Abraham Lincoln's Cardinal Traits Part 10

And he took full pains in this address to give G.o.d all the praise. And so his reverence towards Deity, and his affirmation touching righteousness became identical. His sense of equity stood clothed in piety.

In the second place, deep within the heart of these divine instructions were such unveilings of G.o.d's high majesty, in his steadfast reign above the pa.s.sing centuries, as awoke on Lincoln's lips such lowly adoration as attuned these words of G.o.dly statesmans.h.i.+p unto a psalm of praise. Here Lincoln's lowliness attains consummate beauty. It is indeed an utterance of profound abas.e.m.e.nt. It sinks beneath a strong rebuke. It acknowledges sad wanderings. It accepts correction, and meekly takes G.o.d's guiding hand. It also sees G.o.d's excellence, his high thoughts and ways, his irresistible dominion, his moral spotlessness. And before that revelation he humbly walks among his fellow-citizens, the lowliest of them all, confessing that the reproach involved in what he said fell heaviest upon himself; and therein, as a priest, leading the Nation in an act of wors.h.i.+pping submissiveness before the Lord. Herein his comely, moral modesty becomes an act and att.i.tude of simple reverence towards G.o.d. And thus his humility, just like his sense of righteousness, becomes apparelled all about with G.o.dly piety.

In the third place, this new discernment of the ways of G.o.d unfolds profound discoveries of the divine evaluation of the diverse, contending interests in our commingled life. It makes clear which values fade, and which s.h.i.+ne on eternally. The problem upon which Lincoln had transfixed his eye was that two and one-half centuries of hard and sad embondagement. By that gross sin men's deathless souls were bought and sold for transient gain. Past all denial, therein was moral wrong; else moral wrong had no existence. Its presence, every time he faced it, tortured Lincoln, and made him miserable. And it affronted heaven, overturning G.o.d's creative fiat of equality in all mankind. It set and ranked brief creature comforts and desires above the worth of heaven's image in a brother man. Every day it challenged heaven's curse. But heaven's judgment was delayed. Long centuries seemed to show that heaven was indifferent whether human souls or carnal pleasures held superior rank.

But now, within the awful tumult of the war there boomed an undertone, conveying unto all who had quick ears to hear, how G.o.d adjudged that wrong. Upon dark battle clouds shone heavenly light, making newly plain G.o.d's estimate of slaveholder and of slave; of joys and gains that perish with their use, or await recall; and of souls that never die. Those awful tidings told how ill-gotten, carnal wealth is mortgaged under woe, and to the uttermost farthing must be released; how offending men affront the Lord; and how all offenses must be avenged. They made full clear how he who grasps at earthly gain by wrecking human dignity commits a primal sin--a sin that time, though it run into centuries, cannot obscure, or mitigate, or exempt from strict review. They reveal infallibly that G.o.d's pure eye is on G.o.d's image in every son of man; that supreme, far-seeing ends are lodged in all the good but unenduring gifts wherewith G.o.d's wise and kindly bounties crown man's toil; that a perfect moral government holds dominion everywhere and forevermore; and that beneath this rule, in G.o.d's own time, it shall come supremely clear that feasts and luxury and fine attire, that wealth and l.u.s.t and pampered flesh have lesser worth and pa.s.s away, while souls of men may thrive, and gain, and win new worth eternally.

As Lincoln's eye reviewed these centuries of reveling wealth, and impoverished hearts; and beheld, in the issues of the resultant war, that wealth laid waste, and those pure hearts fed and filled with hope and liberty; his wisdom to compare all earth-born, mortal things with things unperis.h.i.+ng and heavenly pa.s.sed through new birth, new growth to new completeness in depth and clarity and confidence. And all this gain to Lincoln, while wholly ethical, dealing as it did with the wrong and right in human slavery and liberty, owed all its increase to truer understanding of the Lord. Here again his ethics was purified by faith. His faith was deeply ethical. As with his lowliness, and his rect.i.tude, so with his moral valuation of the human soul. It was vestured all about with G.o.dly piety.

