Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs Volume II Part 25

The representatives of that opinion maintain that contemporaries are too near the object of vision, that to them a comprehensive view is impossible, and that the successive generations of one's countrymen may be influenced by inherited pa.s.sions, or by transmitted traditions.

Some of us were Mr. Lincoln's contemporaries, and one and all we are his countrymen, and in advance we accept joyfully any qualifications of our opinions that may be made in other lands or by other ages, if qualifying facts shall be disclosed hereafter. But nearness of observation, and a knowledge of the events with which Mr. Lincoln's public life was identified, may have given to his a.s.sociates and co-workers opportunities for a sound judgment that were not possessed by contemporary critics and historians of other lands, and that the students of future times will be unable to command.

The recent practical improvements in the art of printing, the telegraph and the railway, have furnished to mankind the means of reaching safe conclusions in all matters of importance, including biography and history, with a celerity and certainty which to former ages were unknown. In these five and twenty years, since the death of Mr.

Lincoln, there has been a wonderful exposition of the events and circ.u.mstances of the stupendous contest in which he was the leading figure, and all that knowledge is now consummated on the pages of Nicolay and Hay's complete and trustworthy history. Of the minor incidents of Mr. Lincoln's career, time and research will disclose many facts not now known, which may lend coloring to a character whose main features, however, cannot be changed by time nor criticism. The nature of Mr. Lincoln's services we can comprehend, but their value will be more clearly realized and more highly appreciated by posterity.

As to the nature of those services the judgment of his own generation is final--it can never be reversed. Indeed, it may be a.s.serted of historical personages generally, that the judgment of contemporaries is never reversed. Attempts have been made to reverse the judgment of contemporaries, in the cases of Judas Iscariot, of Henry the Eighth, and of Shakespeare, and I venture the a.s.sertion that all these attempts have failed, most signally. In our own country there have been no reversals. Modifications of opinions there have been--growth in some cases, decrease in others, but absolute change in none. The country has grown towards Hamilton and away from Jefferson. They are, however, as they were at the beginning of the last century, the representatives of antagonistic ideas in government, but their common patriotism is as yet unchallenged. It is the fate of those who take an active part in public affairs, to be misjudged during their lives, but death softens the asperities of political and religious controversies and tempers the judgment of those who survive. Franklin, Was.h.i.+ngton, Jackson, Clay and Webster, are to this generation what they were to the survivors of the respective generations to which they belonged. Mr.

Calhoun has suffered by the attempt to make a practical application of his ideas of government, but the nature and dangerous character of those ideas were as fully understood at the time of his death as they are at the present moment.

I pa.s.s over as unworthy of serious consideration the detractions and attacks, sometimes thoughtless, and sometimes malicious, to which Mr.

Lincoln was subject during his administration. He made explanations and replied to these detractions and attacks only when they seemed to put in peril the fortunes of the country; but when he made replies, there were none found, either among his political friends or his political enemies who were capable of making an adequate answer.

Consult, as we may consult, his correspondence in regard to the transit of troops through Maryland, in regard to the invasion of Virginia, in case the city of Was.h.i.+ngton should be attacked or menaced from the right bank of the Potomac, in regard to the suspension of the privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_, in regard to the arrest of Vallandingham, in regard to our foreign relations, and, finally, consult his numerous papers in regard to the objects for which the war should be prosecuted, and the means, as well, by which it could be prosecuted. Consider, also, that this work was done by a man called to the head of an administration that had no predecessor, to the management of the affairs of a government distracted by civil war, its navy scattered, its treasury bankrupted, its foreign relations disturbed by a traditional and almost universal hostility to republican inst.i.tutions, and all while he was threatened constantly by an adverse public judgment in that section of the country in which his hopes rested exclusively. And consider, also, that Mr. Lincoln had had little or no experience on the statesmans.h.i.+p side of his political career, that as an attorney and advocate he had dealt only with local and munic.i.p.al laws; that he was separated by circ.u.mstances from a practical acquaintance with maritime and international jurisprudence, and yet consider further with what masterful force he rebuked timid or untrustworthy friends who would have abandoned the contest and consented to the independence of the seceding States, in the vain hope that time might aid in the recovery of that which by pusillanimity had been lost; with what serenity of manner he put aside the suggestion of Mr. Seward that war should be declared against France and Spain as a means of quieting domestic difficulties which were even then represented by contending armies; with what calmness of mind he laid aside Mr.

