Abraham Lincoln's Cardinal Traits Part 7

"I believe it (the address) is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a G.o.d governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told, and, as whatever of humiliation there is in it falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it."

"Most directly on myself." There Lincoln bares his heart to G.o.d and man, in order that upon himself might fall the first, the deepest, and the most direct humiliation. At one with slaves, despised by pride, astray from G.o.d prepared for sacrifice--but attesting still that slaves were men, that robbery was wrong, that G.o.d was just--so he stands.

But, be it said again and yet again, in such a posture looms n.o.bility.

In meekness such as this is nothing craven. It beseems true royalty.

Bowing before his G.o.d to receive rebuke, bowing to make confession before his fellowmen, he stands as on a hilltop, announcing and declaring to all the world how arrogance proves men base, how lowliness may be beautiful, how reverend are G.o.d's mysteries, how just and pitiful his ways. Here is a kingliness that no crown can rightly symbolize. Here is a victory that is not won with swords. In the very att.i.tude is final triumph. It bravely claims, and truly overcomes the world. In such a patience there is present instantly, and in full possession, the vigor of undying hope, and the t.i.tle of a firstborn son to the heritage of the earth.

This capacity in Lincoln's patience for the close allegiance of self-devotion and self-respect, of sympathy and jealousy, is shown dramatically in his tournament with Douglas in 1858. Throughout those speeches, replies, and rejoinders Lincoln held fast his full fraternity with the slaves, while repressing with his fullest vigor every onslaught against his personal integrity.

The date of those debates marked over four full years, since Douglas had championed through Congress into finished legislation a bill that abrogated all federal limitation of slavery, and opened an unrestricted possibility of its further spread forever, wherever any local interest might so desire. That bill obtained the presidential signature in May of 1854. During the succeeding years Douglas had been shaping public sentiment by his almost royal influence in public speech towards a stereotyped acceptance of the principles and implications of that law. Under his aggressive leaders.h.i.+p his party had been well solidified upon three political postulates, which he declared essential not alone to party fealty, but to any permanent national peace. These three postulates were the following:--

Slavery is in no sense wrong.

Slavery is to be treated as a local interest only.

These principles have been sanctioned perfectly by history.

From these fundamental postulates flowed numerous corollaries:--

Black men are an inferior race. This inferiority has been stamped upon this race indelibly by G.o.d. The Declaration of Independence did not and does not include the blacks in its affirmations about equality.

This country contains vast sections precisely fitted to be occupied by slavery.

Local interests being essentially diverse, as for example between Alabama and Maine, decisions as to local affairs will also be diverse.

This entails divergent treatment of black men, just as of herds and crops.

To the rights of stronger races to enslave the blacks, the fathers who framed our government, our national history since, and the age-long fate of Africa unitedly bear witness.

Counter to these three major postulates of Douglas, Lincoln set the following three:--

The enslavement of men is wrong.

The treatment of slavery is a federal concern.

Our history has contained, and still contains a compromise. Our fathers deemed slavery a wrong. But finding it present when they framed our government, and finding its removal impossible at the time, they arranged for its territorial limitation, for its gradual diminishment, and for its ultimate termination.

From these three fundamental postulates in Lincoln's arguments flowed also various corollaries:--

The sinfulness of slavery roots in the elemental manhood of the slave.

This manhood warrants his elemental claim to the employment and enjoyment of his life in liberty.

In our form of government, things local and things federal being held within their respective realms respectively supreme, things locally divergent lead to federal compromise.

Certain sections of the country in particular, and the Nation in general being committed, either from policy or from choice, to foster slavery; men who hate the thing as wrong must in patient meekness endure its presence, until in G.o.d's own time its presence and its sin and guilt shall be removed.

