The Wonderful Story of Lincoln Part 13

This boy had served a year on the gunboat Ottawa and had gone through two important battles. Willie lived in the district of Congressman Kell and he asked Kell to help him get a place in the Naval School.

The testimony of the gunners on the _Ottawa_ was that Willie had carried powder to them in the midst of the hottest engagements with all the coolness and bravery of any of the sailors, and Congressman Kell's sympathy was thoroughly enlisted for the boy's ambition.

Lincoln was much interested in the case and at once wrote to the Secretary of the Navy to appoint Willie Bladen to the school, if there was yet a place for him.

The appointment was made and the boy was ordered to report in July.

But Congressman Kell found, on going back home, that Willie would not be fourteen till September, and no one could be accepted in the Naval School under fourteen.

Willie was terribly distressed.

"Never mind," said Mr. Kell, "I'll take you to see the President about this and I am sure he will manage it some way."

A few days later, Congressman Kell, holding Willie Bladen by the hand, walked in to where Lincoln sat, and introduced the boy.

Willie made a profound bow.

"Why, bless me," responded Lincoln, "is this the boy who did so gallantly in those two great battles! I feel that I should bow to him."

And, with that, Lincoln arose and made a bow to the little hero.

The President then made out papers directing that the boy be allowed until September to report, then putting his hand on the boy's head, he said, "Now, my boy, go home and play for the next two months. They may be the last holidays you will ever get."

Lincoln's knowledge of the Bible is shown by many an incident.

In one of the darkest hours of the war a ma.s.s convention was called of Union men to protest against the President's "imbecile policy in the conduct of the war." It was also intended to start a boom for "Fremont the Pathfinder" to succeed Lincoln to the Presidency. Instead of a great ma.s.s convention of many thousands, only four hundred disgruntled politicians were present.

When this news was brought to Lincoln, he reached for the Bible that always lay on his desk, and, turning to the first book of Samuel, the twenty-second chapter, read aloud, "And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented gathered themselves unto him; and he became a Captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men."

The old saying, originating from the Bible, "To have friends you must show yourself friendly," was always true in Lincoln's case. One of these friends once said of Lincoln that "he had nothing, only friends." His enemies did not know him or they would not have been enemies.

CHAPTER IX

I. FALSEHOOD AIDS NO ONE'S TRUTH

James Oppenheim says:

"The greatest are the simplest-- They need be nothing else, It is the rest who have to play parts, To seem what they are not."

War times and periods of great public agitation have always brought forth in every free country the most scurrilous and vicious denunciations and slanders of public men. Such vile vituperation of Was.h.i.+ngton, Lincoln and others in our stormy periods, if all printed would make many volumes that bear in numerous instances the logical appearance of authentic history. But when sifted down, each to its origin, it is always what some one, long since gone from the possibility of explanation, has said, or been supposed to say, who might have known or might have misunderstood.

Every young man, if not every boy, sooner or later hears, as if indisputable, the most vulgar stories about men whom the world has enrolled as their n.o.blest benefactors. All the moral world then seems to go to pieces as these stories seem to be the truth. But it is a common evidence of the viciousness, the most degenerate and cowardly viciousness, that is thus seen to remain possible in the composition of common minds. Political perversions of the meaning and motives of public men are so common in election times that the only wonder is, the only rea.s.surance is, how little the disease of slander prevails, and yet, alas, we may not see how much injury and despair it has caused and is causing in growing minds. Many delight in making respected people appear filthy. Somehow, it satisfies and excuses their own brains and degenerate character.

Many people vaguely know that an a.s.sertion may be wrong, they even more vaguely know what is the right thing, and, when some one appears to state clearly what is wrong, and to give a clear idea of what is right, and a clear vision of the right way, then he becomes the embodiment of the people and they follow him. It was thus that Lincoln was the superbly great man. In the days when Americanism was a mist and a fog in so many high places, Lincoln stood forth as the embodied patriotism and mind of America. When men stormed around him with ideas as diverse as the wind, he was a soul high and clear as the unchanging sun. The storm-makers are gone, but Lincoln remains, unchanged, one of the beacon lights of mankind.

Lincoln's favorite poem reflects the deep burden of his own soul. It is a long poem written by William Knox, who was a much valued friend of Sir Walter Scott.

Four of the stanzas are as follows:

"Oh! Why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, He pa.s.seth from life to his rest in the grave.

"So the mult.i.tude goes like the flower or the weed, That withers away to let others succeed; So the mult.i.tude comes--even these we behold, To repeat every tale that has often been told.

"Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, Are mingled together in suns.h.i.+ne and rain; And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge, Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.

"'Tis the wink of an eye,--'tis the draught of a breath; From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, From the gilded salon to the bier and the shroud; O, why should the spirit of mortal be proud!"

II. FREEDOM TO MISREPRESENT IS NOT FREEDOM

One of the great perils of the American republic, which makes progress so slow and misery so rich in victims, is the perversions which opponents put upon the words of public men, and the distortions which are given to their meaning. It is not only brutal, but to misshape righteous ideas is treason to those who receive them, and it brands such malefactors as criminal minds. The traitor and the liar are abhorred, but somehow we have not yet cla.s.sified the unspeakable vice that deforms minds by disfiguring ideas so that they make a man say what he never said and to represent what he never was. This malignant vice is not above the village gossip and the vile tongue of common slander, but it has been especially the method of gamblers in the most sacred social interests, and of demagogues trying to control the election of officers and legislators for our government.

Such perversions were placed on Lincoln's meaning throughout the South that his name was the most abhorred of all names, until the miseries of reconstruction, by contrast, so brought in comparisons that he became known as the one great soul who had not, through all the terrible struggle, ever uttered a single bitter word against them, and who was the one great friend who could have given them justice and peace.

Soon the typical view of the intelligent South was that "his untimely and tragic end was one of the severest catastrophes of the war," and, to the South, his death was "the direst misfortune that ever darkened the calendar of its woes."

Up to the time of his nomination and following him in many ways on to his death, the Eastern States took up the most trivial news items and used them for ridicule, as representing Lincoln to be the mere caricature of a man.

One of these minor incidents, showing this defaming method, is represented as follows in the newspaper headlines of New York and New England. The great news, in the midst of the fearful times, relating to this incident was usually introduced in these words, "Old Abe kisses a Pretty Girl."

Here is the true story: A little girl named Grace Bedell lived at Westfield, New York. Her father was a republican, but her two brothers were democrats, and, therefore, hearing much excited argument, she was greatly interested. Of course, she was a republican and she wanted to help her father. Seeing a portrait of Lincoln gave her an idea. If Lincoln only had whiskers like her father, he would look better, and so her brothers might not be so much against him. No sooner was this improvement thought of than she hastened to put it into an earnest letter to Mr. Lincoln, telling him of her idea.

She seemed to think that all great men, like her father, must have a little girl, so she said in closing, "If you have no time to answer my letter, will you allow your little girl to reply for you?"

Such a letter could not be ignored by the great-hearted man to whom it came. He replied,

"Springfield, Illinois, Oct. 19, 1860.

"My dear little Miss:

"Your very agreeable letter of the fifteenth is received. I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughter. I have three sons; one seventeen; one nine, and one seven years of age.

They, with their mother, const.i.tute my whole family. As to whiskers, having never worn any, do you think people would call it a piece of silly affectation if I should begin now?

"Your very sincere well-wisher, "A. LINCOLN."

It happened, when on the journey to Was.h.i.+ngton to be inaugurated, that the train stopped at Westfield. Suddenly, in speaking to the people, he remembered.

"I have a little correspondent at this place," he said, "I would like to see her."

Some one called out and asked if Grace Bedell was in the crowd that surged around the train. Far back in the crowd the way began to open and a beautiful little girl came forward, timid but happy, to speak to the President-elect, who was also happy to show her that he had taken her advice and begun to grow a beard. The little girl was lifted up to him. He took her in his arms and tenderly kissed her forehead in the midst of the enthusiastic approval of a cheering mult.i.tude.

But the story ran the rounds of the East as the uncouth conduct of a backwoods demagogue.

As Europe got its idea of the new President from the New York and New England papers, he was believed by foreign leaders to be the proof of degenerate democracy and the failure of popular government. Throughout the war there was lavished upon him an unceasing tirade of caricature and lampoon. But they had been deceived. The shock of his a.s.sa.s.sination seemed to tear off the veil that blinded their eyes, and since then all the scholars.h.i.+p of Europe has a.n.a.lyzed his career as showing one of the great characters of the world. History finds that he was a prophet of ideal humanity, the farthest possible from despotic sovereignties. Dynastic states can never fight for a democratic government merely to preserve it, and democracies can never fight merely to preserve a party in power. It may very well be doubted that the North could have won the Civil War if there had not been involved the moral issues of human slavery. England would surely have intervened for the starving workers of their cottonmills, but the workers refused to have their cause supported by fastening slavery upon any part of the human race.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Lincoln Statue--Chicago, Illinois.]