The Battle of Principles Part 10

"What I do about slavery and the coloured race I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

"I shall do less whenever I believe that what I am doing hurts the cause.

"And I shall do more whenever I believe that doing more will help the Union."

How wonderfully does this publish the supremacy of Abraham Lincoln!

Lincoln saw clearly, where others had an indistinct vision. As to gravity, Isaac Newton's vote outweighs all the other millions of men, and from the hour that Lincoln published this letter to Horace Greeley the people saw that Abraham Lincoln had the last fact in the case, saw the whole truth, saw it through and through. By sheer power, clarity of thought, strength of statement and fairness, Abraham Lincoln finally won over not only a lukewarm North, but a bitter South, until to-day he belongs to the ninety millions. If every Northerner should die, the brave and patriotic men of the South living now would defend everything for which Abraham Lincoln lived and died. For at last it is true of both North and South, in Lincoln's own pathetic words, that the mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

The most striking characteristic of Lincoln's character was his honesty.

Some men are naturally secretive: Lincoln was naturally open as suns.h.i.+ne. The exact fact, truth in the hidden parts, openness, these were the innermost fibre of his being. Machiavelli laid out the diplomat's career on the line of deceit, and concealing the cards.

Lincoln would have made a poor diplomat,--he spread all his cards out on the table. He won from his opponent, Stephen A. Douglas, the tribute, "Lincoln was the fairest and most honest man I ever knew." If there ever lived an absolutely honest lawyer, Lincoln was the man. In his work before the jury Lincoln never misrepresented his opponent's position, never twisted the testimony of the witness, never made bia.s.sed statements to win a verdict. Once a young lawyer who was opposing Lincoln made a poor plea for his client, and overlooked in his argument before the jury two most important considerations. Lincoln was restless, and greatly disturbed. He seemed to think that the lawyer's client had been badly used, and that his attorney had not given him a fair chance, or guarded his rights. When Lincoln arose, therefore, he began by saying that the opposing counsel had overlooked the most important point. He then stated his opponent's position far more strongly than his lawyer had, and made the best possible statement for his opponent, to the astonishment and indignation of his own client, whom he was defending.

Then Lincoln turned to answer these arguments,--with the result that for the first time the two litigants understood the exact facts of both sides, and at Lincoln's request settled the case, withdrawing it from the court.

This love of the exact truth and of fair play and of essential justice shone from the man's face, dominated his arguments, explained his view-point, revealed his character. The nickname, "Honest Old Abe,"

tells the whole story. Lincoln's final judgment partook of the nature of a final decree and law. At length his p.r.o.nouncements became like a divine fiat. Take the truth out of Lincoln's character, and it would be like taking the warmth out of a sunbeam. He _was_ truth, he thought truth, loved the truth, surrendered himself to the truth. Under that influence he refused to play politics, or fence for position with Douglas. Once Lincoln won a case so easily that he returned one-half of the retainer's fee, because he felt that he had not earned it.

Here, therefore, is found the secret of Lincoln's unbounded popularity.

The common people know their friends, and--what with Lincoln's gentleness, his justice, his boundless kindness, his sympathy with the poor and the unfortunate, and his honesty--he became the most beloved man in the Illinois circuit.

Wonderful, too, his literary achievements. His great pa.s.sages read like the Bible, and have almost the moral authority thereof. If preachers ever wear the old Bible out, Lincoln's Second Inaugural, and his speech at Gettysburg, and certain other pa.s.sages, will furnish texts for another hundred years. One thing is certain,--if Chinese students in their universities two thousand years from now translate any oration out of the English language, as we now translate the speeches of Demosthenes, these Chinese students will translate Lincoln's speech at Gettysburg, and his Second Inaugural Address. Contrary to the usual idea, it may be confidently affirmed that Lincoln was a well equipped man, and had the best possible training for literary style. During the plastic years of memory, Lincoln had three books to study, and two of these are the finest models for style in all literature,--King James'

Version of the Bible, and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." These are the world's great literary masterpieces, these are the wells of English, pure and undefiled. Upon these two books Robert Burns was reared. To the fact that his mother made him commit to memory forty chapters of the Bible before he was seven years old, John Ruskin attributed his mastery in English style. Second rate men know something about everything.

Lincoln was a first rate man who knew everything about some one thing.

If you want to make a versatile man, turn a boy loose in a library. If you want a boy to have the note of distinction upon his pages, lock him out of a library, and send him into solitude, with the English Bible, with John Bunyan, and with aesop's Fables, and let him take these three books into his intellect, as he takes meat and bread into the rich blood of the physical system.

Literary style is the shadow that the soul flings across the page. Style is simply the intellect rus.h.i.+ng into exhibition and verbal form.