As will be seen at once, for the purposes of a popular debate, the postulates of Douglas were easier to defend. Of the two sets of premises, his seemed the more simple, more explicit, more direct, more telling with a crowd; while those of Lincoln, by reason of that moral and historical compromise, seemed more confused, more evasive, and not so apt to take the mult.i.tude. In the nature of the debate Lincoln had to shape his propositions and replies to face two ways:--towards the practical emergencies of our history and form of government, on the one hand; and on the other hand, towards an ideal nowhere yet attained, and seemingly unattainable. Whereas Douglas, quite unconcerned about any ideal motives in the past, as of any vision of an ideal day to come, but dealing solely with the political situation that day occurrent, could make every affirmation and every thrust against his adversary seem straight, and clear, and impossible to refute. This very practical and substantial disadvantage Lincoln had to bear. Questions that Douglas would answer decisively, and instantly, and with absolute distinctness, Lincoln would be compelled to labor with, in careful deference both to our Const.i.tutional protection of slavery, and to its moral wrong.

This situation in those debates deserves a close attention. The difference in the two positions was most profound. That this deep difference was laid fully bare was the supreme resultant of the debate. It was indeed a difference in principles. But stated yet more narrowly, it was a difference in nothing less than estimates of men, and att.i.tudes towards wrong. It was not a difference in abstract theorems. It was vastly more. It was a difference in the personal qualities of the two protagonists. To test this affirmation let any one imagine Douglas producing from his heart the sentiments, and arranging in his thought the arguments of Lincoln's last inaugural.

Douglas sadly erred in his opinion of his time. In Lincoln, in those debates, our government, our history, our ideal as a great Republic stood incorporate. Like our n.o.ble history, he patiently endured and bore what he instinctively and inveterately abhorred. This pathetic situation, this invincible anomaly in our national career, is pathetically re-enacted in the fate of Lincoln in these debates.

This at bottom, and this at last is what those flas.h.i.+ng falchions and ringing s.h.i.+elds declare. This explains the genesis and the actual course of those painful personalities. And it is to study this that these debates have been introduced. In the personal thrusts of those debates two qualities in Lincoln become pre-eminent. He would not forsake his humble champions.h.i.+p of slaves. He would accept no thrust against his personal integrity. Let those debates be read, and re-perused until those cardinal elements in Lincoln's att.i.tude come clear. And let it be observed that in no single personality was Lincoln's thrust initial. Douglas opened the debate. In his opening speech he made direct a.s.sertions and indirect intimations too gross to be termed subtle, and too staring to be called disguised; imputing and suggesting that Lincoln was in character a coward and a cheat, in his politics a revolutionary, and in his social proclivities contemptible.

These same charges were made with unrelenting persistency and reiteration by Douglas throughout the series of the debates.

To every imputation Lincoln made definite and reiterated reply, denouncing them roundly as unwarranted and inexcusable impeachment of his honor, his veracity, and his candor. And then, with measured and exact equivalence, he dealt out to Douglas's face a list of counter personalities of sharply parallel and actual transactions in Douglas's life, meriting precisely his own reproach. And he pressed the battle home so hard that Douglas, in an impa.s.sioned height of protest, demanded if Lincoln meant to carry his tactics up to "personal difficulty."

All this is painful confessedly to review. One wishes earnestly, just as with the later civil war, it might never have occurred. But it should be remembered that every retort of Lincoln was, as in the war itself, in personal defense. Lincoln was not the a.s.sailant. But once his honor was a.s.sailed, it was not the nature of that honor to stand so mute that his own character seemed rightly smirched, while justice rested with his adversary. And so, in self-defense, as in his speech at Quincy, he carefully details, he vigorously returned each thrust.

And this, be it constantly recalled, not in any selfishness, not for wounded pride, not for unction to a hurt, not in any vengeful heat; but just as in the following war, in absolute unselfishness, void of malice, in the ministry of charity, that the honor of all men might be saved, and that the Union with its boon of universal freedom and equality might not perish from the earth.

Such was Lincoln's patience, in those earlier debates, and in this last inaugural, the same. While bearing voluntarily in his single life all the opprobrium borne by slaves; through all that fellows.h.i.+p and sympathy, and on its sole behalf, he guarded his own honor with an infinite jealousy. But it was honor saved for suffering. His life was sacrificial. He learned to know full well, but willingly, what meekness costs. Not alone from a political antagonist and an embattled South, but from a mult.i.tude of active dissentients besides throughout the North, from Congress, and from the close circle of his cabinet he had to bear with blind misunderstandings, and malignant misrepresentations of the deeds and qualities and motives of his perplexed and overburdened life.