In the fourth place, within the awful wreckage of the war, with which this last inaugural is so absorbed, there were mighty attestations that G.o.d was pitiful. That war could be defined as G.o.d's vengeance on man's cruelty. Precisely this was what Lincoln grew to see. To all who toiled in slavery the war had brought deliverance. Thereby the stinging lash was s.n.a.t.c.hed from human hands; the human heel was thrust from human necks; the shameless havoc of the homes of lowly men was stayed; countless sufferings were a.s.suaged; and true blessedness was restored to souls hard-wonted to unrelenting grief.

And this achievement was alone the Lord's. Of all down-trodden men high heaven became the champion. In all its awful judgments he who ruled that conflict remembered mercy. High above all the b.l.o.o.d.y carnage of those swords there swayed the scepter of the All-pitiful.

In the very doom upon the strong G.o.d wrought redemption for the poor.

And so, as that dreadful wreckage brought to nothing all the pride in the extorted gain of centuries, it published most impressively that he who reigned above all centuries was All-compa.s.sionate.

To this great thought of G.o.d, Lincoln keyed this last inaugural. The majesty of G.o.d's sovereign law of purity and righteousness was robed in kindliness. Into this high truth ascended Lincoln's patriot hope.

Let men henceforth forswear all cruelty, and follow G.o.d in showing all who suffer their costliest sympathy. This was a mighty longing in his great heart, as he prepared this speech. Before G.o.d's vindication of the meek, let the merciless grow merciful. Yea, let all the land, for all the land had taken part in human cruelty, confess its wrong, accept G.o.d's scourge without complaint, thus opening every heart to G.o.d's free, healing grace, and binding all the land in leagues of friendliness. Let men, like G.o.d, be pitiful. Like G.o.d, let men be merciful. In mutual sympathy let all make clear how men of every sort may yet resemble G.o.d, the All-compa.s.sionate. This was the trend and strength of Lincoln's gentleness, as it stood and wrought in full maturity beneath G.o.d's discipline, within this last inaugural. It was nothing but an echo and reflection of the gentleness of G.o.d. And so, in his benignity, as in his rect.i.tude and lowliness and purity, he stood in this address attired in G.o.dly piety.

So Lincoln's ethics can be described, in his ripened harvest-tide of life. So it stands in this inaugural. It is alike a living code for daily life, and a religious faith. It is born and taught of G.o.d. It is G.o.dliness without disguise, upon the open field of civic statesmans.h.i.+p. It is a prophet's voice, in a civilian's speech. It is the seasoned wisdom of a man familiar equally with the field of politics, and the place of prayer. It shows how G.o.d may walk with men, how civic interests deal with things divine. It proves that a civilian in a foremost seat may without apology profess himself a man of G.o.d, and gain thereby in solid dignity. It shows how heaven and earth may harmonize.

But this manly recognition in Lincoln's mind of the inner unison of ethics and religion was in no respect ephemeral, no careless utterance of a single speech, no flitting sentiment of a day. It was the fruitage of an ample season's growth. It was royally deliberate, the issue of prolonged reflection, the goal of mental equipoise and rest to which his searching, balanced thought had long conduced. It was in keeping with an habitual inclination in his life.

This proclivity of his inwrought moral honesty to find its norm and origin, its warrant and secure foundation in his and his Nation's G.o.d must have taken shape controllingly within those silent days that intervened between his first election in 1860, and the date of his inaugural oath in 1861. Else, in those brief addresses on his way to Was.h.i.+ngton, that marvelous efflorescence upon his honest lips of an ideal heavenward expectancy is unaccountable. In those dispersed and fugitive responses, from Springfield to Independence Hall and Harrisburg, there breathed such patriotic sentiments of aspiration and anxiety as owed their ardor, their excellence, and their very loyalty to his eager trust and hope, that all his deeds as president should execute the will of G.o.d. Throughout his presidential term this wish to make his full official eminence a facile instrument of G.o.d, attains in his clear purpose and intelligence a solid ma.s.siveness, all too unfamiliar in the craft of politics.

