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Part II
Part II
Mr. Lincoln is sometimes claimed as an example of a ready-made ruler.
But no case could well be less in point; for, besides that he was a man of
such fair-mindedness as is always the raw material of wisdom, he had in his
profession a training precisely the opposite of that to which a partisan is
subjected. His experience as a lawyer compelled him not only to see that there
is a principle underlying every phenomenon in human affairs, but that there
are always two sides to every question, both of which must be fully understood
in order to understand either, and that it is of greater advantage to an
advocate to appreciate the strength than the weakness of his antagonist`s
position. Nothing is more remarkable than the unerring tact with which, in his
debate with Mr. Douglas, he went straight to the reason of the question; nor
have we ever had a more striking lesson in political tactics than the fact,
that, opposed to a man exceptionally adroit in using popular prejudice and
bigotry to his purpose, exceptionally unscrupulous in appealing to those baser
motives that turn a meeting of citizens into a mob of barbarians, he should
yet have won his case before a jury of the people. Mr. Lincoln was as far as
possible from an impromptu politician. His wisdom was made up of a knowledge
of things as well as of men; his sagacity resulted from a clear perception and
honest acknowledgment of difficulties, which enabled him to see that the only
durable triumph of political opinion is based, not on any abstract right, but
upon so much of justice, the highest attainable at any given moment in human
affairs, as may be had in the balance of mutual concession. Doubtless he had
an ideal, but it was the ideal of a practical statesman, - to aim at the best,
and to take the next best, if he is lucky enough to get even that. His slow,
but singularly masculine, intelligence taught him that precedent is only an
other name for embodied experience, and that it counts for even more in the
guidance of communities of men than in that of the individual life. He was not
a man who held it good public economy to pull down on the mere chance of
rebuilding better. Mr. Lincoln`s faith in God was qualified by a very well -
founded distrust of the wisdom of man. Perhaps it was his want of self -
confidence that more than anything else won him the unlimited confidence of
the people, for they felt that there would be no need of retreat from any
position he had deliberately taken. The cautious, but steady, advance of his
policy during the war was like that of a Roman army. He left behind him a firm
road on which public confidence could follow; he took America with him where
he went; what he gained he occupied, and his advanced posts became colonies.
The very homeliness of his genius was its distinction. His kingship was
conspicuous by its workday homespun. Never was ruler so absolute as he nor so
little conscious of it; for he was the incarnate common-sense of the people.
With all that tenderness of nature whose sweet sadness touched whoever saw him
with something of its own pathos, there was no trace of sentimentalism in his
speech or action. He seems to have had but one rule of conduct, always that of
practical and successful politics, to let himself be guided by events, when
they were sure to bring him out where he wished to go, though by what seemed
to unpractical minds, which let go the possible to grasp at the desirable, a
longer road.
Undoubtedly the highest function of statesmanship is by degrees to
accommodate the conduct of communities to ethical laws, and to subordinate the
conflicting self-interests of the day to higher and more permanent concerns.
But it is on the understanding, and not on the sentiment, of a nation that all
safe legislation must be based. Voltaire`s saying, that "a consideration of
petty circumstances is the tomb of great things," may be true of individual
men, but it certainly is not true of governments. It is by a multitude of such
considerations, each in itself trifling, but all together weighty, that the
framers of policy can alone divine what is practicable and therefore wise. The
imputation of inconsistency is one to which every sound politician and every
honest thinker must sooner or later subject himself. The foolish and the dead
alone never change their opinion. The course of a great statesman resembles
that of navigable rivers, avoiding immovable obstacles with noble bends of
concession, seeking the broad levels of opinion on which men soonest settle
and longest dwell, following and marking the almost imperceptible slopes of
national tendency, yet always aiming at direct advances, always recruited from
sources nearer heaven, and sometimes bursting open paths of progress and
fruitful human commerce through what seem the eternal barriers of both. It is
loyalty to great ends, even though force to combine the small and opposing
motives of selfish men to accomplish them; it is the anchored cling to solid
principles of duty and action, which knows how to swing with the tide, but is
never carried away by it, - that we demand in public men, and not obstinacy in
prejudice, sameness of policy, or a conscientious persistency in what is
impracticable. For the impracticable, however theoretically enticing, is
always politically unwise, sound statesmanship being the application of that
prudence to the public business which is the safest guide in that of private
men.
