The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

A >> Abraham Lincoln >> The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete


But even after his renomination the opposition to Lincoln within the
ranks of the Union party did not subside. A convention, called by the
dissatisfied radicals in Missouri, and favored by men of a similar way of
thinking in other States, had been held already in May, and had nominated
as its candidate for the Presidency General Fremont. He, indeed, did not
attract a strong following, but opposition movements from different
quarters appeared more formidable. Henry Winter Davis and Benjamin Wade
assailed Lincoln in a flaming manifesto. Other Union men, of undoubted
patriotism and high standing, persuaded themselves, and sought to
persuade the people, that Lincoln's renomination was ill advised and
dangerous to the Union cause. As the Democrats had put off their
convention until the 29th of August, the Union party had, during the
larger part of the summer, no opposing candidate and platform to attack,
and the political campaign languished. Neither were the tidings from the
theatre of war of a cheering character. The terrible losses suffered by
Grant's army in the battles of the Wilderness spread general gloom.
Sherman seemed for a while to be in a precarious position before Atlanta.
The opposition to Lincoln within the Union party grew louder in its
complaints and discouraging predictions. Earnest demands were heard that
his candidacy should be withdrawn. Lincoln himself, not knowing how
strongly the masses were attached to him, was haunted by dark forebodings
of defeat. Then the scene suddenly changed as if by magic.

The Democrats, in their national convention, declared the war a failure,
demanded, substantially, peace at any price, and nominated on such a
platform General McClellan as their candidate. Their convention had
hardly adjourned when the capture of Atlanta gave a new aspect to the
military situation. It was like a sun-ray bursting through a dark cloud.
The rank and file of the Union party rose with rapidly growing
enthusiasm. The song "We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred
thousand strong," resounded all over the land. Long before the decisive
day arrived, the result was beyond doubt, and Lincoln was re-elected
President by overwhelming majorities. The election over even his
severest critics found themselves forced to admit that Lincoln was the
only possible candidate for the Union party in 1864, and that neither
political combinations nor campaign speeches, nor even victories in the
field, were needed to insure his success. The plain people had all the
while been satisfied with Abraham Lincoln: they confided in him; they
loved him; they felt themselves near to him; they saw personified in him
the cause of Union and freedom; and they went to the ballot-box for him
in their strength.

The hour of triumph called out the characteristic impulses of his nature.
The opposition within the Union party had stung him to the quick. Now he
had his opponents before him, baffled and humiliated. Not a moment did
he lose to stretch out the hand of friendship to all. "Now that the
election is over," he said, in response to a serenade, "may not all,
having a common interest, reunite in a common effort to save our common
country? For my own part, I have striven, and will strive, to place no
obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here I have not willingly
planted a thorn in any man's bosom. While I am deeply sensible to the
high compliment of a re-election, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that
any other man may be pained or disappointed by the result. May I ask
those who were with me to join with me in the same spirit toward those
who were against me?" This was Abraham Lincoln's character as tested in
the furnace of prosperity.

The war was virtually decided, but not yet ended. Sherman was
irresistibly carrying the Union flag through the South. Grant had his
iron hand upon the ramparts of Richmond. The days of the Confederacy
were evidently numbered. Only the last blow remained to be struck. Then
Lincoln's second inauguration came, and with it his second inaugural
address. Lincoln's famous "Gettysburg speech" has been much and justly
admired. But far greater, as well as far more characteristic, was that
inaugural in which he poured out the whole devotion and tenderness of his
great soul. It had all the solemnity of a father's last admonition and
blessing to his children before he lay down to die. These were its
closing words: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty
scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue
until all the wealth piled up by the bondman's two hundred and fifty
years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood
drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was
said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, `The judgments
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' With malice toward none,
with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see
the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in; to bind up the
nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for
his widow and his orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just
and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

This was like a sacred poem. No American President had ever spoken words
like these to the American people. America never had a President who
found such words in the depth of his heart.

Now followed the closing scenes of the war. The Southern armies fought
bravely to the last, but all in vain. Richmond fell. Lincoln himself
entered the city on foot, accompanied only by a few officers and a squad
of sailors who had rowed him ashore from the flotilla in the James River,
a negro picked up on the way serving as a guide. Never had the world
seen a more modest conqueror and a more characteristic triumphal
procession, no army with banners and drums, only a throng of those who
had been slaves, hastily run together, escorting the victorious chief
into the capital of the vanquished foe. We are told that they pressed
around him, kissed his hands and his garments, and shouted and danced for
joy, while tears ran down the President's care-furrowed cheeks.