The witness to this, in a letter to A. G. Hodges of April, 1864, is most explicit and unimpeachable. This letter is a transcript of a verbal conversation, is written by request, and is designed distinctly to make the testimony of his mortal lips everywhere accessible and permanent. Its major portion aims to give his former spoken words a simple repet.i.tion. Then he says:--"I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation." And upon this he appends a paragraph, as of something he could not restrain, the while he was conscious perfectly that what he was about to write was certain to be published and preserved among all men. In this letter, so doubly, so explicitly deliberate, he is defending his decree for unshackling the slave, by the plea, that only so could the Union be preserved. In the appended paragraph, he disclaims all compliment to his own sagacity, and accredits all direction and deliverance of the Nation's life, in that dark mortal crisis, to the hidden, reverend government of a kind and righteous G.o.d.

If any man desires to probe and understand the thoughtfulness of Lincoln's piety, let him place this doubly-pondered doc.u.ment and the last inaugural side by side, remembering discerningly the date of each, detecting how each conveys Lincoln's well-digested judgment of unparalleled events, and not forgetting that Lincoln foresaw how both those doc.u.ments would be reviewed in generations to come. Here are signs a.s.suredly that Lincoln's lowliness and reverence, his prayerfulness and trust, his steadfastness and grat.i.tude towards G.o.d had been balanced and illumined beneath the livelong cogitations of an even, piercing eye. Pursuing and comparing every way the tangled, complex facts of history; the endless strifes of men; the broken lights in minds most sage; and the awful evidence, as the centuries evolve, that greed and scorn and hate and falsity lead to woe; his patient mind grows poised and clear in faith that a good and righteous G.o.d is sovereign eternally. The truth he grasped transcended centuries. His grasping faith transcends change.

But Lincoln's piety was not alone deep-rooted and deliberate, the ripened growth of mixed and manifold experience. It was heroic. It was the mainspring and the inspiration of a splendid bravery. This is finely shown in the early autumn of 1864. On September 4 of that year he wrote a letter to Mrs. Gurney, a Quakeress. This letter bears a most curious and intimate resemblance to the central substance of the last inaugural. It witnesses to his earnest research after the hidden ways of G.o.d.

Within this search he sees some settled certainties. He sees that he and all men are p.r.o.ne to fail, when they strive to perceive what G.o.d intends. Into such an error touching the period of the war all had fallen. G.o.d's rule had overborne men's hopes. G.o.d's wisdom and men's error therein would yet be acknowledged by all. Men, though p.r.o.ne to err, if they but earnestly work and humbly trust in deference to G.o.d, will therein still conduce to G.o.d's great ends. So with the war. It was a commotion transcending any power of men to make or stay. But in G.o.d's design it contained some n.o.ble boon. And then he closes, as he began, with a tender intimation of his reverent trust in prayer. The whole is comprehended within this single central sentence, a sentence which involves and comprehends as well the total measure of the last inaugural:--"The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance."

Here is a confession notable in itself. It would be notable in any man, and at any time. But when one marks its date, its notability is enhanced impressively. For Lincoln was traversing just there some of the darkest hours of his overshadowed life. It was the period following his second nomination for the presidency in May of 1864, and before the crisis of election in November of the same year. Central in that season of wearisome and ominous uncertainty fell the failure of the battle in the Wilderness under Grant; the miscarriage of his plans for Richmond; and the awful carnage by Petersburg. Here fell also the date of Early's raid, with its terrible disclosure of the helplessness in Was.h.i.+ngton. Thereupon ensued, in unexampled earnestness, a recrudescence of the great and widespread weariness with the war; and of an open clamor for some immediate conference and compromise for peace. Foremost leaders and defenders of the Union cause throughout the North sank down despairingly, convinced that at the coming national vote Lincoln was certain to meet defeat. At the same time the army sorely needed new recruits; but another draft seemed desperate.

Then Lincoln's closest counselors approached his ears with heavy words of hopelessness about the outlook in the Northern States confessedly most pivotal.

In the midst of those experiences, on August 23, 1864, Lincoln penned and folded away with singular care from all other eyes, these following words:--

"This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this administration will not be reelected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the president-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration, as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward."

Those words were written eleven days before he penned the sentiments cited above from the letter to the Quakeress. Between those two dates the Democratic Convention of Chicago had convened and nominated General McClellan.

