the Nation must acquiescently

confess. For all the wrong of slavery requital must be made,

submissively, ungrudgingly, repentantly. Beneath that judgment every

heart must bow. The sin must be abjured. Its wrong must be abhorred.

Goodwill to all alike must be restored. And through it all the

Almighty must be adored.

Like a solemn litany within a great cathedral, these solemn sentiments

of Lincoln resounded through the land, as, in want of any other

priest, Lincoln himself led the Nation to the altar of the Lord. He

truly led. And to an altar. In this inaugural, Lincoln, for all

Americans, bows and veils his own brave heart in sacrificial sorrow

and confession, to bear and suffer all that, as the Nation's due, and

for the Nation's rescue, it is the will of holy heaven to inflict.

In this profound, spontaneous assumption of full co-partnership with

all the Nation in a Nation's undivided ill-desert; in this

uncomplaining acquiescence, while God inflicted upon the land, as an

awful scourge, all the shame and cost and sorrow that the woful wrong

of slavery had entailed; in this deep discernment that deep in every

heart ran and flourished all the baleful roots of greed and pride, of

injustice and cruelty, out from which all man's enbondagement of

brother man springs up; in this estimation of human slavery as a

primary sin, while receiving without repining its ultimate

doom--Lincoln unveils in his single heart, an abhorrence and an

endurance of our national sin, that makes him enduringly and

indivisibly the friend and brother of us all, accomplishing, in a

single moral experience, the pattern of the confession, and of the

resolution of our common wrong. Unto this, Lincoln's moral versatility

attained. Beyond this, moral versatility could never go.

The same moral dextrousness, this facile power and fluent readiness to

fully comprehend and fitly meet the moral mastery of a problem, in

itself all but absolutely obstinate and impossible, this wondrous

deftness in compounding together guilt and grace in mutual compassion

and repentance, is shown in Lincoln's patiently repeated, but always

futile efforts to persuade the North and the South to come together,

and so bring slavery and all dissension to an end, by giving and

receiving fiscal reimbursement for the emancipation of the slaves. To

this magnanimous and unexampled proposition, offered in the midst of

war, and urged in words and tones of classic winsomeness, the North

and South could never be brought unitedly to consent. Therein this

moral hero stood like a king against the wrong, argued like a prophet

for the right, and led towards mutual penitence and sacrifice like a

priest. It is in human history one of the supremest illustrations of

moral versatility. Never were Lincoln's character and aim more stable

than in that plea. But never was mortal man more mobile. Beyond all

his contemporaries he observed and regarded the signs of the times. He

saw that the ancient order was certainly to change. He felt that an

almighty, a just, and a benignant Providence had assumed control. He

discerned that the new order was freighted with vast store of good. To

make its entrance gentle, so that nothing should be rent or wrecked,

was the sum of all his thought and toil. He took for pattern the

coming of the dew. For his method he adopted his own well-mastered and

transcendent art of brotherly persuasion. As to manner, he was

vestured in humility, desiring to eject and ban the pharisee from his

own and all other hearts. For prevailing motive he designated the

passing hour as a time of unexampled opportunity. "So much good," he

said, "has not been done by one effort in all past time, as in the

Providence of God it is now your high privilege to do." And for

admonition he pointed to the vastness of the future, and a possible

lament over a pitiful neglect. But it was all for naught. For such a

moral transmutation and free triumph the embattled Nation was

unprepared.

But over against that unrelenting rigor, his moral readiness to meet

his brother, friend or foe, in free and mutual sacrifice, glows

beautifully. Deep in the heart of his design was struggling

heroically, and in balanced moral unison, the Godlike spirit of

eternal justice, mercy, and conciliation. In his strong breast all

pride was crucified, malice was melted down to tenderness, hypocrisy

and sordidness were purged away. His moral outlook was now

unobstructed, open every way. Then his soul stood fleet and free for

any path within the moral universe. With every man in this broad land

he stood ready to journey or sojourn, meek to suffer, resolute to

prevail. Sharing with the wrongdoer and the wronged alike their shame

and suffering and sin, while urging with immortal eagerness towards

fairness and happiness and peace, he resolved and overcame the problem

of the slaveholder and the slave, and made this land forever the

universal refuge of the free. In such a transmutation, first within

himself, and then throughout the land, moral as it is in every fiber,

and from circumference to core, is perfect moral concord. Thus, in

moral discord, moral freedom finds the way to peace, while full

responsibility remains unchangeably supreme. Here is the final,

perfect triumph of moral ingenuity. Thus by means of mercy, freely

offered and freely received, through mutual fellowship in moral

suffering, wrong may be comprehended, and fully overcome, in the

unchanged dominion of the right. So moral freedom and moral

consistency combine. Men's lives become vicarious. Thus moral

versatility culminates, and overcomes, and wins the sovereign moral

crown.