No doubt slavery was the most delicate and embarrassing question with
which Mr. Lincoln was called on to deal, and it was one which no man in his
position, whatever his opinions, could evade; for, though he might withstand
the clamor of partisans, he must sooner or later yield to the persistent
importunacy of circumstances, which thrust the problem upon him at every turn
and in every shape.
It has been brought against us as an accusation abroad and repeated here
by people who measure their country rather by what is thought of it than by
what it is, that our war has not been distinctly and avowedly for the
extinction of slavery, but a war rather for the preservation of our national
power and greatness, in which the emancipation of the negro has been forced
upon us by circumstances and accepted as a necessity. We are very far from
denying this; nay, we admit that it is so far true that we were slow to
renounce our constitutional obligations even toward those who had absolved us
by their own act from the letter of our duty. We are speaking of the
government which, legally installed for the whole country, was bound, so long
as it was possible, not to overstep the limits of orderly prescription, and
could not, without abnegating its own very nature, take the lead in making
rebellion an excuse for revolution. There were, no doubt, many ardent and
sincere persons who seemed to think this as simple a thing to do as to lead
off a Virginia reel. They forgot what should be forgotten least of all in a
system like ours, that the administration for the time being represents not
only the majority which elects it, but the minority as well, - a minority in
this case powerful, and so little ready for emancipation that it was opposed
even to war. Mr. Lincoln had not been chosen as general agent of an
antislavery society, but President of the United States, to perform certain
functions exactly defined by law. What ever were his wishes, it was no less
duty than policy to mark out for himself a line of action that would not
further distract the country, by raising before their time questions which
plainly would soon enough compel attention, and for which every day was making
the answer more easy.
Meanwhile he must solve the riddle of this new Sphinx, or be devoured.
Though Mr. Lincoln`s policy in this critical affair has not been such as to
satisfy those who demand an heroic treatment for even the most trifling
occasion, and who will not cut their coat according to their cloth, unless
they can borrow the scissors of Atropos, it has been at least not unworthy of
the long-headed king of Ithaca. Mr. Lincoln, had the choice of Bassanio
offered him. Which of the three caskets held the prize that was to redeem the
fortunes of the country? There was the golden one whose showy speciousness
might have tempted a vain man; the silver of compromise, which might have
decided the choice of a merely acute one; and the leaden, - dull and homely
looking, as prudence always is, - yet with something about it sure to attract
the eye of practical wisdom. Mr. Lincoln dallied with his decision perhaps
longer than seemed needful to those on whom its awful responsibility was not
to rest, but when he made it, it was worthy of his cautious but sure-footed
understanding. The moral of the Sphinx-riddle, and it is a deep one, lies in
the childish simplicity of the solution. Those who fail in guessing it, fail
because they are over-ingenious, and cast about for an answer that shall
suit their own notion of the gravity of the occasion and of their own dignity,
rather than the occasion itself.
In a matter which must be finally settled by public opinion, and in
regard to which the ferment of prejudice and passion on both sides has not yet
subsided to that equilibrium of compromise from which alone a sound public
opinion can result, it is proper enough for the private citizen to press his
own convictions with all possible force of argument and persuasion; but the
popular magistrate, whose judgment must become action, and whose action
involves the whole country, is bound to wait till the sentiment of the people
is so far advanced toward his own point of view, that what he does shall find
support in it, instead of merely confusing it with new elements of division.