Greeley's letter of despair and self-reproach of July 29, 1861, and proceeded with the preparation of his programme of military operations from every base line of the armies of the Republic; with what skill and statesmanlike foresight he corrected Mr. Seward's letter to Mr. Adams in regard to the recognition by Great Britain of the belligerent character of the Confederate States; and, finally, consider with what firmness and wisdom he annulled the proclamations of Fremont and Hunter, and a.s.sumed to himself exclusively the right and the power to deal with the subject of slavery in the rebellious States. In what other time, to what other ruler have questions of such importance been presented, and under circ.u.mstances so difficult? And to what other ruler can we a.s.sign the ability to have met and to have managed successfully all the difficult problems of the Civil War? It cannot be claimed for Mr. Lincoln that he had had any instructive military experience, or that he had any technical knowledge of the military art; but it may be said with truth that his correspondence with the generals of the army, and his memoranda touching military operations indicate the presence of a military quality or facility, which in actual service might have been developed into talent or even genius.

His letter to General McClellan, of October 13, 1862, is at once a memorable evidence and a striking ill.u.s.tration of his faculty on the military side of his official career. He sets forth specifically, and in the alternative, two plans of operation, and with skill and caustic severity he contrasts the inactivity and delays of General McClellan, with the vigor of policy and activity of movement which characterized the campaign on the part of the enemy. He brings in review the facts that General McClellan's army was superior in numbers, in equipment, and in all the material of war. The President in conclusion said: "this letter is not to be considered as an order," and yet it is difficult to reconcile the continued inactivity of General McClellan with the claim of his friends that he was a patriotic, not to say an active, supporter of the cause of the Union. With that letter in hand a patriotic and sensitive commander would have acted at once upon one of the alternatives presented by the President, or he would have formed a plan of campaign for himself and ordered a movement without delay, or he would have asked the President to relieve him from duty. No one of these courses was adopted, and the policy of inactivity was continued until Lee regained the vantage ground which he abandoned when he crossed the Potomac into Maryland. It is at this point, and in this juncture of affairs that the policy of Mr. Lincoln requires the explanation of a friendly critic. The historian of the future may wonder at the procrastination of the President. He may criticize his conduct in neglecting to relieve McClellan when it was apparent that he would not avail himself of the advantages that were presented by the victory at Antietam. The explanation or apology, is this, in substance: The Army of the Potomac had been created under the eye of McClellan and the officers and men were devoted to him as their leader and chief.

They had had no opportunity for inst.i.tuting comparisons between him and other military men. After Pope's defeat, the army had been unanimous, substantially, in the opinion that McClellan should be again placed in command. The President had yielded to that opinion against his own judgment, and against the unanimous opinion of his Cabinet. Having thus yielded, it was wise to test McClellan until the confidence of the army and the country should be impaired, or, as the President hoped would be the result, until McClellan should satisfy the Administration and the army, that he was equal to the duty imposed upon him. Hence the delay until the 5th of November, when McClellan was relieved, finally, from the military service of the country.

It was known to those who were near President Lincoln, that he was a careful student of the war maps and that he had daily knowledge of the position and strength of our armies. I recall the incident of meeting President Lincoln on the steps of the Executive Mansion at about eleven o'clock in the evening of the day when the news had but just reached Was.h.i.+ngton that Grant had crossed the Black River and that the army was in the rear of Vicksburg. The President was returning from the War Office with a copy of the despatch in his hand. I said:--

"Mr. President, have you any news?" He said in reply:

"Come in, and I will tell you."

After reading the despatch, the President turned to his maps and traced the line of Grant's movements as he then understood and comprehended those movements. That night the President became cheerful, his voice took on a new tone--a tone of relief, of exhilaration--and it was evident that his faith in our ultimate success had been changed into absolute confidence. In the dark days of 1862 he had never despaired of the Republic, when others faltered, he was undismayed. He put aside the suggestion of Mr. Seward that he should surrender the chief prerogative of his office; he rebuked the suggestion of General Hooker that he should declare himself dictator; and he treated with silent contempt the advice of General McClellan, from Harrison's Landing, in July, 1862, that the President should put himself at the head of the army with a general in command, on whom he could rely, and thus a.s.sume the dictators.h.i.+p of the Republic. He a.s.serted for himself every prerogative that the laws and the Const.i.tution conferred upon him, and he declined to a.s.sume any power not warranted by the t.i.tle of office which he held. He was resolute in his purpose to perform every duty that devolved upon him, but he declared that the responsibility of preserving the Government rested upon the people.