HIS PATIENCE--THE PROBLEM OF MEEKNESS

In the chapter just preceding, Lincoln's patience came into allusion

and review. That quality deserves a somewhat closer, separate

examination. When Lincoln took his last inaugural oath, he based its

meaning upon a statement in his inaugural address, that all the havoc

of the war was, under God, a penalty and atonement for a wrong that

had been inflicted and endured for centuries. In this interpretation

he subtly interwove a pleading intimation that all the land, in

reverent acquiescence with the righteous rule of God, should meekly

bow together to bear the awful sacrifice. And, deep within this open

exposition of his prophetic thought, there gleamed the hidden pledge,

inherent in his undiluted honesty, that he himself would not decline,

but would rather stand the first, to bear all the sorrow consequent

upon such wrong.

Here is an attitude, and here a proposition which men and Nations are

forever prone to scorn; but which all Nations and all men will be

compelled or constrained at last to heed. Therein are published and

enacted verities, than which none known to men are more profound, or

vast, or vested with a higher dignity. They demand attention here.

The statement made by Lincoln pivots on "offenses." Strong men, in

pride and arrogance of strength, had wronged the weak. Weak men, in

the lowliness and impotence of their poverty, had borne the wrong. In

such conditions of painful moral strain the centuries had multiplied.

Those long-drawn years of violence had heightened insolence into a

defiance all but absolute. Those selfsame years of suffering had

deepened ignominy into all but absolute despair. Through banishment of

equity and charity, of purity and humility, while all the heavenly

oracles seemed mute, fear and hope alike seemed paralyzed. The

oppressor seemed to have forgotten his eternal obligation to be kind

and fair. The oppressed seemed to have surrendered finally his

God-like dignity. The times seemed irreversible.

Here is a problem that, while ever mocking human wisdom, refuses to be

mocked. It enfolds a wrong, undoubted moral wrong; else naught is

right. It overwhelms. Within its awful deeps multitudes have been

submerged. And it is unrelieved. It outwears the protests and appeals

of total generations of unhelped, indignant hearts.

This problem Lincoln undertook to understand. In his conclusion was

proclaimed the vindication of the meek. Beneath that age-long wrong,

beneath the silence and delay of God, and beneath the final

recompense, he prevailed upon his heart, and pleaded with other hearts

to stand in suffering, hopeful acquiescence. Among these sorrows, so

wickedly inflicted, without relief, and without rebuke, let patience

be perfected. Here let meekness grow mature. Let confidence in our

equal and unconquered manhood, and let faith in God not fail to

overcome all Godlessness and inhumanity. Let time be trusted

absolutely to prove all wrong iniquitous. Let the worth inherent in

undying souls be shown to be indeed immortal.

Here is Lincoln's resolution of this profound enigma, a resolution

unfolding all its mystery, and involving all his character. Here

Lincoln won his crown. This is all his meaning in abjuring malice, and

invoking charity. Too kindly to indulge resentment, whatever the

provocation, and too sensible of his own integrity to ever court

despair, he appealed to God's eternal justice and compassion, and

clung to a hope that no anguish or delay could overcome. This is

Lincoln's patience. This is the inmost secret of his moral strength.

This is his piercing and triumphant demonstration that in this

troubled world, where sin so much abounds, it is the meek who shall

finally prevail.

This moral patience deserves to be explored. It comprehends

ingredients, quite as worthy to be kept distinct, as to be seen in

unison. For one thing it identified him with slaves. Therein he bore a

grave reproach. Its weight only he himself could rightly compute.

Beneath the rude and among the hurt he took deliberate stand. Among

the lowly, before the scorner, he held his place. He braved the

master's taunts. He penetrated to its heart the cause that kept the

black man mute. He measured out, but without indifference, as without

complaint, the divine delay. He courted in his thought on slavery a

perfect consciousness of its sin. He examined with nicest carefulness

the sufferers' impulse towards revenge. He knew the awful misery in

human shame. He shared with honest men their proudest aspirations. And

all of this, he shared with blacks, not by compulsion, but as a

volunteer.

Herein, and in the second place, he held fast the fundamental claims

that every slave retained an ineffaceable affinity with God; that this

divine inheritance, however deep the negro's poverty, could never be

annulled or forfeited; that friendliness with fellowmen, however hard

or sad their lot, was no reproach; that in human sorrows it well

becometh human hearts, as it becometh God, to remember to be pitiful;

that all invasion or neglect of those inherent human rights and

dignities was bound to be avenged; that in God's good time all patient

souls would be crowned with song; and that thus his open championship

of the cause of slaves was in perfect keeping with his own unaltered

and unalterable self-respect.

A third ingredient in Lincoln's patience was its conspicuous and

inseparable impeachment of oppression. Lincoln's patience under moral

wrong made him no neutral morally. Without fear and without reserve,

he held before oppressors, however hard or strong, the enormity of

their wrong. Before the cruel their cruelty was displayed. Before the

arrogant their arrogance was reflected back. Before the base and foul

their sordidness was brought to light. Before disloyal men the perfidy

of covenant disloyalty was nakedly unveiled. All the wrongs inwrought

and undergone in slavery were recited with insistent accuracy and

unreserve. Of all those centuries of unpaid toil each month and year

were reckoned up. Of all those sins against pure womanhood and

helpless infancy each tell-tale face was told numerically. The moral

wrong in slavery was set before its advocates and beneficiaries

unsparingly. Patience, whether God's or man's, and whether for one day

or for a thousand years, can never be interpreted or understood to

diminish sin's iniquity. Its prolonged persistence only aggravates its

guilt.

In the fourth place, there was in Lincoln's patience a waiting

deference before God's silence and delay. His total confidence was in

God. That God was negligent, or indifferent, he would not concede. His

whole abhorrence of oppression was based on God's decree. Here rested

also all his hope of recompense. Vengeance belongs to God. He will

rebuke the mighty, and redeem the meek. In both, his righteousness

will be complete. And when his judgments fall, all men must own

adoringly his perfect equity.

Finally, in Lincoln's patience there is explicit recognition and

confession of his own complicity with all the land, in the wrong to

slaves, and of his own and all the land's delinquency before the Lord,

in failure to discern and approbate the divine designs. It had been

left with God's far greater patience and far higher moral jealousy to

overcome and overwhelm and overrule the devious plans and ways of

erring men. In lowly acquiescence it was for him and the land to

acquaint themselves with God's designs, confess their wanderings,

accept his will alike in redemption and rebuke, and unite henceforth

to represent and praise on earth his perfect equity and grace.

Here are the elements in Lincoln's patience, and here their sum.

Forming with the lowly and oppressed a free and intimate partnership;

avowing jealously for all mankind a coequal dignity among themselves

and an imperishable affinity with God; declaring unflinchingly to all

who tyrannize the full enormity of their primal sin; restraining

malice and all avenging deeds; confessing his own misjudgments and

misdeeds among his fellowmen and before the Lord; he endures

submissively the divine delays, and shares repentantly with all who

sin the judgments of a perfect righteousness. Genuinely pitiful for

suffering men, sharply jealous for human worth, direct as light to

designate the shame in pride, docile as a child before the righteous

and eternal rule of God, he illustrates and demonstrates how a perfect

patience makes requisition in a noble man of all his noblest

manliness.

But worthy as are all its qualities, its exercise entails stern

discipline in suffering. It costs a man his life. That this was

Lincoln's understanding, as he traversed the responsibility of that

last inauguration day, is witnessed unmistakably by his letter to

Thurlow Weed respecting his inaugural address. These are his words,

well worthy to be reproduced a second time:--

"I believe it (the address) is not immediately popular. Men are not

flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose

between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is

to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I

thought needed to be told, and, as whatever of humiliation there is in

it falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me

to tell it."

"Most directly on myself." There Lincoln bares his heart to God and

man, in order that upon himself might fall the first, the deepest, and

the most direct humiliation. At one with slaves, despised by pride,

astray from God prepared for sacrifice--but attesting still that

slaves were men, that robbery was wrong, that God was just--so he

stands.

But, be it said again and yet again, in such a posture looms nobility.

In meekness such as this is nothing craven. It beseems true royalty.

Bowing before his God to receive rebuke, bowing to make confession

before his fellowmen, he stands as on a hilltop, announcing and

declaring to all the world how arrogance proves men base, how

lowliness may be beautiful, how reverend are God's mysteries, how just

and pitiful his ways. Here is a kingliness that no crown can rightly

symbolize. Here is a victory that is not won with swords. In the very

attitude is final triumph. It bravely claims, and truly overcomes the

world. In such a patience there is present instantly, and in full

possession, the vigor of undying hope, and the title of a firstborn

son to the heritage of the earth.

This capacity in Lincoln's patience for the close allegiance of

self-devotion and self-respect, of sympathy and jealousy, is shown

dramatically in his tournament with Douglas in 1858. Throughout those

speeches, replies, and rejoinders Lincoln held fast his full

fraternity with the slaves, while repressing with his fullest vigor

every onslaught against his personal integrity.

The date of those debates marked over four full years, since Douglas

had championed through Congress into finished legislation a bill that

abrogated all federal limitation of slavery, and opened an

unrestricted possibility of its further spread forever, wherever any

local interest might so desire. That bill obtained the presidential

signature in May of 1854. During the succeeding years Douglas had been

shaping public sentiment by his almost royal influence in public

speech towards a stereotyped acceptance of the principles and

implications of that law. Under his aggressive leadership his party

had been well solidified upon three political postulates, which he

declared essential not alone to party fealty, but to any permanent

national peace. These three postulates were the following:--

Slavery is in no sense wrong.

Slavery is to be treated as a local interest only.

These principles have been sanctioned perfectly by history.

From these fundamental postulates flowed numerous corollaries:--

Black men are an inferior race. This inferiority has been stamped upon

this race indelibly by God. The Declaration of Independence did not

and does not include the blacks in its affirmations about equality.

This country contains vast sections precisely fitted to be occupied by

slavery.

Local interests being essentially diverse, as for example between

Alabama and Maine, decisions as to local affairs will also be diverse.

This entails divergent treatment of black men, just as of herds and

crops.

To the rights of stronger races to enslave the blacks, the fathers who

framed our government, our national history since, and the age-long

fate of Africa unitedly bear witness.

Counter to these three major postulates of Douglas, Lincoln set the

following three:--

The enslavement of men is wrong.

The treatment of slavery is a federal concern.

Our history has contained, and still contains a compromise. Our

fathers deemed slavery a wrong. But finding it present when they

framed our government, and finding its removal impossible at the time,

they arranged for its territorial limitation, for its gradual

diminishment, and for its ultimate termination.

From these three fundamental postulates in Lincoln's arguments flowed

also various corollaries:--

The sinfulness of slavery roots in the elemental manhood of the slave.

This manhood warrants his elemental claim to the employment and

enjoyment of his life in liberty.

In our form of government, things local and things federal being held

within their respective realms respectively supreme, things locally

divergent lead to federal compromise.

Certain sections of the country in particular, and the Nation in

general being committed, either from policy or from choice, to foster

slavery; men who hate the thing as wrong must in patient meekness

endure its presence, until in God's own time its presence and its sin

and guilt shall be removed.

As will be seen at once, for the purposes of a popular debate, the

postulates of Douglas were easier to defend. Of the two sets of

premises, his seemed the more simple, more explicit, more direct, more

telling with a crowd; while those of Lincoln, by reason of that moral

and historical compromise, seemed more confused, more evasive, and not

so apt to take the multitude. In the nature of the debate Lincoln had

to shape his propositions and replies to face two ways:--towards the

practical emergencies of our history and form of government, on the

one hand; and on the other hand, towards an ideal nowhere yet

attained, and seemingly unattainable. Whereas Douglas, quite

unconcerned about any ideal motives in the past, as of any vision of

an ideal day to come, but dealing solely with the political situation

that day occurrent, could make every affirmation and every thrust

against his adversary seem straight, and clear, and impossible to

refute. This very practical and substantial disadvantage Lincoln had

to bear. Questions that Douglas would answer decisively, and

instantly, and with absolute distinctness, Lincoln would be compelled

to labor with, in careful deference both to our Constitutional

protection of slavery, and to its moral wrong.

This situation in those debates deserves a close attention. The

difference in the two positions was most profound. That this deep

difference was laid fully bare was the supreme resultant of the

debate. It was indeed a difference in principles. But stated yet more

narrowly, it was a difference in nothing less than estimates of men,

and attitudes towards wrong. It was not a difference in abstract

theorems. It was vastly more. It was a difference in the personal

qualities of the two protagonists. To test this affirmation let any

one imagine Douglas producing from his heart the sentiments, and

arranging in his thought the arguments of Lincoln's last inaugural.

Douglas sadly erred in his opinion of his time. In Lincoln, in those

debates, our government, our history, our ideal as a great Republic

stood incorporate. Like our noble history, he patiently endured and

bore what he instinctively and inveterately abhorred. This pathetic

situation, this invincible anomaly in our national career, is

pathetically re-enacted in the fate of Lincoln in these debates.

This at bottom, and this at last is what those flashing falchions and

ringing shields declare. This explains the genesis and the actual

course of those painful personalities. And it is to study this that

these debates have been introduced. In the personal thrusts of those

debates two qualities in Lincoln become pre-eminent. He would not

forsake his humble championship of slaves. He would accept no thrust

against his personal integrity. Let those debates be read, and

re-perused until those cardinal elements in Lincoln's attitude come

clear. And let it be observed that in no single personality was

Lincoln's thrust initial. Douglas opened the debate. In his opening

speech he made direct assertions and indirect intimations too gross to

be termed subtle, and too staring to be called disguised; imputing and

suggesting that Lincoln was in character a coward and a cheat, in his

politics a revolutionary, and in his social proclivities contemptible.

These same charges were made with unrelenting persistency and

reiteration by Douglas throughout the series of the debates.

To every imputation Lincoln made definite and reiterated reply,

denouncing them roundly as unwarranted and inexcusable impeachment of

his honor, his veracity, and his candor. And then, with measured and

exact equivalence, he dealt out to Douglas's face a list of counter

personalities of sharply parallel and actual transactions in Douglas's

life, meriting precisely his own reproach. And he pressed the battle

home so hard that Douglas, in an impassioned height of protest,

demanded if Lincoln meant to carry his tactics up to "personal

difficulty."

All this is painful confessedly to review. One wishes earnestly, just

as with the later civil war, it might never have occurred. But it

should be remembered that every retort of Lincoln was, as in the war

itself, in personal defense. Lincoln was not the assailant. But once

his honor was assailed, it was not the nature of that honor to stand

so mute that his own character seemed rightly smirched, while justice

rested with his adversary. And so, in self-defense, as in his speech

at Quincy, he carefully details, he vigorously returned each thrust.

And this, be it constantly recalled, not in any selfishness, not for

wounded pride, not for unction to a hurt, not in any vengeful heat;

but just as in the following war, in absolute unselfishness, void of

malice, in the ministry of charity, that the honor of all men might be

saved, and that the Union with its boon of universal freedom and

equality might not perish from the earth.

Such was Lincoln's patience, in those earlier debates, and in this

last inaugural, the same. While bearing voluntarily in his single life

all the opprobrium borne by slaves; through all that fellowship and

sympathy, and on its sole behalf, he guarded his own honor with an

infinite jealousy. But it was honor saved for suffering. His life was

sacrificial. He learned to know full well, but willingly, what

meekness costs. Not alone from a political antagonist and an embattled

South, but from a multitude of active dissentients besides throughout

the North, from Congress, and from the close circle of his cabinet he

had to bear with blind misunderstandings, and malignant

misrepresentations of the deeds and qualities and motives of his

perplexed and overburdened life.

But whatever his shortcomings or mistakes, whatever his follies or

sins, two affirmations about his life will hold forever true. He bore

his load. And he kept his path. Through all that stern campaign for

liberty and union he turned neither to the right nor to the left.

Sorrows and contentions surrounded him continually. But he descried a

better time. To speed that day he welcomed sacrifice. He lived and

died for nothing else. To show the priceless worth of freemen in a

mighty multitude, in a civic league of lasting unison and peace was

his supreme commission and consuming wish. To bring that vision near

he aspired and submitted to be its pattern and its devotee.

HIS RISE FROM POVERTY--THE PROBLEM OF INDUSTRIALISM

In his first public speech, seeking election to the State Legislature

of Illinois in 1832, Lincoln said: "I was born, and have ever

remained, in the most humble walks of life." He adds: "If the good

people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I

have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much

chagrined." In the same speech he said: "I have no other (ambition) so

great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering

myself worthy of their esteem."

Here are three phrases that epitomize Lincoln's ideals and Lincoln's

career:--"the most humble walks of life;" "too familiar with

disappointments;" and "rendering myself worthy of their esteem." There

at the age of twenty-three we are apprised of Lincoln's poverty, of

his ambition, and of his adversity. In the same address he says: "I

have no wealthy or popular relatives or friends to recommend me." At

that time he had been but two years in the State.

In pondering this brief and frank appeal one wonders at the blending

of the youthful and the mature, the daring and the wary, the ardent

and the chastened, the eager and the sedate, the wistful and the

resigned. What had been the inner and the outer history and fortune of

him, who at the age of twenty-three could talk of being "familiar with

disappointments"--so familiar with experiences of reverse that he

could bear the public refusal of his one greatest ambition, that

public's "true esteem," without being "much chagrined." Plainly in

Lincoln's early life there was a great heart, cherishing a high hope,

but environed with poverty, familiar with reversals, unchampioned,

unknown. Already he was being refined by manifold discipline. Already

in that refining fire he had fixed his eye and set his face to win his

neighbor's true esteem. Therein one comprehends his whole career. Out

of oblivion and solitude and direst poverty he passed by sheer

self-mastery to the highest national authority and renown. Of all the

distance and of all the way between those "humblest walks" and that

commanding eminence, and of all the pregnant meaning to him and to all

Americans, and indeed to every son of Adam, of that achievement,

Lincoln had a marvelous discerning sense. He knew full well its vast

significance and he never let its vivid recollection lapse. It was

always in his living consciousness.

One impressive proof and token that the meaning of his advancement had

permanent place in his remembrance, and that he deemed his fortune an

ideal and a type of our American government and life has been

preserved in the tone and substance of his address in Independence

Hall, when on his way to his first great inauguration. Standing there

at the age of forty-one, the Nation's president-elect, and "filled

with deep emotion," he said: "I have never had a feeling politically

that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of

Independence." And to give that statement explanation he said, "I have

often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept

this Confederacy so long together." And for answer to that inquiry he

points to "that sentiment in the Declaration which gave liberty not

alone to the people of this country, but hope to all the world for all

future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the

weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all

should have an equal chance." "Liberty," "hope," "promise," "weights

lifted," "an equal chance," "to all," "for all," "of all," "all," "in

due time"--these are the terms that answered the question over which

he "often pondered" and "often inquired." This was the "great

principle," the "idea" which held the Confederacy together. This was

the "basis" on which, if he could save the country, he would be "one

of the happiest men in the world, if he could help to save it." This

was the principle concerning which he exclaimed: "If this country

cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say

that I would rather be assassinated upon this spot than surrender

it"--words whose purport is seen to be nothing less than tragic, when

we recall the peril of death, which he was consciously facing in that

very hour from a deep laid conspiracy against his life.

Thus spoke Lincoln within ten days of his inauguration, in a speech

which he says was "wholly unprepared." But the day before, in a speech

at Trenton, he characterized that same "idea" as that "something more

than common" which away back in childhood, the earliest days of his

being able to read, he recollected thinking, "boy though I was," was

the "treasure" for which "those men struggled." That "something" he

then defines as "even more than national independence;" and as holding

out "a great promise to all the people of the world to all time to

come."

This lifting of weights from the shoulders of men, this equal chance

for all; this was the liberty for which the fathers fought, this was

the hope which their Declaration enshrined, this it was whose

preservation Lincoln longed to secure above any other happiness, this

it was for which he was all but ready to die.

There Lincoln spoke his heart. There he voiced his highest hopes.

There he traced his patriotism to its roots. And there too he touched

the quick nerve of his own disappointments, of his own often futile

endeavors and desires. And there as well his living sympathy with

other men, encumbered with disadvantage and defeat, found mighty

utterance. Lifting weights from the shoulders of all men--that in "due

time" this should be achieved he judged and felt to be the single

sovereign meaning of our national destiny.

Of just this national destiny Lincoln's personal life was a strangely

full epitome. His shoulders knew full well the pressure of those

"weights." His soul knew all the awful volume of sorrow as of joy,

that poured about the denial or the enjoyment of an "equal chance."

From the humblest walks to the foremost seat he had been permitted to

thread his way. That liberty he chiefly sought in struggling youth.

That liberty he chiefly prized as president. And this, not alone for

himself, not alone for all Americans, but for "all the world." Thus

spoke Lincoln, "all unprepared" in February of 1861.

But these spontaneous words were no passing breath of transient

sentiments. In July of that same year he sent to Congress his first

Message. That paper was Lincoln's studied and formal argument, a

president's deliberate State Paper, addressing to Congress his

responsible demonstration that the war was a necessity. In that

argument and demonstration his fundamental postulate was a definition

of our government. In that definition he affirms its "leading object"

to be "to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights

from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to

afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance in the race of

life." And so he calls the war a "people's contest." And he speaks of

its deeper purport as something that "the plain people understand."

And he speaks of the loyalty of all the common soldiers--not one of

whom was known to have deserted his flag--as "the patriotic instinct

of the plain people."

Those words of Lincoln in Trenton and Philadelphia, defining the

"leading object" in the minds of the founders of our government in the

hours of its birth-travail, define his own idea and ideal as he

approached the hour of his presidential oath. That a national

government, thus beneficently designed for the equal weal of all,

should be preserved inviolate and preserved from dissolution was his

supreme desire and his supreme resolve. Its majesty and its integrity

must be held most sacred and most jealously preserved. This was the

apple of his eye. By the light of this ideal and in the pursuit of

this alluring, wistful hope he studied and judged all the movements of

his time. And in this, his initial message, he registers his official

verdict upon those surrounding evolutions and events. A vast and

ever-expanding Confederacy of intelligent and resolute men, leagued

together in a Union of Confederate States, and pledged to secure to

all men within its bounds a clear path, an unfettered start, and a

fair chance in every laudable pursuit, was judged by him a civic

undertaking too preciously freighted with promise and hope for the

welfare of the world to be ever disrupted and destroyed by the

disloyalty and the withdrawal of any one or any cluster of its

constituent parts. It was a Union as sacred and holy as all the worth

and all the hopes of men. To separate from such a league was a capital

disloyalty. To disintegrate such a unison was the ultimate inhumanity.

To stand fast forever by such a federation was a crowning fidelity. To

preserve, protect and defend such a Union, at whatever cost of life or

wealth, and therein to adventure however sacred honor was a primary

and a final obligation. By its perpetual preservation unimpaired was

secured to all mankind the vision and the priceless promise of liberty

and hope. By secession, defiance, and violent assault, that precious

human treasure was being endangered and defiled. Hence his anxious

all-consuming eagerness as he approached his ominous task. Hence his

firm acceptance of awful, inevitable war.

Such were the marshalings of Lincoln's thoughts and sentiments as he

approached and undertook his mighty work--fit prelude in Independence

Hall, and befitting explanation and defense in the Halls of Congress

of the mighty rallying of those regiments of men for the awful combats

of a people's war.

This was Lincoln's argument. That the rights of life and liberty and

happiness were designed and decreed by the Maker of all to be equal

for all was for him, as an American, and for him as a fellow and a

friend of all, under God, an axiom. And to that firm truth the war was

but a corollary. Because the Union was a league of freemen, kindred to

God, and peers among themselves, bound together in mutual goodwill and

for mutual weal, it must at all hazards and through all perils and

sorrows be made perpetual. Not that slavery should be immediately

removed, though its existence in such a league was an elemental

unworthiness and affront; but that the Union should be forever secured

was his immediate aspiration and resolve. This once achieved and

forever assured, and slavery with every other kindred inequality would

in "due time" be done away.

This is the key and the core of his ringing and irresistible retort to

Greeley. This was the inspiration of that immortal appeal at

Gettysburg, the very pledge and secret of its excellence and

immortality--the plea that government of the people, by the people,

for the people should not perish from the earth.

And it was definitively this axiomatic verity that provided to his

deeply thoughtful mind that deeply philosophic interpretation of the

divine intention in the war, which he so carefully enshrined within

his last inaugural. The sin of slavery had transgressed a primary law

of God. Human shoulders had been heavily laden with artificial

weights. Brother men had been denied by fellow-men an equal start. The

paths of laudable pursuit were not kept equally clear to all.

Multitudes of men, by the inhuman tyranny of the strong upon the

weak, and that from birth to death, had been accorded no fair chance.

Men had toiled for centuries, and that beneath the lash, without

requital. Hence the awful doom and woe of war--God's visitation upon

ourselves of our own offense, the wasting of our unholy wealth and the

leveling of our inhuman pride. And all of this was being guided

through to its predestined and most holy end with the divine design

that through the awful baptism of blood our national life should begin

anew in humble reverence for him whose just and fiery jealousy demands

that all his little ones shall share with all the mightiest in equal

rights. Thus Lincoln viewed the war as God's avenging vindication of

the just and gracious principles that all men everywhere are entitled

to share together equally in liberty and hope.

But Lincoln felt all of this to be, not alone the law of God, but

quite as truly the common and compelling affirmation of the human

heart. This way and style of phrasing it found eloquent annunciation

in that earliest and unanswerable address respecting slavery at Peoria

in October of 1854, where were deeply laid and may still be seen the

foundations of all his power and fame. In that address he said, "My

faith in the proposition, that each man should do precisely as he

pleases with all which is exclusively his own, lies at the foundation

of the sense of justice there is in me." And upon that foundation he

laid this cornerstone of social and civic order: "No man is good

enough to govern another man without that other man's consent." To so

invade the liberty of another man is "despotism." Such invasion is

"founded in the selfishness of man's nature." "Opposition to it is

founded in his sense of justice." "These principles are in eternal

antagonism." When they collide, "shocks and throes and convulsions

must ceaselessly follow." These sentiments of liberty are above

repeal. Though you repeal all past history, "you cannot repeal human

nature." Out of the "abundance of man's heart" "his mouth will

continue to speak." And to demonstrate that this sentiment of liberty,

this consciousness that human worth is sovereign, is a verity of human

nature which even holders of slaves corroborate, he points to the over

400,000 free negroes then in the land. Their presence is proof that

deep in all human hearts is a "sense of human justice and sympathy"

continually attesting "that the poor negro has some natural right to

himself, and that those who deny it and make merchandise of him

deserve kickings, contempt and death." This irrepealable law of the

human heart was a mighty rock of confidence in Lincoln's social and

political faith. All men were made to be free, and entitled equally to

a happy life; and of this divine endowment all men everywhere were

well aware. Human nature is by its nature the birthplace and the home

of liberty and hope.

Especially serviceable for the purposes of this study upon

Industrialism is the section in Lincoln's Message to Congress of

December, 1861, dealing with what he calls our "popular institutions."

With his eagle eye he discerns in the Southern insurrection an

"approach of returning despotism." The assault upon the Union was

proving itself, under his gaze, an attack upon "the first principles

of popular government--the rights of the people." And against that

assault he raised "a warning voice."

In this warning he treats specifically the relation of labor and

capital. In this discussion his motive is single and clear. He detects

a danger that so-called labor may be assumed to be so inseparably

bound up and indentured with capital as to be subject to capital in a

sort of bondage; and that, once labor, whether slave or hired, is

brought under that assumed subjection, that condition is "fixed for

life."

Both of these assumptions he assails. Labor is not a "subject state;"

nor is capital in any sense its master. There is "no such thing as a

free man's being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer."

So he affirms. And then he argues that "labor is prior to and

independent of capital." "Capital is only the fruit of labor." "Labor

is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher

consideration." Hired labor, and capital that hires and labors

not--these do both exist; and both have rights. But "a large majority

belong to neither class--neither work for others, nor have others

working for them." This is measurably true even in the Southern

States. While in the Northern States a large majority are "neither

hirers nor hired." And even where free labor is employed for hire,

that condition is not "fixed for life." "Many independent men

everywhere in these Northern States, a few years back in their lives,

were hired laborers." The "penniless," if "prudent," "labors for wages

awhile;" "saves a surplus;" "then labors on his own account;" and "at

length hires another new beginner to help him." "This is the just and

generous and prosperous system which opens the way to all, gives hope

to all." Here is a form of "political power;" here is a "popular

principle" that underlies present national prosperity and strength,

and infolds a pledge of its certain future abounding expansion. Thus

Lincoln argued in his Annual Message of 1861.

In his Annual Message of 1862, he pursued in a similar strain, a vital

and kindred aspect of the same industrial theme. He was arguing with

Congress in favor of compensated emancipation. In the course of that

argument, speaking of the relation of freed negroes to white labor

and white laborers, he said: "If there ever could be a proper time for

mere catch arguments, that time surely is not now. In time like the

present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly

be responsible through time and in eternity." And then, after

appealing with utmost patience and consideration and with ideal

persuasiveness to every better sentiment and to every proper interest,

he drew towards the close of his plea with these arresting, prophetic,

almost forboding words, words richly worth citation for a second

time:--"The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise

with the occasion." "We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall

save our country." "We cannot escape history." "The fiery trial

through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the

latest generation." "We know how to save the Union." "We--even we

here--hold the power and bear the responsibility." "In giving freedom

to the slave, we assure freedom to the free--honorable alike in what

we give and what we preserve." "We shall nobly save or meanly lose the

last, best hope of earth." "The way is plain, peaceful, generous,

just--a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and

God must forever bless."

Thus Lincoln voiced, and in terms that human-kind will not lightly

suffer to be forgotten, his seasoned and convinced belief about the

principles that should hold dominion in the industrial realm. They

reveal that in his chastened and chastening faith Civics and Economics

are merged forever in Ethics, and that therein they are forever at

one. Individuals, however lowly or however strong; parties or

combinations of men or wealth, however massive or however firm;

governments or nations, however puissant, ambitious or proud, are

alike endowed and alike enjoined with sovereign duties and with

sovereign rights. The negro, however poor, may not be robbed or

exploited or bound by any master, however grand. The soil of a

neighboring government, however alluring its promise of expansion or

wealth, may never be invaded or annexed by force of any Nation's arms,

however exalted and humane that Nation's professions and aims. If any

man, or any Nation of men be but meagerly endowed, that humble

heritage is inviolably theirs forever to enjoy. The person of Dred

Scott and the soil of Mexico are holy ground--heaven-appointed

sanctuaries that no oppressor or invader may ever venture to profane.

If to any nation, or to any man "God gave but little, that little let

him enjoy." Slavery and tyranny are iniquitous economy. "Take from him

that is needy" is the rule of the slaveholder and the tyrant. "Give to

him that is needy" is the rule of Christian charity. As between the

strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the timid and the bold,

"this good earth is plenty broad enough for both."

Here is indeed an eternal struggle. But underneath is "an eternal

principle." And among the many Nations of the earth this American

people are bringing to this principle in the face of all the world a

world-commanding demonstration of its benign validity. By the sweat of

his face shall man eat bread. And the fruit of his toil shall man

enjoy.

So would Lincoln guard, in the industrial world, against all

exaggeration and all infringement of human liberties and rights, and

this quite as much for the sake of the strong as in defense of the

weak. Tyranny, in despoiling the weak, despoils the tyrant too.

Liberty does harm to none, but brings rich boon to all. Thus Lincoln

cherished freedom.

But deep within this treasured liberty Lincoln saw the shining jewel

of human hope. And hope with him was ever neighborly. And this

generous sentiment, expanding forever in his heart, he cherished, not

merely as common civilian, but as president. It was while at

Cincinnati, on his way to his inauguration, that he said, "I hold that

while man exists it is his duty not only to improve his own condition,

but also to assist in ameliorating mankind." "It is not my nature,

when I see people borne down by the weight of their shackles ... to

make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but

rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke."

But true as was Lincoln's view of our national mission, and clear and

just and generous as was his own desire, he saw in the Nation's path

before his face a mighty obstacle. He knew the fascination of

"property." And he knew that this fascination held its malevolent

sway, even though that "property" was vested in human life. Here was

the brunt of all his battle. The slaves of his day had a "cash value"

at a "moderate estimate" of $2,000,000,000. He saw that this property

value had "a vast influence on the minds of its owners." And he knew

that this was so "very naturally" that the same amount of property

"would have an equal influence ... if owned in the North;" that "human

nature is the same;" that "public opinion is founded to great extent

on a property basis;" that "what lessens the value of property is

opposed;" that "what enhances its value is favored."

With this prevailing tendency, native and universal in all men alike,

he had to deal. Indeed he had no other problem. All his presidential

difficulties reduced to this:--the universal greed of men for gain;

and deep within this inborn greed, man's inborn selfishness. And all

his all-absorbing toil and thought as statesman and as president were

to exalt in human estimation the values in men above all other gain.

This desire lay deep in his heart at the beginning of his struggle in

1854. At the end of his conflict in those closing days of his life in

1865 this longing came forth as pure and shining gold thrice refined.

From the time of his second election his thoughts moved with an almost

unwonted constancy upon these upper heights. With immeasurable

satisfaction he brooded and pondered over the emerging issues of the

stupendous strife. With an almost mother's love he considered and

counted over and reckoned up those outcomes of the sacrifice that

should worthily endure. With a vision purged of every form of vanity

and every form of selfishness, not as a miser, but in very deed with a

mother's pride and inner joy, he recited over the precious inventory

of the chastened Nation's wealth.