It was not unnatural that men earnestly devoted to the saving of their
country, and profoundly convinced that slavery was its only real enemy, should
demand a decided policy round which all patriots might rally, - and this might
have been the wisest course for an absolute ruler. But in the then unsettled
state of the public mind, with a large party decrying even resistance to the
slaveholder`s rebellion as not only unwise, but even unlawful; with a
majority, perhaps, even of the would-be loyal so long accustomed to regard
the Constitution as a deed of gift conveying to the South their own judgment
as to policy and instinct as to right, that they were in doubt at first
whether their loyalty were due to the country or to slavery; and with a
respectable body of honest and influential men who still believed in the
possibility of conciliation, - Mr. Lincoln judged wisely, that, in laying down
a policy in deference to one party, he should be giving to the other the very
fulcrum for which their disloyalty had been waiting.
I behooved a clear-headed man in his position not to yield so far to an
honest indignation against the brokers of treason in the North as to lose
sight of the materials for misleading which were their stock in trade, and to
forget that it is not the falsehood of sophistry which is to be feared, but
the grain of truth mingled with it to make it specious, - that it is not the
knavery of the leaders so much as the honesty of the followers they may
seduce, that gives them power for evil. It was especially his duty to do
nothing which might help the people to forget the true cause of the war in
fruitless disputes about its inevitable consequences.
The doctrine of state rights can be so handled by an adroit demagogue as
easily to confound the distinction between liberty and lawlessness in the
minds of ignorant persons, accustomed always to be influenced by the sound of
certain words, rather than to reflect upon the principles which give them
meaning. For, though Secession involves the manifest absurdity of denying to a
State the right of making war against any foreign power while permitting it
against the United States; though it supposes a compact of mutual concessions
and guaranties among States without any arbiter in case of dissension; though
it contradicts common-sense in assuming that the men who framed our
government did not know what they meant when they substituted Union for
Confederation; though it falsifies history, which shows that the main
opposition to the adoption of the Constitution was based on the argument that
it did not allow that independence in the several States which alone would
justify them in seceding; - yet, as slavery was universally admitted to be a
reserved right, an inference could be drawn from any direct attack upon it
(though only in self-defence) to a natural right of resistance, logical
enough to satisfy minds untrained to detect fallacy, as the majority of men
always are, and now too much disturbed by the disorder of the times to
consider that the order of events had any legitimate bearing on the argument.
Though Mr. Lincoln was too sagacious to give the Northern allies of the Rebels
the occasion they desired and even strove to provoke, yet from the beginning
of the war the most persistent efforts have been made to confuse the public
mind as to its origin and motives, and to drag the people of the loyal States
down from the national position they had instinctively taken to the old level
of party squabbles and antipathies. The wholly unprovoked rebellion of an
oligarchy proclaiming negro slavery the corner-stone of free institutions,
and in the first flush of over-hasty confidence venturing to parade the
logical sequence of their leading dogma, "that slavery is right in principle,
and has nothing to do with difference of complexion," has been represented as
a legitimate and gallant attempt to maintain the true principles of democracy.
The rightful endeavor of an established government, the least onerous that
ever existed, to defend itself against a treacherous attack on its very
existence, has been cunningly made to seem the wicked effort of a fanatical
clique to force its doctrines on an oppressed population.
Even so long ago as when Mr. Lincoln, not yet convinced of the danger and
magnitude of the crisis, was endeavoring to persuade himself of Union
majorities at the South, and to carry on a war that was half peace in the hope
of a peace that would have been all war, - while he was still enforcing the
Fugitive Slave Law, under some theory that Secession, however it might absolve
States from their obligations, could not escheat them of their claims under
the Constitution, and that slaveholders in rebellion had alone among mortals
the privilege of having their cake and eating it at the same time, - the
enemies of free government were striving to persuade the people that the war
was an Abolition crusade. To rebel without reason was proclaimed as one of the
rights of man, while it was carefully kept out of sight that to suppress
rebellion is the first duty of government. All the evils that have come up the
country have been attributed to the Abolitionists, though it is hard to see
how any party can become permanently powerful except in one of two ways, -
either by the greater truth of its principles, or the extravagance of the
party opposed to it. To fancy the ship of state, riding safe at her
constitutional moorings, suddenly engulfed by a huge kraken of Abolitionism,
rising from unknown depths and grasping it with slimy tentacles, is to look at
the natural history of the matter with the eyes of Pontoppidan. To believe
that the leaders in the Southern treason feared any danger from Abolitionism
would be to deny them ordinary intelligence, though there can be little doubt
that they made use of it to stir the passions and excite the fears of their
deluded accomplices. They rebelled, not because they thought slavery weak, but
because they believed it strong enough, not to overthrow the government, but
to get possession of it; for it becomes daily clearer that they used rebellion
only as a means of revolution, and if they got revolution, though not in the
shape they looked for, is the American people to save them from its
consequences at the cost of its own existence? The election of Mr. Lincoln,
which it was clearly in their power to prevent had they wished, was the
occasion merely, and not the cause, of their revolt. Abolitionism, till within
a year or two, was the despised heresy of a few earnest persons, without
political weight enough to carry the election of a parish constable; and their
cardinal principle was disunion, because they were convinced that within the
Union the position of slavery was impregnable. In spite of the proverb, great
effects do not follow from small causes, - that is, disproportionately small,
- but from adequate causes acting under certain required conditions. To
contrast the size of the oak with that of the parent acorn, as if the poor
seed had paid all costs from its slender strong-box, may serve for a child`s
wonder; but the real miracle lies in that divine league which bound all the
forces of nature to the service of the tiny germ in fulfilling its destiny.
Everything has been at work for the past ten years in the cause of anti -
slavery, but Garrison and Phillips have been far less successful propagandists
than the slaveholders themselves, with the constantly growing arrogance of
their pretensions and encroachments. They have forced the question upon the
attention of every voter in the Free States, by defiantly putting freedom and
democracy on the defensive. But, even after the Kansas outrages, there was no
wide-spread desire on the part of the North to commit aggressions, though
there was a growing determination to resist them. The popular unanimity in
favor of the war three years ago was but in small measure the result of anti -
slavery sentiment, far less of any zeal for abolition. But every month of the
war, every movement of the allies of slavery in the Free States, has been
making Abolitionists by the thousand. The masses of any people, however
intelligent, are very little moved by abstract principles of humanity and
justice, until those principles are interpreted for them by the stinging
commentary of some infringement upon their own rights, and then their
instincts and passions, once aroused, do indeed derive an incalculable
reinforcement of impulse and intensity from those higher ideas, those sublime
traditions, which have no motive political force till they are allied with a
sense of immediate personal wrong or imminent peril. Then at last the stars in
their courses begin to fight against Sisera. Had any one doubted before that
the rights of human nature are unitary, that oppression is of one hue the
world over, no matter what the color of the oppressed, - had any one failed to
see what the real essence of the contest was, - the efforts of the advocates
of slavery among ourselves to throw discredit upon the fundamental axioms of
the Declaration of independence and the radical doctrines of Christianity
could not fail to sharpen his eyes.
While every day was bringing the people nearer to the conclusion which
all thinking men saw to be inevitable from the beginning, it was wise in Mr.
Lincoln to leave the shaping of his policy to events. In this country, where
the rough and ready understanding of the people is sure at last to be the
controlling power, a profound common-sense is the best genius for
statesmanship. Hitherto, the wisdom of the President`s measures has been
justified by the fact that they have always resulted in more firmly uniting
public opinion. One of the things particularly admirable in the public
utterances of President Lincoln is a certain tone of familiar dignity, which,
while it is perhaps the most difficult attainment of mere style, is also no
doubtful indication on personal character. There must be something essentially
noble in an elective ruler who can descend to the level of confidential ease
without forfeiting respect, something very manly in one who can break through
the etiquette of his conventional rank and trust himself to the reason and
intelligence of those who have elected him. No higher compliment was ever paid
to a nation than the simple confidence, the fireside plainness, with which Mr.
Lincoln always addresses himself to the reason of the American people. This
was, indeed, a true democrat, who grounded himself on the assumption that a
democracy can think. "Come, let us reason together about this matter," has
been the tone of all his addresses to the people; and accordingly we have
never had a chief magistrate who so won to himself the love and at the same
time the judgment of his countrymen. To us, that simple confidence of his in
the right-mindedness of his fellow-men is very touching, and its success
is as strong an argument as we have ever seen in favor of the theory that men
can govern themselves. He never appeals to any vulgar sentiment, he never
alludes to the humbleness of his origin; it probably never occurred to him,
indeed, that there was anything higher to start from than manhood; and he put
himself on a level with those he addressed, not by going down to them, but
only by taking it for granted that they had brains and would come up to a
common ground of reason. In an article lately printed in "The Tation," Mr.
Bayard Taylor mentions the striking fact, that in the foulest dens of the Five
Points he found the portrait of Lincoln. The wretched population that makes
its hive there threw all its votes and more against him, and yet paid this
instinctive tribute to the sweet humanity of his nature. Their ignorance sold
its vote and took its money, but all that was left of manhood it them
recognized its saint and martyr.
Mr. Lincoln is not in the habit of saying, "This is my opinion, or my
theory," but, "This is the conclusion to which, in my judgment, the time has
come, and to which, accordingly, the sooner we come the better for us." His
policy has been the policy of public opinion based on adequate discussion and
on a timely recognition of the influence of passing events in shaping the
features of events to come.
One secret of Mr. Lincoln`s remarkable success in captivating the popular
mind is undoubtedly an unconsciousness of self which enables him, though under
the necessity of constantly using the capital I, to do it without any
suggestion of egotism. There is no single vowel which men`s mouths can
pronounce with such difference of effect. That which one shall hide away, as
it were, behind the substance of his discourse, or, if he bring it to the
front, shall use merely to give an agreeable accent of individuality to what
he says, another shall make an offensive challenge to the self-satisfaction
of all his hearers, and an unwarranted intrusion upon each man`s sense of
personal importance, irritating every pore of his vanity, like a dry northeast
wind, to a goose-flesh of opposition and hostility. Mr. Lincoln has never
studied Quinctilian; but he has, in the earnest simplicity and unaffected
Americanism of his own character, one art of oratory worth all the rest. He
forgets himself so entirely in his object as to give his I the sympathetic and
persuasive effect of We with the great body of his countrymen. Homely,
dispassionate, showing all the rough-edged process of his thought as it goes
along, yet arriving at his conclusions with an honest kind every-day logic,
he is so eminently our representative man, that, when he speaks, it seems as
if the people were listening to their own thinking aloud. The dignity of his
thought owes nothing to any ceremonial garb of words, but to the manly
movement that comes of settled purpose and an energy of reason that knows not
what rhetoric means. There has been nothing of Cleon, still less of
Strepsiades striving to underbid him in demagogism, to be found in the public
utterances of Mr. Lincoln. He has always addressed the intelligence of men,
never their prejudice, their passion, or their ignorance.
On the day of his death, this simple Western attorney, who according to
one party was a vulgar joker, and whom the doctrinaires among his own
supporters accused of wanting every element of statesmanship, was the most
absolute ruler in Christendom, and this solely by the hold his good-humored
sagacity had laid on the hearts and understandings of his countrymen. Nor was
this all, for it appeared that he had drawn the great majority, not only of
his fellow-citizens, but of mankind also, to his side. So strong and so
persuasive is honest manliness without a single quality of romance or unreal
sentiment to help it! A civilian during times of the most captivating military
achievement, awkward, with no skill in the lower technicalities of manners, he
left behind him a fame beyond that of any conqueror, the memory of a grace
higher than that of outward person, and of a gentlemanliness deeper than mere
breeding. Never before that startled April morning did such multitudes of men
shed tears for the death of one they had never seen, as if with him a friendly
presence had been taken away from their lives, leaving them colder and darker.
Never was funeral panegyric so eloquent as the silent look of sympathy which
strangers exchanged when they met on that day. Their common manhood had lost a
kinsman.
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