Amid such scenes, in the presence of such events, and among such prognostications, Lincoln chiseled out those phrases about the perfect, hidden, but all-prevailing purposes of G.o.d. Here is G.o.dly piety in the sternest stress of politics. Here faith is militant, and unsubdued. Its face is like a burnished s.h.i.+eld. Its patience no campaign outwears. In its constancy suggestions of surrender can find no place. It was forged upon a well-worn anvil, under mighty strokes, and at a fervent heat. Fires only proved its purity. It was fighting battles quite as sore as any fought with steel. It was the deathless, truceless courage of a moral hero. It was pure and perfect fort.i.tude.

Its struggle, its testing, and its victory had not been wrought on earthly battle-fields. Its strife had been with G.o.d. More than with the South, Lincoln's controversy had been with the Most High. He wrestled with the heavenly angel through the night, like the ancient patriarch. Like the ancient saint, he bore the marks of grievous conflict. And like him of old, he gained his boon. He achieved to see that G.o.d and perfect righteousness were in eternal covenant.

Such was Lincoln's piety. His view of G.o.d gave G.o.d an absolute pre-eminence. In Lincoln's day, as in the day when Satan tempted Christ, vast areas of human life seemed to give all faith in G.o.d's control the lie; and men in mult.i.tudes abjured such futile confidence.

But Lincoln kept his faith in G.o.d, and truth, and love, and immortality. And in that faith he judged his trust, and hope, and prayer to be preserved on high inviolate. There above, he firmly held, were lodged eternally the perfect pattern and a.s.surance of full rect.i.tude and charity. And in that understanding he held on earth unyieldingly to the perfect image of that heavenly norm, in a pure and acquiescent loyalty and love. Thus discerningly, submissively, triumphantly did Lincoln's heart aspire to unify an honest earthly walk with a living faith in G.o.d.

One word remains. As Lincoln makes confession of his faith in this inaugural, extolling G.o.d supremely, and therein announcing to his fellowmen the groundwork of his morality, it comes to view that the qualities held fast in Lincoln's heart, and the attributes of G.o.d have marvelous affinity. The equity he adores in G.o.d he cherishes within himself, and recommends to all. G.o.d's estimate of the incomparable value of a human soul, when set beside the variable treasures men exchange, Lincoln's judgment reverently approves, and as reverently adopts, establis.h.i.+ng thereby a standard quality in his conscious life.

G.o.d's tender pity for the poor, hidden deep in his divine rebuke of slavery, and hidden deeper still within his mercy for all who help to bear its awful sacrifice, melts and molds the heart of Lincoln to the same compa.s.sion. And to the very outlines of G.o.d's majesty, as his sovereign purposes are all unrolled and all fulfilled throughout the earth, Lincoln's soul conforms ideally, in its humble vision and expression of devout, discerning praise.

Here is something pa.s.sing wonderful. Between a fragile, mortal man and the eternal G.o.d, when each is limned in terms of ethics, appears a deep and high agreement. There is enthroned in each a common righteousness. In each, the laws of mercy are the same. In each are const.i.tuted principles inwrought with immortality. And within the eternal interplay of reverence and majesty between mankind and G.o.d, there is a fellows.h.i.+p in dignity that proves the holy Maker and his moral creature to be immediately akin. And so the mind and will of Lincoln, in this their moral plenitude, may interpret and recommend, may apprehend and execute the eternal purposes of G.o.d. This high commission Lincoln humbly, firmly undertook. And in his commanding life there is a mighty hint, not easy to silence or erase, that G.o.dliness and ethics, which have been set so often far apart, were eternally designed for unison.

HIS LOGIC--THE PROBLEM OF PERSUASION

In the study of Lincoln's ethics it is not enough to describe it as an ideal scheme of thought, however notable its range and poise and insight may be seen to be. As Lincoln's character stands forth in national eminence among our national heroes, he figures as a man of deeds, a man of powerful influence over the actions of other men, a man of masterly exploits. However truly it may be affirmed that mult.i.tudes of adjutants reinforced his undertakings at every turn and on every side, it still holds also true, and that a truth almost without a parallel, that his sheer personal force was the single, undeniable, over-mastering energy that shaped this Nation's evolution through an outstanding epoch in its career. It was primarily out of those prolific and exhaustless energies, stored and mobilized within himself, that he rose, as though by nature, to be national chief executive. It was straight along the line of his far-seeing vision and advice that Congress and the Nation were guided to accept and undertake that terrible enterprise of war. In that great struggle he came to be in firm reality, far more than any other man, the competent, effective commander-in-chief. He was chief councilor in a cabinet whose supreme function dealt singly with matters wholly executive. It was by the almost marvelous unison of wisdom and decision resident in him that Congress and the Nation were day by day induced to hold with an almost preternatural inflexibility to the single, sovereign issue of the strife. When, after four years of unexampled bitterness, mult.i.tudes were wearying of all patience in further hostilities, it was his personal momentum and weight, more than any other influence, that held the prevailing majority of the national electorate to predetermine by their free ballots that, at whatever cost of further war, the principles of liberty, equality, and national integrity should be placed above all possible challenge or a.s.sault forever.

And in the period before the war and before his elevation to the presidency this same executive efficiency, this singular capacity to mold the views and stir the motives of other men, was likewise in continual demonstration. Discerning how supreme a factor in our American affairs was the power of public sentiment, and observing how that power was being utilized to undermine the national tranquillity, he challenged and overthrew single handed the leading master of the day in the field of political management and debate. Trusting in the same confidence, and pursuing the same device, he appealed to the civic consciences of men in the open field of free debate, by the single instrument of reasoned speech, until, by his persuading arguments, he consolidated into effective harmony and led to national victory a party of independent voters, with watchword, platform, and experience all untried. In all the process by which that new-formed party gained access to national pre-eminence it was Lincoln's governing influence that went ahead and gave the movement steadiness.

And through it all he vitally inspired a Nation, now undivided and indivisible, with a prevailing, corporate desire, that all succeeding days and all beholding Nations are now deeming, for any stable civic life, the true enduring ideal.

And all of this was compa.s.sed and set afoot within scarcely more than one decade. In October of 1854 at Peoria, he consciously took up his strenuous enterprise. In April of 1865, he laid it down and ceased to strive. Single handed he undertook the task. Through all its progress the weight of that one hand was undeniably preponderant. And when that hand relaxed, the task that its release left trembling was one that stirred a mighty Nation's full solicitude.

Here is something marvelous. These affirmations, as thus far made, seem certainly overdrawn, and totally incredible. An agency and an efficiency of national dimensions, introducing and completing an epoch in our national history; but an agent and an outfit almost defying inventory, his personality seeming in every phase so simple and without prestige, and all his ways and means seeming so unpromising and plain; the while through all his course he was confronting a resistance and a hostility whose impulse was rooted in centuries of firm and proud dominion, and whose onset made a Nation tremble. How can such stupendous affirmations be clothed with credibility? Was it indeed the hand of Lincoln that turned the Nation from its mistaken path? Was it Lincoln's will that reinaugurated our predestined course?

Was it Lincoln's overcoming confidence that established in the land again a good a.s.surance that its integrity was indestructible?

If questions such as these were addressed to Lincoln himself for his reply, we may be sure his answer, like all his ways, would contain a beautiful mingling of modesty and confidence. Heeding well the mortal crisis, and hearing the Nation's call for help, he would not refuse, when bidden and appointed, to take his stand alone at the very apex of the strain, knowing well that the burdens to be borne would be greater than tasked the strength of even Was.h.i.+ngton; and affirming as he advanced warily to his post, that in his appointment many abler men had been pa.s.sed by. But then he would re-affirm and urge again all the arguments of his great addresses and messages and debates, beginning with that initial trumpet peal in Peoria in 1854, and not concluding until, after all had been rehea.r.s.ed and reavouched, he recited again with prophetic earnestness this last inaugural. And throughout all his devout re-affirmation of all the spoken and written appeals to which his patriotic mind gave studied form and utterance in that intense decade, a discerning ear could distinguish in every paragraph profound and penetrating attestations, such as these:--This is a mighty Nation. Its future is far more vast. Its present perplexities are intricate. It has been misled. It needs most sane direction. I am stationed at her head. Difficulties environ me. My burdens outweigh Was.h.i.+ngton's. But this land was conceived in liberty. It was dedicated to be free. Here all are peers. G.o.d's hand has been on our history.

Our destiny enfolds the highest human weal. G.o.d is with us still.

Human hearts are with us. Here is overcoming power. Despite my frailty and poor descent, I will never leave my place. I see how other men prevail with mult.i.tudes by personal appeal. This shall be my confidence. Though I have no name, though there is perhaps no reason why I should ever have a name, I can plead. I can plead with men. It is a G.o.dlike art. Grave as is my problem, this is its grand solution.

I will study to persuade. I will take refuge in the mighty power of argument. I will confer, and conciliate, and convince. I will employ my reason to the full. I will address, and a.s.sail, and enlist the reason of other men. I will put all my trust in speech, in ordered, reasoned speech. I will arrange all my convictions and hopes and plans in arguments. I will approach men's wills with momentous propositions.

I will open a path to human hearts through open ears by my living voice. I will make righteousness vibrate vocally. To men's very faces will I rebuke their wrong. Argument, pure argument shall be my only weapon, my only agency, my only way. By naked argument, honest and unadorned, I will undertake to turn this Nation back to rect.i.tude. I will rest all my confidence in truth, truth unalloyed, abjuring every counterfeit and all hypocrisy. It is truth's primal and mightiest function to persuade. Through persuasion alone can freemen be induced by freemen to yield a free obedience. The heavenly art of persuading speech shall be for me the first and the last resort. By this most comely instrument shall my most eager and ambitious wish gain access to all this peopled land, and win vindication through all coming time.

Something such as this, as one must judge from Lincoln's practice, was Lincoln's science and evaluation of the art of logical appeal. By every token Lincoln was a master of a.s.semblies. Upon a public platform he was in his native element. There he won his place and name.

Whatever any one may say about Lincoln's reputation or Lincoln's power, that power and that reputation were mined and minted in the very act and exercise of reasoning appeal. As iron sharpeneth iron, so he, in the immediate presence of audiences of freeborn men, a.s.sembled from his very neighborhood, shaped and edged and tempered his total influence. It was when upon the hustings, and while engaged in pleading speech, that he commanded the Nation's eye and gained the Nation's ear. And once advanced to national pre-eminence, it was still by logical persuasion that the Nation's deference was retained.

What now was the inner nature of Lincoln's arguments? What was the fiber, what the texture in the composition of his thought that made its arguments so convincing? What was the structure, and what the carrying power in his appeals that made their logic so prevailing, so compelling, so enduring?

To find an answer to this inquiry let men review yet once again this last inaugural. Here is a product of Lincoln's mind whose single motive is persuasion, whose momentum does not diminish, and which seems destined to be adjudged by history a master's masterpiece. What does this short speech contain that gave it in 1865, and gives it yet, an influence almost magical?

There can be but one possible reply. The factor in that address that makes its influence so imperial is the moral majesty of the argument in its major paragraph. That paragraph enshrines an argument. Though fas.h.i.+oned in the mode and aspect of a reverent supposition, the steady pace and import of its ordered thought is such as every ordered mind admits to be compelling. But in substance and in structure that argument is purely ethical. All turns upon that cited, undoubted fact of age-long, unrequited toil. Upon that stern actuality hinges all the arrangement of the thought. Its phrases move with rhythmic fluency; but they bind together inseparably a Nation's duty, sin, and doom; not omitting to enfold, with a marvel of moral insight, an almost hidden intimation of a healing cure.

Here are weighty thoughts, thoughts that press and urge, thoughts that carry and communicate the gravity of centuries. They contain an interpretation. They clarify and illuminate. And they all co-ordinate.

They combine and operate together to enforce agreement. They demonstrate that tyranny breeds a baleful progeny of guilt and woe; that robbery binds the robber under debt to the full measure of his rapine; that such guilt can never be forgotten; that such a woe is pitiless; that the centuries, though slow and mute, are attentive and impartial witnesses; and that G.o.d's even judgments are over all, and are altogether just. This is all the content and all the purport of this paragraph, and of all this speech: an exposition of American slavery and of its resultant civil war, in moral terms, before the moral bar of every hearer's conscience, and beneath the thought of G.o.d's eternal righteousness; all turning upon the self-evident verity that unpaid toil is wrong. In this prolific affirmation is the fertile germ of all that Lincoln ever thought or undertook in that supreme decade. Here are enfolded all his axioms and postulates and propositions. By interlocking its multiform, infolded, self-evident cert.i.tudes he framed all his arguments. Its overflowing, resistless demonstrations in active human affairs formed all his corollaries.