Of the officers who successively were at the head of the Army of the Potomac, none ever possessed his entire confidence, until General Grant a.s.sumed that command, in person. His letter to General Grant when he entered upon the Campaign of the Wilderness contains conclusive evidence that his confidence was given to that officer, without reservation.

Turning again to the civil side of his administration, consider the steps by which he led the country up to the point where it was willing to accept the abolition of slavery in the States engaged in the rebellion. History must soon address itself to generations of Americans who will have had no knowledge of the inst.i.tution of slavery as an existing fact. Indeed, at the present moment, more than two thirds of the population of the United States have no memory of the time when slavery was the dominating force in the politics of the country, when it was interwoven in the daily domestic life of the inhabitants of fifteen States; when it muzzled the press, perverted the Scriptures, compelled the pulpit to become its apologist, and when successive generations of statesmen were brought down on an "equality of servitude" before an irresponsible and unt.i.tled oligarchy.

As early as 1839, Mr. Clay estimated the value of the slaves at $1,200,000,000, and upon the same basis, their value in 1860, exceeded $2,000,000,000. This estimate conveys only an inadequate idea of the power of slavery and it presents only an imperfect view of the difficulties which confronted Mr. Lincoln in 1861 and 1862. Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri were slave States, and all of them, with the exception of Delaware, were hesitating between secession and the cause of the Union. They were in favor of the Union, if slavery could be saved with the Union, but it was doubtful in all the year 1861, whether those States could be held, to the "Lincoln Government" as it was derisively called, if the abolition of slavery were a recognized part of our public policy. Nor is this even yet a full statement of the difficulties which confronted Mr. Lincoln. With varying degrees of intensity, the Democratic Party of the North sympathized with the South in its attempts to dissolve the Union.

During the entire period of the war, New York, Ohio and Indiana were divided States, and Indiana was only kept in line by the active and desperate fidelity of Oliver P. Morton. In the presence of these difficulties Mr. Lincoln recommended the purchase of all the slaves in the States not in rebellion; then he suggested the deportation of the manumitted slaves and the free blacks, to Central America, and for this purpose an appropriation was made; then came the proposition to give pecuniary aid to States that might voluntarily make provision for the abolition of slavery, and then came, finally, the statute of July, 1862, by which slaves captured, and the slaves of all persons engaged in the rebellion were declared to be free. It is not probable that Mr.

Lincoln entertained the opinion that these measures, one or all, would secure the complete abolition of slavery, but they gave to the slave- holders of the border States an opportunity to obtain compensation for the loss of their slaves, and the pendency of these propositions occupied the attention of the country while the formative processes were going on, which matured finally in the opinion that slavery and the Union could no longer co-exist. In the same time the country arrived at the conclusion that separation and continuous peace were impossible.

The alternative was this: Slavery, a division of territory, and a condition of permanent hostility on the one side; and on the other, a union of States, domestic peace, a government of imperial power, with equality of citizens.h.i.+p in the States and an equality of States in the Union. Thus his measures, which were at once measures of expediency and of delay, prepared the public mind to receive his monitory Proclamation of September 1862. In that time the border States had come to realize the fact that the negroes were no longer valuable as property, and they therefore accepted emanc.i.p.ation as a means of ending the controversy.

To the Republicans of the North, the Proclamation was a welcome message; to the Democrats it was a result which they had predicted, and against which they had in vain protested. But the controversy would not have ended with the war. Slavery existed in the States that had not partic.i.p.ated in the rebellion, and the legality of the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation might be drawn in question in the courts. One thing more was wanted, an amendment to the Const.i.tution abolis.h.i.+ng slavery everywhere within the jurisdiction of the Government. This was secured after a protracted struggle, and the result was due in a pre-eminent degree to the personal and official influence of Mr. Lincoln. In one phrase it may be said that every power of his office was exerted to secure the pa.s.sage, in the Thirty-eighth Congress, of the resolution, by which the proposed amendment was submitted to the States. Mr.

Lincoln did not live to see the consummation of his great undertaking, in the cause of Freedom, but the work of ratification by the States was accelerated by his death, and on the 18th day of December, 1865, Mr. Seward, then Secretary of State of the United States, made proclamation that the amendment had been ratified by twenty-seven of the thirty-six States then composing the Union, and that slavery and involuntary servitude were from that time and forever forth impossible within our limits. Such was then the universal opinion in all America.

It was our example that wrought the abolition of slavery in Brazil, and in colonies of Spain and Portugal; it has led to the extermination of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and it was an inspiration to the nations of Europe in their effort to destroy the traffic in human beings on the continent of Africa.

There is an aspect of Mr. Lincoln's career, which must attract general attention and command universal sympathy. His loneliness in his office and in the performance of his duties is deeply pathetic. It is true that Congress accepted and endorsed his measures as they were presented from time to time, but there were bitter complaints on account of his delays on the slavery question, and not infrequently doubts were expressed as to the sincerity of his avowed opinions. There were little intrigues in Congress, and personal aspirations in the Cabinet in regard to the succession. Of the commanders of the Army of the Potomac from McDowell to Meade, each and all had failed to win victories, or they had failed to secure the reasonable advantages of victories won. There were divisions in the Cabinet which were aggravated by personal rivalries. On one occasion, leading Republican members of Congress engaged in a movement for a change in the Cabinet; a movement which was without a precedent and wholly dest.i.tute of justification under our system of government.

His want of faith in his Cabinet was shown in his preliminary statement when he proceeded to read the Proclamation of Emanc.i.p.ation. Mr. Lincoln was then about to take the most important step ever taken by a President of the United States and yet he informed the men, the only men whose opinions he could command by virtue of his office that the main question was not open for discussion; that the question had been by him already decided, and that suggestions from them would be received only in reference to the formalities of the doc.u.ment.

It may be the truth, and our estimation of Mr. Lincoln would not be lowered, if, indeed, it were shown to be the truth, that he chose to act upon his own judgment in a matter of the supremest gravity, and in which, from the nature of the case, the sole responsibility was upon him. On the great question of the abolition of slavery his mind reached a definite conclusion, a conclusion on which he could act, but neither too early nor too late. The Proclamation was issued at a moment when the exigencies of the war justified its issue as a military necessity, and when, as a concurrent fact, the public mind was first prepared to receive it, and to give to the measure the requisite support.

Mr. Lincoln prepared the way for the reorganization of the government.

Under him the old order of things was overthrown and the introduction of a new order became possible. Through his agency the Const.i.tution of the United States has been brought into harmony with the Declaration of Independence. The system of slavery has perished, the inst.i.tutions of the country have been reconciled to the principles of freedom, and in these changes we have additional guarantees for the perpetuity of the Union.

A just eulogy of Mr. Lincoln is a continuing encomium of the Republican Party. By the election of 1860 he became the head of that party and during the four years and more of his official life he never claimed to be better nor wiser than the party with which he was identified.

From first to last he had the full confidence of the army and of the ma.s.ses of the voters in the Republican Party, and of that confidence Mr. Lincoln was always a.s.sured. Hence he was able to meet the aspirations of rivals and the censures of the disappointed with a good degree of composure. To the honor of the ma.s.ses of the Republican Party it can be said that they never faltered in their devotion to the President and in that devotion and in the fidelity of the President to the principles of the party were the foundations laid on which the greatness of the country rests.

The measure of grat.i.tude due to Mr. Lincoln and to the Republican Party may be estimated by a comparison of the condition of the country when he accepted power in March, 1861, with its condition in 1885, and in 1893, when we yielded the administration to the successors of the men who had well-nigh wrecked the Government in a former generation.

The Republican Party found the Union a ma.s.s of sand; it left it a structure of granite. It found the Union a by-word among the nations of the earth, it left it ill.u.s.trious and envied, for the exhibition of warlike powers, for the development of our industrial and financial resources in times of peace, for the unwavering fidelity with which every pecuniary obligation was met; for the generous treatment measured out with an unstinted hand to the conquered foe; and, finally, for the cheerful recognition of the duty resting upon the Republican Party and upon the country to enfranchise, to raise up, to recreate the millions that had been brought out of bondage.

This work was not accomplished fully in Mr. Lincoln's time, but he was the leader of ideas and policies which could have no other consummation.

At the end it must be said of Mr. Lincoln that he was a great man, in a great place, burdened with great responsibilities, coupled with great opportunities, which he used for the benefit of his country and for the welfare of the human race. Among American statesmen he is conspicuously alone. From Was.h.i.+ngton to Grant he is separated by the absence on his part of military service and military renown. On the statesmans.h.i.+p side of his career, there is no one from Was.h.i.+ngton along the entire line who can be considered as the equal or the rival of Lincoln.

And we may wisely commit to other ages and perhaps to other lands the full discussion and final decision of the relative claims of Was.h.i.+ngton and Lincoln to the first place in the list of American statesmen.

XLIV SPEECH ON COLUMBUS

DELIVERED AT GROTON, Ma.s.s., OCTOBER 21, 1892

We celebrate this day as the anniversary of the discovery of the American continent.

"The hand that rounded Peter's dome.

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from G.o.d he could not free; He builded better than he knew."

Of these lines of Emerson, the last three are as true of Columbus, as of

"The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,"

for he, too,

"Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from G.o.d he could not free; He builded better than he knew."

And shall we therefore say that he is not worthy of praise, of tribute, of memorials, of anniversary days, of centennial years, of national and international gatherings and exhibitions, that in some degree mankind may ill.u.s.trate and dignify, if they will, the events that have followed the opening of a new world to our advanced and advancing civilization?

In great deeds, in great events, in great names, there is a sort of immortality, an innate capacity for living, a tendency to growth, to expansion, and thus what was but of little comment in the beginning is seen, often after the lapse of years, possibly only after the lapse of centuries, to have been freighted with consequences whose value can only be measured by the yearly additions to the sum of human happiness.

Franklin's experiments in electricity were followed at once by the common lightning-rod, but a century pa.s.sed before the electrical power was utilized, and made subservient, in some degree, to the control of men.

Every decade of three centuries has added to the greatness of that one immortal name in the literature of the whole English speaking race. The security for the world that the name of Shakespeare and the writings of Shakespeare cannot die may be found in the selfishness, the intelligent selfishness of mankind, which will struggle constantly to preserve and to magnify a possession which if once lost, could never be regained.

After four centuries of delay we have come to realize, with some degree of accuracy, the magnitude of the event called the Discovery of America.

Identified with that event, and as its author, is the man Columbus.

Involved in controversies while living, the object of the base pa.s.sions of envy, hatred and jealousy, consigned finally to chains and to prison, and in death ignorant of the magnitude of the discovery that he had made, there seemed but slight basis for the conjecture that his name was destined to become the one immortal name in the annals of modern Italy and Spain.

As if accident and fate and the paltry ambitions of men had combined to rob Columbus of his just t.i.tle to fame, the name of the double continent that he discovered was given to another. To that other the name remains, but the continent itself has become the continent of Columbus.

In connection with the event no other name is known, and so it will ever be in all the centuries of the future.

In these years we are inaugurating a series of centennial anniversary celebrations in honor of Columbus, and in testimony of the importance of the discovery that he made. This we do as the greatest of the states that have arisen on the continent that he discovered, and I delay what I have to say of Columbus and of the discovery that I may express my regret and the reasons for my regret, that the celebration and the ceremonies have not been made distinctively and exclusively national.

In this I do not disparage, on the other hand I exalt, the public spirit, the capacity for large undertakings, the will and the courage of the city and the citizens of Chicago in a.s.suming burdens and responsibilities from which any other city on this continent would have shrunk.

My point is this: If the people and Government of the United States were of the opinion that the discovery of a continent--a continent in which one of the great governments of the world has found an abiding place--was worthy of a centennial celebration, then the conduct of the celebration ought not to have been left to the care of any community less than the whole. Nor is it an unworthy thought that something of dignity would have been added to the celebration if the nations of the earth could have been invited to the capital which bears the name of the discoverer of the continent and the founder of the Republic.

There are occasions which confer greatness upon an orator. Such are revolutionary periods, the overthrow of states, radical changes in a long-settled public policy, struggles for power, empire, dominion.

These and kindred exigencies in the affairs of men and states, seem to create, or at least to furnish opportunity and scope for, statesmen, orators, poets and soldiers.