But whatever his shortcomings or mistakes, whatever his follies or sins, two affirmations about his life will hold forever true. He bore his load. And he kept his path. Through all that stern campaign for liberty and union he turned neither to the right nor to the left.

Sorrows and contentions surrounded him continually. But he descried a better time. To speed that day he welcomed sacrifice. He lived and died for nothing else. To show the priceless worth of freemen in a mighty mult.i.tude, in a civic league of lasting unison and peace was his supreme commission and consuming wish. To bring that vision near he aspired and submitted to be its pattern and its devotee.

HIS RISE FROM POVERTY--THE PROBLEM OF INDUSTRIALISM

In his first public speech, seeking election to the State Legislature of Illinois in 1832, Lincoln said: "I was born, and have ever remained, in the most humble walks of life." He adds: "If the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined." In the same speech he said: "I have no other (ambition) so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem."

Here are three phrases that epitomize Lincoln's ideals and Lincoln's career:--"the most humble walks of life;" "too familiar with disappointments;" and "rendering myself worthy of their esteem." There at the age of twenty-three we are apprised of Lincoln's poverty, of his ambition, and of his adversity. In the same address he says: "I have no wealthy or popular relatives or friends to recommend me." At that time he had been but two years in the State.

In pondering this brief and frank appeal one wonders at the blending of the youthful and the mature, the daring and the wary, the ardent and the chastened, the eager and the sedate, the wistful and the resigned. What had been the inner and the outer history and fortune of him, who at the age of twenty-three could talk of being "familiar with disappointments"--so familiar with experiences of reverse that he could bear the public refusal of his one greatest ambition, that public's "true esteem," without being "much chagrined." Plainly in Lincoln's early life there was a great heart, cheris.h.i.+ng a high hope, but environed with poverty, familiar with reversals, unchampioned, unknown. Already he was being refined by manifold discipline. Already in that refining fire he had fixed his eye and set his face to win his neighbor's true esteem. Therein one comprehends his whole career. Out of oblivion and solitude and direst poverty he pa.s.sed by sheer self-mastery to the highest national authority and renown. Of all the distance and of all the way between those "humblest walks" and that commanding eminence, and of all the pregnant meaning to him and to all Americans, and indeed to every son of Adam, of that achievement, Lincoln had a marvelous discerning sense. He knew full well its vast significance and he never let its vivid recollection lapse. It was always in his living consciousness.

One impressive proof and token that the meaning of his advancement had permanent place in his remembrance, and that he deemed his fortune an ideal and a type of our American government and life has been preserved in the tone and substance of his address in Independence Hall, when on his way to his first great inauguration. Standing there at the age of forty-one, the Nation's president-elect, and "filled with deep emotion," he said: "I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence." And to give that statement explanation he said, "I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together." And for answer to that inquiry he points to "that sentiment in the Declaration which gave liberty not alone to the people of this country, but hope to all the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance." "Liberty," "hope," "promise," "weights lifted," "an equal chance," "to all," "for all," "of all," "all," "in due time"--these are the terms that answered the question over which he "often pondered" and "often inquired." This was the "great principle," the "idea" which held the Confederacy together. This was the "basis" on which, if he could save the country, he would be "one of the happiest men in the world, if he could help to save it." This was the principle concerning which he exclaimed: "If this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say that I would rather be a.s.sa.s.sinated upon this spot than surrender it"--words whose purport is seen to be nothing less than tragic, when we recall the peril of death, which he was consciously facing in that very hour from a deep laid conspiracy against his life.

Thus spoke Lincoln within ten days of his inauguration, in a speech which he says was "wholly unprepared." But the day before, in a speech at Trenton, he characterized that same "idea" as that "something more than common" which away back in childhood, the earliest days of his being able to read, he recollected thinking, "boy though I was," was the "treasure" for which "those men struggled." That "something" he then defines as "even more than national independence;" and as holding out "a great promise to all the people of the world to all time to come."

This lifting of weights from the shoulders of men, this equal chance for all; this was the liberty for which the fathers fought, this was the hope which their Declaration enshrined, this it was whose preservation Lincoln longed to secure above any other happiness, this it was for which he was all but ready to die.

There Lincoln spoke his heart. There he voiced his highest hopes.