Toil unrequited is a moral wrong. It cries to heaven, and shall be avenged. In this avenging, if we but see our day, there is an open door to join with heaven, and trans.m.u.te its vengeance into recompense and reconciliation.

This was Lincoln's logic. It was purely ethical. This was the master-key to his transcendent statesmans.h.i.+p. Here was the secret of his political efficiency. Thus, and in no other way, he swayed the Nation. Himself a G.o.dlike man, and discerning in every other man the same G.o.dlikeness; trusting his own soul's honesty, and appealing to honest manhood in all other men; he took his stand beside all the oppressed, and against all extortion; and voiced and urged and trusted the sovereign moral plea for perfect charity, and perfect equity for all.

But Lincoln's logic was interlaced with history. All through his debates and addresses are woven the facts and sequences of our national career. And to these connected events he clung in all his arguments, as a man clings to the honor of his home. There was in those events an argument. To tamper with that history, discrediting its sure occurrences, or distorting their right connection, was in his conception a downright immorality.

But mere historical exact.i.tude was not the motive of Lincoln's appeal to past events. The momentum of our past was for Lincoln's use entirely moral. Here upon this continent, as he conceived our great experiment, was being tried, in the presence and on behalf of all mankind, a government in which the governed were the governors. Here men are inquiring and being taught what true manhood can create, uphold, and consummate upon a continental scale, in mutual equality.

Here men are schooled for independence. Here men may dare to fas.h.i.+on their own law. Here men are nurtured towards full fraternity. Here men are forced to heed the civic necessity of being fair. Here a boundless impending future has to be kept steadily in view. Here the G.o.d of Nations is teaching a Nation that he should be revered. Here, in brief and in sum, men are being disciplined to know and cherish the rudiments of civic character.

Thus Lincoln interpreted the meaning of our national history. In his rating, its total purport was ethical. Any logical exposition of our national career, if its statements are historically exact, will carry moral consequences. If the logical sequence of any statement of our historical course is morally perverse, then that statement of our history is historically untrue. Thus Lincoln's jealous zest for truthful history, for truthful argument, and for true morality became coincident.

But Lincoln's logic was his own. His zeal for history was a freeman's zest. His arguments were not the cold reflection of a borrowed light.

They were the fervid affirmations of his own convictions, compacted into reasoned unison, out of the indivisible const.i.tuents of his very manhood's honor. When in his appeal his soul most glowed, when the ordered sequence and pressure of his thought waxed irresistible, he was simply opening to his auditors the balanced burden of his honest heart. Then genuine manhood became articulate. Then pure honor found a voice. Then eloquence became naught but plain sincerity. Then arguments became transparent, and affirmations convinced like axioms.

Then demonstrations moved. a.s.sertions did persuade. Then the very being of the orator took possession of the auditor in an intelligent fraternity. True, indeed, a solid South, and mult.i.tudes besides, derided his postulates, contemned his arguments, and scorned derisively his tenderest appeals. But better than they themselves he understood their hearts; and holding fast forever his deeper faith and confidence, he maintained his reasoning and his plea, knowing surely that in some future day their chastened hearts would vindicate his words.

But in all of this exposition of Lincoln's logical force and skill there has been no mention of a syllogism. Did Lincoln then neglect that famous formula of argumentative address? To this natural inquiry it must be replied that Lincoln understood right well the fine utility of this strict norm of formal thought. Indeed, he had taken special pains to perfect his skill in just that form of argument. To the logical click in a well-formed syllogism his inner ear was well attuned. Repeatedly he summoned in its aid. An excellent ill.u.s.tration may be seen in his rejoinder to Douglas at Galesburg in September of 1858. But Lincoln's confidence was not in syllogistic forms, however trim. His trust was in his moral axioms. Unaided, naked truth; truth whose total urgency is self-contained, whose perfect verity is self-displayed, and whose proudest triumphs are self-achieved; pure truth, shaped forth in speech of absolute simplicity; truth that works directly in the human mind, like suns.h.i.+ne in the eye, was Lincoln's handiest and most common instrument in an argument. Thus he sought to so use reason as to awaken conscience and arouse the will. And thus his arguments prevailed.