A few days more brought the surrender of Lee's army, and peace was
assured. The people of the North were wild with joy. Everywhere festive
guns were booming, bells pealing, the churches ringing with
thanksgivings, and jubilant multitudes thronging the thoroughfares, when
suddenly the news flashed over the land that Abraham Lincoln had been
murdered. The people were stunned by the blow. Then a wail of sorrow
went up such as America had never heard before. Thousands of Northern
households grieved as if they had lost their dearest member. Many a
Southern man cried out in his heart that his people had been robbed of
their best friend in their humiliation and distress, when Abraham Lincoln
was struck down. It was as if the tender affection which his countrymen
bore him had inspired all nations with a common sentiment. All civilized
mankind stood mourning around the coffin of the dead President. Many of
those, here and abroad, who not long before had ridiculed and reviled him
were among the first to hasten on with their flowers of eulogy, and in
that universal chorus of lamentation and praise there was not a voice
that did not tremble with genuine emotion. Never since Washington's
death had there been such unanimity of judgment as to a man's virtues and
greatness; and even Washington's death, although his name was held in
greater reverence, did not touch so sympathetic a chord in the people's
hearts.

Nor can it be said that this was owing to the tragic character of
Lincoln's end. It is true, the death of this gentlest and most merciful
of rulers by the hand of a mad fanatic was well apt to exalt him beyond
his merits in the estimation of those who loved him, and to make his
renown the object of peculiarly tender solicitude. But it is also true
that the verdict pronounced upon him in those days has been affected
little by time, and that historical inquiry has served rather to increase
than to lessen the appreciation of his virtues, his abilities, his
services. Giving the fullest measure of credit to his great
ministers,--to Seward for his conduct of foreign affairs, to Chase for
the management of the finances under terrible difficulties, to Stanton
for the performance of his tremendous task as war secretary,--and readily
acknowledging that without the skill and fortitude of the great
commanders, and the heroism of the soldiers and sailors under them,
success could not have been achieved, the historian still finds that
Lincoln's judgment and will were by no means governed by those around
him; that the most important steps were owing to his initiative; that his
was the deciding and directing mind; and that it was pre-eminently he
whose sagacity and whose character enlisted for the administration in its
struggles the countenance, the sympathy, and the support of the people.
It is found, even, that his judgment on military matters was
astonishingly acute, and that the advice and instructions he gave to the
generals commanding in the field would not seldom have done honor to the
ablest of them. History, therefore, without overlooking, or palliating,
or excusing any of his shortcomings or mistakes, continues to place him
foremost among the saviours of the Union and the liberators of the slave.
More than that, it awards to him the merit of having accomplished what
but few political philosophers would have recognized as possible,--of
leading the republic through four years of furious civil conflict without
any serious detriment to its free institutions.

He was, indeed, while President, violently denounced by the opposition as
a tyrant and a usurper, for having gone beyond his constitutional powers
in authorizing or permitting the temporary suppression of newspapers, and
in wantonly suspending the writ of habeas corpus and resorting to
arbitrary arrests. Nobody should be blamed who, when such things are
done, in good faith and from patriotic motives protests against them. In
a republic, arbitrary stretches of power, even when demanded by
necessity, should never be permitted to pass without a protest on the one
hand, and without an apology on the other. It is well they did not so
pass during our civil war. That arbitrary measures were resorted to is
true. That they were resorted to most sparingly, and only when the
government thought them absolutely required by the safety of the
republic, will now hardly be denied. But certain it is that the history
of the world does not furnish a single example of a government passing
through so tremendous a crisis as our civil war was with so small a
record of arbitrary acts, and so little interference with the ordinary
course of law outside the field of military operations. No American
President ever wielded such power as that which was thrust into Lincoln's
hands. It is to be hoped that no American President ever will have to be
entrusted with such power again. But no man was ever entrusted with it
to whom its seductions were less dangerous than they proved to be to
Abraham Lincoln. With scrupulous care he endeavored, even under the most
trying circumstances, to remain strictly within the constitutional
limitations of his authority; and whenever the boundary became
indistinct, or when the dangers of the situation forced him to cross it,
he was equally careful to mark his acts as exceptional measures,
justifiable only by the imperative necessities of the civil war, so that
they might not pass into history as precedents for similar acts in time
of peace. It is an unquestionable fact that during the reconstruction
period which followed the war, more things were done capable of serving
as dangerous precedents than during the war itself. Thus it may truly be
said of him not only that under his guidance the republic was saved from
disruption and the country was purified of the blot of slavery, but that,
during the stormiest and most perilous crisis in our history, he so
conducted the government and so wielded his almost dictatorial power as
to leave essentially intact our free institutions in all things that
concern the rights and liberties of the citizens. He understood well the
nature of the problem. In his first message to Congress he defined it in
admirably pointed language: "Must a government be of necessity too strong
for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own
existence? Is there in all republics this inherent weakness?" This
question he answered in the name of the great American republic, as no
man could have answered it better, with a triumphant "No...."

It has been said that Abraham Lincoln died at the right moment for his
fame. However that may be, he had, at the time of his death, certainly
not exhausted his usefulness to his country. He was probably the only
man who could have guided the nation through the perplexities of the
reconstruction period in such a manner as to prevent in the work of peace
the revival of the passions of the war. He would indeed not have escaped
serious controversy as to details of policy; but he could have weathered
it far better than any other statesman of his time, for his prestige with
the active politicians had been immensely strengthened by his triumphant
re-election; and, what is more important, he would have been supported by
the confidence of the victorious Northern people that he would do all to
secure the safety of the Union and the rights of the emancipated negro,
and at the same time by the confidence of the defeated Southern people
that nothing would be done by him from motives of vindictiveness, or of
unreasoning fanaticism, or of a selfish party spirit. "With malice
toward none, with charity for all," the foremost of the victors would
have personified in himself the genius of reconciliation.

He might have rendered the country a great service in another direction.
A few days after the fall of Richmond, he pointed out to a friend the
crowd of office-seekers besieging his door. "Look at that," said he.
"Now we have conquered the rebellion, but here you see something that may
become more dangerous to this republic than the rebellion itself." It is
true, Lincoln as President did not profess what we now call civil service
reform principles. He used the patronage of the government in many cases
avowedly to reward party work, in many others to form combinations and to
produce political effects advantageous to the Union cause, and in still
others simply to put the right man into the right place. But in his
endeavors to strengthen the Union cause, and in his search for able and
useful men for public duties, he frequently went beyond the limits of his
party, and gradually accustomed himself to the thought that, while party
service had its value, considerations of the public interest were, as to
appointments to office, of far greater consequence. Moreover, there had
been such a mingling of different political elements in support of the
Union during the civil war that Lincoln, standing at the head of that
temporarily united motley mass, hardly felt himself, in the narrow sense
of the term, a party man. And as he became strongly impressed with the
dangers brought upon the republic by the use of public offices as party
spoils, it is by no means improbable that, had he survived the
all-absorbing crisis and found time to turn to other objects, one of the
most important reforms of later days would have been pioneered by his
powerful authority. This was not to be. But the measure of his
achievements was full enough for immortality.

To the younger generation Abraham Lincoln has already become a
half-mythical figure, which, in the haze of historic distance, grows to
more and more heroic proportions, but also loses in distinctness of
outline and feature. This is indeed the common lot of popular heroes;
but the Lincoln legend will be more than ordinarily apt to become
fanciful, as his individuality, assembling seemingly incongruous
qualities and forces in a character at the same time grand and most
lovable, was so unique, and his career so abounding in startling
contrasts. As the state of society in which Abraham Lincoln grew up
passes away, the world will read with increasing wonder of the man who,
not only of the humblest origin, but remaining the simplest and most
unpretending of citizens, was raised to a position of power unprecedented
in our history; who was the gentlest and most peace-loving of mortals,
unable to see any creature suffer without a pang in his own breast, and
suddenly found himself called to conduct the greatest and bloodiest of
our wars; who wielded the power of government when stern resolution and
relentless force were the order of the day and then won and ruled the
popular mind and heart by the tender sympathies of his nature; who was a
cautious conservative by temperament and mental habit, and led the most
sudden and sweeping social revolution of our time; who, preserving his
homely speech and rustic manner even in the most conspicuous position of
that period, drew upon himself the scoffs of polite society, and then
thrilled the soul of mankind with utterances of wonderful beauty and
grandeur; who, in his heart the best friend of the defeated South, was
murdered because a crazy fanatic took him for its most cruel enemy; who,
while in power, was beyond measure lampooned and maligned by sectional
passion and an excited party spirit, and around whose bier friend and foe
gathered to praise him which they have since never ceased to do--as one
of the greatest of Americans and the best of men.




ABRAHAM LINCOLN

BY JOSEPH H. CHOATE

[This Address was delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical
Institution, November 13, 1900. It is included in this set with the
courteous permission of the author and of Messrs. Thomas Y. Crowell &
Company.]


ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

When you asked me to deliver the Inaugural Address on this occasion, I
recognized that I owed this compliment to the fact that I was the
official representative of America, and in selecting a subject I ventured
to think that I might interest you for an hour in a brief study in
popular government, as illustrated by the life of the most American of
all Americans. I therefore offer no apology for asking your attention to
Abraham Lincoln--to his unique character and the part he bore in two
important achievements of modern history: the preservation of the
integrity of the American Union and the emancipation of the colored race.

During his brief term of power he was probably the object of more abuse,
vilification, and ridicule than any other man in the world; but when he
fell by the hand of an assassin, at the very moment of his stupendous
victory, all the nations of the earth vied with one another in paying
homage to his character, and the thirty-five years that have since
elapsed have established his place in history as one of the great
benefactors not of his own country alone, but of the human race.

One of many noble utterances upon the occasion of his death was that in
which 'Punch' made its magnanimous recantation of the spirit with which
it had pursued him:

"Beside this corpse that bears for winding sheet
The stars and stripes he lived to rear anew,
Between the mourners at his head and feet,
Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you?

...................

"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."

Fiction can furnish no match for the romance of his life, and biography
will be searched in vain for such startling vicissitudes of fortune, so
great power and glory won out of such humble beginnings and adverse
circumstances.

Doubtless you are all familiar with the salient points of his
extraordinary career. In the zenith of his fame he was the wise,
patient, courageous, successful ruler of men; exercising more power than
any monarch of his time, not for himself, but for the good of the people
who had placed it in his hands; commander-in-chief of a vast military
power, which waged with ultimate success the greatest war of the century;
the triumphant champion of popular government, the deliverer of four
millions of his fellowmen from bondage; honored by mankind as Statesman,
President, and Liberator.

Let us glance now at the first half of the brief life of which this was
the glorious and happy consummation. Nothing could be more squalid and
miserable than the home in which Abraham Lincoln was born--a one-roomed
cabin without floor or window in what was then the wilderness of
Kentucky, in the heart of that frontier life which swiftly moved westward
from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, always in advance of schools and
churches, of books and money, of railroads and newspapers, of all things
which are generally regarded as the comforts and even necessaries of
life. His father, ignorant, needy, and thriftless, content if he could
keep soul and body together for himself and his family, was ever seeking,
without success, to better his unhappy condition by moving on from one
such scene of dreary desolation to another. The rude society which
surrounded them was not much better. The struggle for existence was
hard, and absorbed all their energies. They were fighting the forest, the
wild beast, and the retreating savage. From the time when he could
barely handle tools until he attained his majority, Lincoln's life was
that of a simple farm laborer, poorly clad, housed, and fed, at work
either on his father's wretched farm or hired out to neighboring farmers.
But in spite, or perhaps by means, of this rude environment, he grew to
be a stalwart giant, reaching six feet four at nineteen, and fabulous
stories are told of his feats of strength. With the growth of this
mighty frame began that strange education which in his ripening years was
to qualify him for the great destiny that awaited him, and the
development of those mental faculties and moral endowments which, by the
time he reached middle life, were to make him the sagacious, patient, and
triumphant leader of a great nation in the crisis of its fate. His whole
schooling, obtained during such odd times as could be spared from
grinding labor, did not amount in all to as much as one year, and the
quality of the teaching was of the lowest possible grade, including only
the elements of reading, writing, and ciphering. But out of these simple
elements, when rightly used by the right man, education is achieved, and
Lincoln knew how to use them. As so often happens, he seemed to take
warning from his father's unfortunate example. Untiring industry, an
insatiable thirst for knowledge, and an ever-growing desire to rise above
his surroundings, were early manifestations of his character.

Books were almost unknown in that community, but the Bible was in every
house, and somehow or other Pilgrim's Progress, AEsop's Fables, a History
of the United States, and a Life of Washington fell into his hands. He
trudged on foot many miles through the wilderness to borrow an English
Grammar, and is said to have devoured greedily the contents of the
Statutes of Indiana that fell in his way. These few volumes he read and
reread--and his power of assimilation was great. To be shut in with a
few books and to master them thoroughly sometimes does more for the
development of character than freedom to range at large, in a cursory and
indiscriminate way, through wide domains of literature. This youth's
mind, at any rate, was thoroughly saturated with Biblical knowledge and
Biblical language, which, in after life, he used with great readiness and
effect. But it was the constant use of the little knowledge which he had
that developed and exercised his mental powers. After the hard day's
work was done, while others slept, he toiled on, always reading or
writing. From an early age he did his own thinking and made up his own
mind--invaluable traits in the future President. Paper was such a scarce
commodity that, by the evening firelight, he would write and cipher on
the back of a wooden shovel, and then shave it off to make room for more.
By and by, as he approached manhood, he began speaking in the rude
gatherings of the neighborhood, and so laid the foundation of that art of
persuading his fellow-men which was one rich result of his education, and
one great secret of his subsequent success.

Accustomed as we are in these days of steam and telegraphs to have every
intelligent boy survey the whole world each morning before breakfast, and
inform himself as to what is going on in every nation, it is hardly
possible to conceive how benighted and isolated was the condition of the
community at Pigeon Creek in Indiana, of which the family of Lincoln's
father formed a part, or how eagerly an ambitious and high-spirited boy,
such as he, must have yearned to escape. The first glimpse that he ever
got of any world beyond the narrow confines of his home was in 1828, at
the age of nineteen, when a neighbor employed him to accompany his son
down the river to New Orleans to dispose of a flatboat of produce--a
commission which he discharged with great success.