There he traced his patriotism to its roots. And there too he touched the quick nerve of his own disappointments, of his own often futile endeavors and desires. And there as well his living sympathy with other men, enc.u.mbered with disadvantage and defeat, found mighty utterance. Lifting weights from the shoulders of all men--that in "due time" this should be achieved he judged and felt to be the single sovereign meaning of our national destiny.

Of just this national destiny Lincoln's personal life was a strangely full epitome. His shoulders knew full well the pressure of those "weights." His soul knew all the awful volume of sorrow as of joy, that poured about the denial or the enjoyment of an "equal chance."

From the humblest walks to the foremost seat he had been permitted to thread his way. That liberty he chiefly sought in struggling youth.

That liberty he chiefly prized as president. And this, not alone for himself, not alone for all Americans, but for "all the world." Thus spoke Lincoln, "all unprepared" in February of 1861.

But these spontaneous words were no pa.s.sing breath of transient sentiments. In July of that same year he sent to Congress his first Message. That paper was Lincoln's studied and formal argument, a president's deliberate State Paper, addressing to Congress his responsible demonstration that the war was a necessity. In that argument and demonstration his fundamental postulate was a definition of our government. In that definition he affirms its "leading object"

to be "to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance in the race of life." And so he calls the war a "people's contest." And he speaks of its deeper purport as something that "the plain people understand."

And he speaks of the loyalty of all the common soldiers--not one of whom was known to have deserted his flag--as "the patriotic instinct of the plain people."

Those words of Lincoln in Trenton and Philadelphia, defining the "leading object" in the minds of the founders of our government in the hours of its birth-travail, define his own idea and ideal as he approached the hour of his presidential oath. That a national government, thus beneficently designed for the equal weal of all, should be preserved inviolate and preserved from dissolution was his supreme desire and his supreme resolve. Its majesty and its integrity must be held most sacred and most jealously preserved. This was the apple of his eye. By the light of this ideal and in the pursuit of this alluring, wistful hope he studied and judged all the movements of his time. And in this, his initial message, he registers his official verdict upon those surrounding evolutions and events. A vast and ever-expanding Confederacy of intelligent and resolute men, leagued together in a Union of Confederate States, and pledged to secure to all men within its bounds a clear path, an unfettered start, and a fair chance in every laudable pursuit, was judged by him a civic undertaking too preciously freighted with promise and hope for the welfare of the world to be ever disrupted and destroyed by the disloyalty and the withdrawal of any one or any cl.u.s.ter of its const.i.tuent parts. It was a Union as sacred and holy as all the worth and all the hopes of men. To separate from such a league was a capital disloyalty. To disintegrate such a unison was the ultimate inhumanity.

To stand fast forever by such a federation was a crowning fidelity. To preserve, protect and defend such a Union, at whatever cost of life or wealth, and therein to adventure however sacred honor was a primary and a final obligation. By its perpetual preservation unimpaired was secured to all mankind the vision and the priceless promise of liberty and hope. By secession, defiance, and violent a.s.sault, that precious human treasure was being endangered and defiled. Hence his anxious all-consuming eagerness as he approached his ominous task. Hence his firm acceptance of awful, inevitable war.

Such were the marshalings of Lincoln's thoughts and sentiments as he approached and undertook his mighty work--fit prelude in Independence Hall, and befitting explanation and defense in the Halls of Congress of the mighty rallying of those regiments of men for the awful combats of a people's war.

This was Lincoln's argument. That the rights of life and liberty and happiness were designed and decreed by the Maker of all to be equal for all was for him, as an American, and for him as a fellow and a friend of all, under G.o.d, an axiom. And to that firm truth the war was but a corollary. Because the Union was a league of freemen, kindred to G.o.d, and peers among themselves, bound together in mutual goodwill and for mutual weal, it must at all hazards and through all perils and sorrows be made perpetual. Not that slavery should be immediately removed, though its existence in such a league was an elemental unworthiness and affront; but that the Union should be forever secured was his immediate aspiration and resolve. This once achieved and forever a.s.sured, and slavery with every other kindred inequality would in "due time" be done away.

This is the key and the core of his ringing and irresistible retort to Greeley. This was the inspiration of that immortal appeal at Gettysburg, the very pledge and secret of its excellence and immortality--the plea that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth.