[8] The substance of what follows is from chapter 29th of "The History
of Abraham Lincoln, and The Overthrow of Slavery," by Isaac N. Arnold.
In the remaining pages, I shall attempt to give a word-picture of Mr.
Lincoln, his person, his moral and intellectual characteristics, and
some personal recollections, so as to aid the reader, as far as I may be
able, in forming an ideal of the man.
Physically, he was a tall, spare man, six feet and four inches in
height. He stooped, leaning forward as he walked. He was very athletic,
with long, sinewy arms, large, bony hands, and of great physical power.
Many anecdotes of his strength are given, which show that it was equal
to that of two or three ordinary men. He lifted with ease five or six
hundred pounds. His legs and arms were disproportionately long, as
compared with his body; and when he walked, he swung his arms to and fro
more than most men. When seated, he did not seem much taller than
ordinary men. In his movements there was no grace, but an impression of
awkward strength and vigor.
He was naturally diffident, and even to the day of his death, when in
crowds, and not speaking or acting, and conscious of being observed, he
seemed to shrink with bashfulness. When he became interested, or spoke,
or listened, this appearance left him, and he indicated no
self-consciousness. His forehead was high and broad, his hair very dark,
nearly black, and rather stiff and coarse, his eyebrows were heavy, his
eyes dark-gray, very expressive and varied; now sparkling with humor and
fun, and then deeply sad and melancholy; flashing with indignation at
injustice or wrong, and then kind, genial, droll, dreamy; according to
his mood.
His nose was large, and clearly defined and well shaped; cheek-bones
high and projecting. His mouth coarse, but firm. He was easily
caricatured--but difficult to represent as he was, in marble or on
canvass. The best bust of him is that of Volk, which was modeled from a
cast taken from life in May, 1860, while he was attending court at
Chicago.
Among the best portraits, in the judgment of his family and intimate
friends, are those of Carpenter, in the picture of the Reading of the
Proclamation of Emancipation before the Cabinet, and that of Marshall.
He would be instantly recognized as belonging to that type of tall,
thin, large-boned men, produced in the northern portion of the Valley of
the Mississippi, and exhibiting its peculiar characteristics in a most
marked degree in Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee. In any crowd in the
United States, he would have been readily pointed out as a Western man.
His stature, figure, manner, voice, and accent, indicated that he was of
the Northwest. His manners were cordial, familiar, genial; always
perfectly self-possessed, he made every one feel at home, and no one
approached him without being impressed with his kindly, frank nature,
his clear, good sense, and his transparent truthfulness and integrity.
There is more or less of expression and character in handwriting.
Lincoln's was plain, simple, clear, and legible, as that of Washington;
but unlike that of Washington, it was without ornament.
In endeavoring to state those qualities which gave him success and
greatness, among the most important, it seems to me, were a supreme love
of truth, and a wonderful capacity to ascertain it. Mentally, he had a
perfect eye for truth. His mental vision was clear and accurate: he saw
things as they were. I mean that every thing presented to his mind for
investigation, he saw divested of every extraneous circumstance, every
coloring, association, or accident which could mislead. This gave him at
the bar a sagacity which seemed almost instinctive, in sifting the true
from the false, and in ascertaining facts; and so it was in all things
through life. He ever sought the real, the true, and the right. He was
exact, carefully accurate in all his statements. He analyzed well; he
saw and presented what lawyers call the very _gist_ of every question,
divested of all unimportant or accidental relations, so that his
statement was a demonstration. At the bar, his exposition of his case,
or a question of law, was so clear, that, on hearing it, most persons
were surprised that there should be any controversy about it. His
reasoning powers were keen and logical, and moved forward to a
demonstration with the precision of mathematics. What has been said
implies that he possessed not only a sound judgment, which brought him
to correct conclusions, but that he was able so to present questions as
to bring others to the same result.
His memory was capacious, ready, and tenacious. His reading was limited
in extent, but his memory was so ready, and so retentive, that in
history, poetry, and general literature, no one ever remarked any
deficiency. As an illustration of the power of his memory, I recollect
to have once called at the White House, late in his Presidency, and
introducing to him a Swede and a Norwegian; he immediately repeated a
poem of eight or ten verses, describing Scandinavian scenery and old
Norse legends. In reply to the expression of their delight, he said that
he had read and admired the poem several years before, and it had
entirely gone from him, but seeing them recalled it.
The two books which he read most were the Bible and Shakespeare. With
these he was very familiar, reading and studying them habitually and
constantly. He had great fondness for poetry, and eloquence, and his
taste and judgment in each was exquisite. Shakespeare was his favorite
poet; Burns stood next. I know of a speech of his at a Burns festival,
in which he spoke at length of Burns's poems; illustrating what he said
by many quotations, showing perfect familiarity with and full
appreciation of the peasant poet of Scotland. He was extremely fond of
ballads, and of simple, sad, and plaintive music.
He was a most admirable reader. He read and repeated passages from the
Bible and Shakespeare with great simplicity but remarkable expression
and effect. Often when going to and from the army, on steamers and in
his carriage, he took a copy of Shakespeare with him, and not
unfrequently read, aloud to his associates. After conversing upon public
affairs, he would take up his Shakespeare, and addressing his
companions, remark, "What do you say now to a scene from Macbeth, or
Hamlet, or Julius Caesar," and then he would read aloud, scene after
scene, never seeming to tire of the enjoyment.
On the last Sunday of his life, as he was coming up the Potomac, from
his visit to City Point and Richmond, he read aloud many extracts from
Shakespeare. Among others, he read, with an accent and feeling which no
one who heard him will ever forget, extracts from Macbeth, and among
others the following:--
"Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well.
Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Can touch him farther."
After "treason" had "_done his worst_," the friends who heard him on
that occasion remembered that he read that passage very slowly over
twice, and with an absorbed and peculiar manner. Did he feel a
mysterious presentiment of his approaching fate?
His conversation was original, suggestive, instructive, and playful;
and, by its genial humor, fascinating and attractive beyond comparison.
Mirthfulness and sadness were strongly combined in him. His mirth was
exuberant, it sparkled in jest, story, and anecdote; and the next moment
those peculiarly sad, pathetic, melancholy eyes, showed a man "familiar
with sorrow, and acquainted with grief." I have listened for hours at
his table, and elsewhere, when he has been surrounded by statesmen,
military leaders, and other distinguished men of the nation, and I but
repeat the universally concurring verdict of all, in stating that as a
conversationalist he had no equal. One might meet in company with him
the most distinguished men, of various pursuits and professions, but
after listening for two or three hours, on separating, it was what
Lincoln had said that would be remembered. His were the ideas and
illustrations that would not be forgotten. Men often called upon him for
the pleasure of listening to him. I have heard the reply to an
invitation to attend the theater, "No, I am going up to the White House.
I would rather hear Lincoln talk for half an hour, than attend the best
theater in the world."
As a public speaker, without any attempt at oratorical display, I think
he was the most effective of any man of his day. When he spoke,
everybody listened. It was always obvious, before he completed two
sentences, that he had something to say, and it was sure to be something
original, something different from any thing heard from others, or which
had been read in books. He impressed the hearer at once, as an earnest,
sincere man, who believed what he said. To-day, there are more of the
sayings of Lincoln repeated by the people, more quotations, sentences,
and extracts from his writings and speeches, familiar as "household
words," than from those of any other American.
I know no book, except the Bible and Shakespeare, from which so many
familiar phrases and expressions have been taken as from his writings
and speeches. Somebody has said, "I care not who makes the laws, if I
may write the ballads of a nation." The words of Lincoln have done more
in the last six years to mold and fashion the American character than
those of any other man, and their influence has been all for truth,
right, justice, and liberty. Great as has been Lincoln's services to the
people, as their President, his influence, derived from his words and
his example, in molding the future national character, in favor of
justice, right, liberty, truth, and real, sincere, unostentatious
reverence for God, is scarcely less important. The Republic of the
future, the matured national character, will be more influenced by him
than by any other man. This is evidence of his greatness, intellectual,
and still more, moral. In this power of impressing himself upon the
people, he contrasts with many other distinguished men in our history.
Few quotations from Jefferson, or Adams, or Webster, live in the
every-day language of the people. Little of Clay survives; not much of
Calhoun, and who can quote, off-hand, half a dozen sentences from
Douglas? But you hear Lincoln's words, not only in every cabin and
caucus, and in every stump speech, but at every school-house,
high-school, and college declamation, and by every farmer and artisan,
as he tells you story after story of Lincoln's, and all to the point,
hitting the nail on the head every time, and driving home the argument.
Mr. Lincoln was not a scholar, but where is there a speech more
exhaustive in argument than his Cooper Institute address? Where any
thing more full of pathos than his farewell to his neighbors at
Springfield, when he bade them good-bye, on starting for the capital?
Where any thing more eloquent than his appeal for peace and union, in
his first Inaugural, or than his defense of the Declaration of
Independence in the Douglas debates? Where the equal of his speech at
Gettysburg? Where a more conclusive argument than in his letter to the
Albany Meeting on Arrests? What is better than his letter to the
Illinois State Convention; and that to Hodges of Kentucky, in
explanation of his anti-slavery policy? Where is there any thing equal
in simple grandeur of thought and sentiment, to his last Inaugural? From
all of these, and many others, from his every-day talks, are extracts on
the tongues of the people, as familiar, and nearly as much reverenced,
as texts from the Bible; and these are shaping the national character.
"Though dead, he yet speaketh."
As a public speaker, if excellence is measured by results, he had no
superior. His manner was generally earnest, often playful; sometimes,
but this was rare, he was vehement and impassioned. There have been a
few instances, at the bar and on the stump, when, wrought up to
indignation by some great personal wrong, or by an aggravated case of
fraud or injustice, or when speaking of the fearful wrongs and injustice
of slavery, he broke forth in a strain of impassioned vehemence which
carried every thing before him.
Generally, he addressed the reason and judgment, and the effect was
lasting. He spoke extemporaneously, but not without more or less
preparation. He had the power of repeating, without reading it, a
discourse or speech which he had prepared or written out. His great
speech, in opening the Douglas canvass, in June, 1858, was carefully
written out, but so naturally spoken that few suspected that it was not
extemporaneous. In his style, manner of presenting facts, and way of
putting things to the people, he was more like Franklin than any other
American. His illustrations, by anecdote and story, were not unlike the
author of _Poor Richard_.
A great cause of his intellectual power was the thorough exhaustive
investigation he gave to every subject. Take, for illustration, his
Cooper Institute speech. Hundreds of able and intelligent men have
spoken on the same subject treated by him in that speech, yet what they
said will all be forgotten, and his will survive; because his address is
absolutely perfect for the purpose for which it was designed. Nothing
can be added to it.
Mr. Lincoln, however, required time thoroughly to investigate before he
came to his conclusions, and the movements of his mind were not rapid;
but when he reached his conclusions he believed in them, and adhered to
them with great firmness and tenacity. When called upon to decide
quickly upon a new subject or a new point, he often erred, and was ever
ready to change when satisfied he was wrong.
It was the union, in Mr. Lincoln, of the capacity clearly to see the
truth, and an innate love of truth, and justice, and right in his heart,
that constituted his character and made him so great. He never
demoralized his intellectual or moral powers, either by doing wrong that
good might come, or by advocating error because it was popular.
Although, as a statesman, eminently practical, and looking to the
possible good of to-day, he ever kept in mind the absolute truth and
absolute right, toward which he always aimed.
Mr. Lincoln was an unselfish man; he never sought his own advancement at
the expense of others. He was a just man; he never tried to pull others
down that he might rise. He disarmed rivalry and envy by his rare
generosity. He possessed the rare wisdom of magnanimity. He was
eminently a tender-hearted, kind, and humane man. These traits were
illustrated all through his life. He loved to pardon: he was averse to
punish. It was difficult for him to deny the request of a child, a
woman, or of any who were weak and suffering. Pages of incidents might
be quoted, showing his ever-thoughtful kindness, gratitude to, and
appreciation of the soldiers. The following note (written to a lady
known to him only by her sacrifices for her country) is selected from
many on this subject:--
"EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
"November, 1864.
"DEAR MADAM:--
"I have been shown, in the files of the War Department, a
statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts, that you
are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the
field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any
words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the
grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I can not refrain from
tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the
thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our
Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement,
and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost,
and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly
a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
"Yours very respectfully,
"ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
"To Mrs. BIXBY, Boston, Massachusetts."
One summer's day, in walking along the shaded path which leads from the
White House to the War Department, I saw the tall form of the President
seated on the grass under a tree, with a wounded soldier sitting by his
side. He had a bundle of papers in his hand. The soldier had met him in
the path, and, recognizing him, had asked his aid. Mr. Lincoln sat down
upon the grass, investigated the case, and sent the soldier away
rejoicing. In the midst of the rejoicings over the triumphs at
Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain, he forgets not to telegraph to Grant,
"Remember Burnside" at Knoxville.
His charity, in the best sense of that word, was pervading. When others
railed, he railed not again. No bitter words, no denunciation can be
found in his writings or speeches. Literally, in his heart there was
"malice toward none, and charity for all."
Mr. Lincoln was by nature a gentleman. No man can point, in all his
lifetime, to any thing mean, small, tricky, dishonest, or false; on the
contrary, he was ever open, manly, brave, just, sincere, and true. That
characteristic, attributed to him by some, of coarse story-telling, did
not exist. I assert that my intercourse with him was constant for many
years before he went to Washington, and I saw him daily, during the
greater part of his Presidency; and although his stories and anecdotes
were racy, witty, and pointed beyond all comparison, yet I never heard
one of a character to need palliation or excuse. If a story had wit and
was apt, he did not reject it, because to a vulgar or impure mind it
suggested coarse ideas; but he himself was unconscious of any thing but
its wit and aptness.
It may interest the people who did not visit Washington during his
Presidency, to know something of his habits, and the room he occupied
and transacted business in, during his administration. His
reception-room was on the second floor, on the south side of the White
House, and the second apartment from the southeast corner. The corner
room was occupied by Mr. Nicolay, his private secretary; next to this
was the President's reception-room. It was, perhaps, thirty by twenty
feet. In the middle of the west side, was a large marble fireplace, with
old-fashioned brass andirons, and a large, high, brass fender. The
windows looked to the south, upon the lawn and shrubbery on the south
front of the White House, taking in the unfinished Washington Monument,
Alexandria, the Potomac, and down that beautiful river toward Mount
Vernon. Across the Potomac was Arlington Heights. The view from these
windows was altogether very beautiful.
The furniture of this room consisted of a long oak table, covered with
cloth, and oak chairs. This table stood in the center of the room, and
was the one around which the Cabinet sat, at Cabinet meetings, and is
faithfully painted in Carpenter's picture of the Emancipation
Proclamation. At the end of the table, near the window, was a large
writing-table and desk, with pigeon-holes for papers, such as are common
in lawyers' offices. In front of this, in a large arm-chair, Mr. Lincoln
usually sat. Behind his chair, and against the west wall of the room,
was another writing-desk high enough to write upon when standing, and
upon the top of this were a few books, among which were the Statutes of
the United States, a Bible, and a copy of Shakespeare. There was a
bureau, with wooden doors, with pigeon-holes for papers, standing
between the windows. Here the President kept such papers as he wished
readily to refer to. There were two plain sofas in the room; generally
two or three map-frames, from which hung military maps, on which the
movements of the armies were continually traced and followed. The only
picture in the room was an old engraving of Jackson, which hung over
the fireplace; late in his administration was added a fine photograph of
John Bright. Two doors opened into this room--one from the Secretary's,
the other from the great hall, where the crowd usually waited. A
bell-cord hung within reach of his hand, while he sat at his desk. There
was an ante-room adjoining this, plainly furnished; but the crowd
usually pressed to the hall, from which an entrance might be directly
had to the President's room. A messenger stood at the door, and took in
the cards and names of visitors.
Here, in this room, more plainly furnished than many law and business
offices--plainer than the offices of the heads of bureaus in the
Executive Departments--Mr. Lincoln spent the days of his Presidency.
Here he received everybody, from the Lieutenant-General and
Chief-Justice, down to the private soldier and humblest citizen. Custom
had established certain rules of precedence, fixing the order in which
officials should be received. The members of the Cabinet and the high
officers of the army were, of course, received always promptly. Senators
and members of Congress, who are usually charged with the presentation
of petitions and recommendations for appointments, and who are expected
to right every wrong and correct every evil each one of their respective
constituents may be suffering, or imagine himself to be suffering, have
an immense amount of business with the Executive. I have often seen as
many as ten or fifteen Senators and twenty or thirty Members of the
House in the hall, waiting their turn to see the President. They would
go to the ante-room, or up to the hall in front of the reception-room,
and await their turns. The order of precedence was, first the
Vice-President, if present, then the Speaker of the House, and then
Senators and Members of the House in the order of their arrival, and the
presentation of their cards. Frequently Senators and Members would go
to the White House as early as eight or nine in the morning, to secure
precedence and an early interview. While they waited, the loud ringing
laugh of Mr. Lincoln, in which he was sure to be joined by all _inside_,
but which was rather provoking to those _outside_, was often heard by
the waiting and impatient crowd. Here, from early morning to late at
night, he sat, listened, and decided--patient, just, considerate,
hopeful. All the people came to him as to a father. He was more
accessible than any of the leading members of his Cabinet--much more so
than Mr. Seward, shut up in the State Department, writing his voluminous
dispatches; far more so than Mr. Stanton, indefatigable, stern, abrupt,
but ever honest and faithful. Mr. Lincoln saw everybody--governors,
senators, congressmen, officers, ministers, bankers, merchants,
farmers--all classes of people; all approached him with confidence, from
the highest to the lowest; but this incessant labor and fearful
responsibility told upon his vigorous frame. He left Illinois for the
capital, with a frame of iron and nerves of steel. His old friends, who
knew him in Illinois as a man who knew not what illness was, who knew
him ever genial and sparkling with fun, as the months and years of the
war passed slowly on, saw the wrinkles on his forehead deepened into
furrows; and the laugh of old days became sometimes almost hollow; it
did not now always seem to come from the heart, as in former years.
Anxiety, responsibility, care, thought, wore upon even his giant frame,
and his nerves of steel became at times irritable. For more than four
years he had no respite, no holidays. When others fled away from the
dust and heat of the capital, he must stay; he would not leave the helm
until the danger was past and the ship was in port.
Mrs. Lincoln watched his care-worn face with the anxiety of an
affectionate wife, and sometimes took him from his labors almost in
spite of himself. She urged him to ride, and to go to the theater and
places of amusement, to divert his mind from his engrossing cares.
Let us for a moment try to appreciate the greatness of his work and his
services. He was the Commander-in-Chief, during the war, of the largest
army and navy in the world; and this army and navy was created during
his administration, and its officers were sought out and appointed by
him. The operations of the Treasury were vast beyond all previous
conceptions of the ability of the country to sustain; and yet, when he
entered upon the Presidency, he found an empty treasury, the public
credit shaken, no army, no navy, the officers all strangers, many
deserting, more in sympathy with the rebels, Congress divided, and
public sentiment unformed. The party which elected him were in a
minority. The old Democratic party, which had ruled the country for half
a century, hostile to him, and, by long political association, in
sympathy with the insurgent States. His own party, new, made up of
discordant elements, and not yet consolidated, unaccustomed to rule, and
neither his party nor himself possessing any _prestige_. He entered the
White House, the object of personal prejudice to a majority of the
people, and of contempt to a powerful minority. And yet I am satisfied,
from the statement of the conversation of Mr. Lincoln with Mr. Bateman,
quoted hereafter, and from various other reasons, that he himself more
fully appreciated the terrible conflict before him than any man in the
nation, and that even then he hoped and expected to be the _Liberator_
of the slaves. He did not yet clearly perceive the manner in which it
was to be done, but he believed it would be done, and that God would
guide him.
In four years, this man crushed the most stupendous rebellion, supported
by armies more vast, and resources greater than were ever before
combined to overthrow any government. He held together and consolidated,
against warring factions, his own great party, and strengthened it by
securing the confidence and bringing to his aid a large proportion of
all other parties. He was re-elected almost by acclamation, and he led
the people, step by step, up to emancipation, and saw his work crowned
by the Constitutional Amendment, eradicating Slavery from the Republic
for ever. Did this man lack firmness? Study the boldness of the
Emancipation! See with what fidelity he stood by his Proclamation! In
his message of 1863, he said: "I will _never_ retract the proclamation,
nor return to slavery any person made free by it." In 1864, he said: "If
it should ever be made a duty of the Executive to return to slavery any
person made free by the Proclamation or the acts of Congress, some other
person, not I, must execute the law."
When hints of peace were suggested as obtainable by giving over the
negro race again to bondage, he repelled it with indignation. When the
rebel Vice-President, Stephens, at Fortress Monroe, tempted him to give
up the freedman, and seek the glory of a foreign war, in which the Union
and Confederate soldiers might join, neither party sacrificing its
honor, he was inflexible; he would die sooner than break the nation's
plighted faith.
Mr. Lincoln did not enter with reluctance upon the plan of emancipation;
and in this statement I am corroborated by Lovejoy and Sumner, and many
others. If he did not act more promptly, it was because he knew he must
not go faster than the people. Men have questioned the firmness,
boldness, and will of Mr. Lincoln. He had no vanity in the exhibition
of power, but he quietly acted, when he felt it his duty so to do, with
a boldness and firmness never surpassed.
What bolder act than the surrender of Mason and Slidell, against the
resolution of Congress and the almost universal popular clamor, without
consulting the Senate or taking advice from his Cabinet? The removals of
McClellan and Butler, the modification of the orders of Fremont and
Hunter, were acts of a bold, decided character. He acted for himself,
taking personally the responsibility of deciding the great questions of
his administration.
He was the most democratic of all the presidents. Personally, he was
homely, plain, without pretension, and without ostentation. He believed
in the people, and had faith in their good impulses. He ever addressed
himself to their reason, and not to their prejudices. His language was
simple, sometimes quaint, never sacrificing expression to elegance. When
he spoke to the people, it was as though he said to them, "Come, let us
reason together." There can not be found in all his speeches or writings
a single vulgar expression, nor an appeal to any low sentiment or
prejudice. He had nothing of the demagogue. He never himself alluded to
his humble origin, except to express regret for the deficiencies of his
education. He always treated the people in such a way, that they knew
that he respected them, believed them honest, capable of judging
correctly, and disposed to do right.
I know not how, in a few words, I can better indicate his political and
moral character, than by the following incident: A member of Congress,
knowing the purity of his life, his reverence for God, and his respect
for religion, one day expressed surprise, that he had not joined a
church. After mentioning some difficulties he felt in regard to some
articles of faith, Mr. Lincoln said, "_Whenever any church_ will
inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership,
Christ's condensed statement of both Law and Gospel, '_Thou shalt love
the Lord, thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with
all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself_,' that church will I join
with all my heart."
Love to God, as the great Father, love to man as his brother,
constituted the basis of his political and moral creed.
One day, when one of his friends was denouncing his political enemies,
"Hold on," said Mr. Lincoln, "Remember what St. Paul says, 'and now
abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; _but the greatest of these is
charity_.'"
From the day of his leaving Springfield to assume the duties of the
Presidency, when he so impressively asked his friends and neighbors to
invoke upon him the guidance and wisdom of God, to the evening of his
death, he seemed ever to live and act in the consciousness of his
responsibility to Him, and with the trusting faith of a child he leaned
confidingly upon His Almighty Arm. He was visited during his
administration by many Christian delegations, representing the various
religious denominations of the Republic, and it is known that he was
relieved and comforted in his great work by the consciousness that the
Christian world were praying for his success. Some one said to him, one
day, "No man was ever so remembered in the prayers of the people,
especially of those who pray not to be heard of men, as you are." He
replied, "I have been a good deal helped by just that thought."
The support which Mr. Lincoln received during his administration from
the religious organizations, and the sympathy and confidence between the
great body of Christians and the President, was indeed a source of
immense strength and power to him.
I know of nothing revealing more of the true character of Mr. Lincoln,
his conscientiousness, his views of the slavery question, his sagacity
and his full appreciation of the awful trial through which the country
and he had to pass, than the following incident stated by Mr. Bateman,
Superintendent of Public Instruction for Illinois.
On one occasion, in the autumn of 1860, after conversing with Mr.
Bateman at some length, on the, to him, strange conduct of Christian men
and ministers of the Gospel supporting slavery, he said:--
"I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see
the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place
and work for me--and I think He has--I believe I am ready. I am nothing,
but truth is every thing. I know I am right, because I know that Liberty
is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I have told them
that a house divided against itself can not stand; and Christ and Reason
say the same; and they will find it so.
"Douglas don't care whether slavery is voted up or down, but God cares,
and humanity cares, and I care; and with God's help I shall not fail. I
may not see the end; but it will come, and I shall be vindicated; and
these men will find that they have not read their Bibles right."
Much of this was uttered as if he were speaking to himself, and with a
sad, earnest solemnity of manner impossible to be described. After a
pause, he resumed: "Doesn't it appear strange that men can ignore the
moral aspect of this contest? A revelation could not make it plainer to
me that slavery or the Government must be destroyed. The future would be
something awful, as I look at it, but for this rock on which I stand
(alluding to the Testament which he still held in his hand). It seems as
if God had borne with this thing (slavery) until the very teachers of
religion had come to defend it from the Bible, and to claim for it a
divine character and sanction; and now the cup of iniquity is full, and
the vials of wrath will be poured out." After this, says Mr. Bateman,
the conversation was continued for a long time. Every thing he said was
of a peculiarly deep, tender, and religious tone, and all was tinged
with a touching melancholy. He repeatedly referred to his conviction
that the day of wrath was at hand, and that he was to be an actor in the
terrible struggle which would issue in the overthrow of slavery, though
he might not live to see the end.[9]
[9] The foregoing statement has been verified by Mr. Bateman as
substantially correct.
Perhaps in all history there is no example of such great and long
continued injustice as that of the British press during the war toward
Mr. Lincoln. His death shamed them into decency. While he lived they
sneered at his manners. Let them turn to their own Cromwell. They said
his person was ugly. Has the world recognized the ability of Mirabeau,
or that of Henry Brougham, notwithstanding their ugliness? They made
scurrile jests about his figure, as though a statesman must be
necessarily a sculptor's model! They were facetious about his dress, as
though a greater than a Fox or a Chatham must be a Beau Brummel. They
were horrified by his jokes. If the same had been told by the patrician
Palmerston, instead of the plebeian Lincoln, they would not have lacked
the "Attic salt," but would have rivaled Dean Swift or Sidney Smith.
It has been truly said there is one parallel only, to English
journalism's treatment of Lincoln, and that is to be found in their
treatment of Napoleon. "The Corsican Ogre," and the "American Ape," were
phrases coined in the same mint. But the great Corsican was England's
bitter foe; Lincoln was never provoked either by his own or his
country's wrongs, to hostility against Great Britain. Yet at the great
Martyr's grave, even this injustice changed to respect and reverence;
even "Punch" repented and said--
"Yes he had lived to shame me from my sneer,
To lame my pencil, and confute my pen;
To make me own this hind, of princes _peer_,
This rail-splitter a true-born _King_ of men."
The place Mr. Lincoln will occupy in history, will be higher than any
which he held while living. His Emancipation Proclamation is the most
important historical event of the nineteenth century. Its influence will
not be limited by time, nor bounded by locality. It will ever be treated
by the historian as one of the great landmarks of human progress.
He has been compared and contrasted with three great personages in
history, who were assassinated,--with Caesar, with William of Orange, and
with Henry IV. of France. He was a nobler type of man than either, as he
was the product of a higher and more Christian civilization.
The two great men by whose words and example our great continental
Republic is to be fashioned and shaped are Washington and Lincoln.
Representative men of the East, and of the West, of the Revolutionary
era, and the era of Liberty for all. One sleeps upon the banks of the
Potomac, and the other on the great prairies of the Valley of the
Mississippi. Lincoln was as pure as Washington, as modest, as just, as
patriotic; less passionate by nature, more of a democrat in his feelings
and manners, with more faith in the people, and more hopeful of their
future. Statesmen and patriots will study their record and learn the
wisdom of goodness.