Therefore style is the balance of faculty, symmetry of development. A man is healthy when he does not know that he has a single organ in his body, and a page has style when you do not know where to find the note of distinction. There is a world of difference between "style," and "a style." Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural has style. Carlyle's French Revolution has a style. A perfect Kentucky horse has style. A knee-sprung horse has a style. Down the track comes this perfect horse, eyes flas.h.i.+ng, head up, neck arched, feet dancing, not a flaw, not a blemish, upon leg or body. Looking at the glorious creature you exclaim, "That horse has style!" For a horse's style is born of perfect health, perfect lungs and perfect legs, one power balancing another, and all united to produce an absolutely perfect horse. Now comes a horse that represents a collection of ringbones, and glanders, and poll-evil. The one horse limping in front has "a style." Thomas Carlyle's sentences are knee-sprung in front and his phrases are spavined behind, and, therefore, Carlyle has "a style" but not "style." You would know one of his sentences if you saw its skeleton lying in the desert on the road to Khartoum. But on the other hand, Lincoln has "style,"--that indescribable bloom and beauty, born of balance, development and symmetrical growth. Samuel Johnson bulged on the side of Latinity.

Daniel Webster is an example of the magnificent, ill.u.s.trating gorgeousness, opulence, and tropic splendour. Lincoln's sentences are like the Bible and Bunyan,--they are plate-gla.s.s windows through which you look to see the jewelled thought beyond.

Lincoln tells us how he made his style. One day he heard a man use the word "demonstrate." For days he cudgelled his brains to find out just what it was to demonstrate a statement. He tells us that when he was about eight years old, he began to be irritated when men used long words that he could not understand. He began the habit of thinking over in the dark before he went to sleep any story he had heard, any statement that had been made, and he tried to subst.i.tute for the long hard words little short simple words, that a boy could understand.

During those early years, he learned that the rich, racy, homey words are steeped and perfumed with beautiful a.s.sociations. He knew that words are fossil poetry. What would one not give for the old cloak that Paul had from Troas, a piece of the marble by Phidias, the old threshold worn by the feet of Socrates, an old missal illuminated by Bellini, an old note-book in which Shakespeare wrote the first outline of Hamlet! And the old, sweet, home words with which a mother soothes her babe, with which a lover woos his bride, the old words of G.o.d, and home and native land, are the words that are rich in a.s.sociation and in power to move the heart. A bird lines its nest with feathers plucked from its own breast, and the heart steeps the dear, simple speech of home life in sacred a.s.sociations. So Lincoln cut out all the long Latin words, and subst.i.tuted the short Saxon ones. Schooled in the two great master books that are the precious life spirit of earth's greatest souls treasured up, he developed his style.

Nor must we overlook the fact that the apparent narrowness of his culture represents a real concentration that made for richness and depth. If one must choose, take the upper Rhine that is a river deep and pure and sweet, and strong for bearing the fleets of war and peace because it is confined between banks and narrowed. But when the Rhine comes down to the flats and approaches the sea and casts off all restraints, and tries to include everything, it turns into a swamp, a mora.s.s, losing its power for commerce, and becoming a source of disease and death. Lincoln's culture was limited to the English, and to a mastery of the Const.i.tution--the principles of fundamental justice, to one country--the Republic, to one topic--the Union, and to one reform--Slavery. Beyond all doubt, this concentration of study during the critical years of his career made up a much better preparation than if he had gone to a college, studied half a dozen languages, and fifty or sixty different subjects, and come out well smattered, but poorly educated. It may be doubted whether Lincoln would have been much better off had he been able to read Latin and Greek, and speak French and German. Many people can say "It is a little yellow dog" in Greek, and German, and French, and Italian, and English, but after all it is only a little yellow dog. What educates is the idea, and not the half dozen names of a thing without an idea.

The important thing about a cistern is water, and not many mouths to the pump. Having spent many years learning to express one idea in five ways, one might be glad to trade the five ways of expression for five ideas to be expressed in one way. Edward Everett, once President of Harvard University, could talk in five languages, and at Gettysburg spoke for two hours. Lincoln could speak in one language, and did so for two minutes. But the next morning Mr. Everett wrote to the President: "I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes."

Lincoln's one language shames our knowledge of four languages, his three books shame our libraries, and our four years of college culture.

Nor must we overlook the influence upon Lincoln's style of the parables of Jesus and the fables of aesop. There are two invariable signs of genius in a boy,--one is the serious note, and the other is the picture-making note. All the great things represent serious thinking.

The greatest artist of the last century was the most serious one,--Watt, with his Love and Life, and Love and Death, and Mammon, and Hope. The great poems have been the serious poems, the In Memoriam, and the Intimations of Immortality, the Hamlet and the Lear. The great orators have been the serious orators.

The next sign of genius is the picture-making faculty. Men of talent evolve arguments, men of genius create emblems, parables and pictures.

Minds oftentimes called profound use long abstractions, and are called deep thinkers, because n.o.body can understand them. But along comes a man of genius, and he squeezes the juice out of the abstract argument, and flings the rind away, and tells you what it is like.

Measured in terms of genius, the parables of Jesus are the greatest literary achievements in history. aesop's fables teach by pictures.

"Pilgrim's Progress" is pictorial.

Lincoln was exceedingly fortunate in his generation in that the three great books of pictures were in his hands during the imaginative epoch.

Of course he was born with the talent for parable, because genius is one-half nature and the other half nurture. It was this natural gift and the training that taught him how when he had completed an argument and mastered the principle, to say, Now what is this great principle like, and how can I condense it into a picture and put it in a happy phrase that will sing itself across the land? This picture-making gift inspired him to quote the keen wisdom of that expression of Jesus, "The house divided against itself cannot stand." This skill in parables gave him the expression, "Better not swap horses in the middle of the stream,"

that gave him his second election. This vision power gave him that sentence equal to anything in Shakespeare, when Vicksburg fell, "Once more the Father of Waters goes unvexed to the sea." This faculty enabled him to sweep into one ill.u.s.tration a thousand arguments, so that the people could never forget the mother principle that explained the facts.

Nor may we forget what the great cause did for him. The era of the war was a great era, because G.o.d heaved society as the winds heave the waves, and men were swept forward with irresistible power upon the great movement of liberty. Great movements make great epochs and great men. A great ideal of G.o.d and righteousness and liberty lifts Savonarola and Florence to new levels; a great cathedral inspires Michael Angelo's great dome; a Divine Saviour and His transfiguration exalt Raphael; Paradise explains Dante; listening to the sevenfold Hallelujah chorus of G.o.d arouses the sweep and majesty of Milton's epic; the woes of three million slaves made eloquence possible for Phillips and Beecher. The saving of a Union, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal, represented a cause into which Lincoln could fling himself. The thought of meanly losing or n.o.bly saving the last, best hope of earth, exalted, transformed, and armed the men, making feeblings strong, and strong men to be giants.

Eloquence and heroism wane during the commercial era. No man can be eloquent upon the duty on hides, or salt, or the digging of mud out of a river. But dumb lips will break into glorious speech at the thought of freeing millions of slaves, and saving free inst.i.tutions, and handing liberty forward to other lands, and to generations yet unborn. The era of Fort Sumter and Gettysburg, when liberty and slavery were in their death grapple, was an era so great that the ordinary issues of avarice, self-interest, fame, luxury, became contemptible, and men were exalted to the point where they spake, and suffered, and marched, and died, more like G.o.ds than men. The great battles to be fought, the great armies to be moved, the great navies to be directed, the great orators and editors with whom he counselled, the many slaves for whom he became a voice, the great days on which he felt that he was making history, the great future into which he hoped to send the great liberties unimpaired and purified, the great G.o.d over all,--lent greatness to Abraham Lincoln, clothed him with pathos, with sorrow, with dignity and majesty, as with garments.

Like every giant, he was gentle. The truly great are always sensitive and sympathetic. In proportion as the mountain goes upward in size does it gain in power to return the strong man's shout, or the sigh of the lost child, echoing and reechoing the cry of need. Sympathy is the soul journeying abroad, to bind up the wounds of him who has fallen among thieves. Sympathy cannot feast in a palace while the poor famish.

Selfishness can stop its ears with wax lest it hear the groan of the poor, but sympathy is knitted in with its kind. Lincoln worked as hard to help men as slave masters did to recover a fugitive to bondage. It has been beautifully said that he did kind deeds stealthily, as if he were afraid of being found out. He became a s.h.i.+eld above the fallen; he stood between the soldier, condemned for the sleep of exhaustion, and the hangman's noose. He refused to attend a cabinet meeting because he was trying to find a reason for reprieving a soldier. "It is butchery day," he said one Friday morning, and he denied himself to a committee because he did not think that hanging would help the boy who was condemned to die. "They said he was homely," said a poor woman, going away from the White House with a reprieve for her son; "he is the handsomest man I ever saw." It is this sympathy that runs through his letter to that mother, whose five sons had died gloriously on the field of battle. For he squeezed the purple cl.u.s.ters of the heart, and let the crimson tide flow down upon the page, as he prayed that the mother might carry through the years "only the cherished memory of the loved and the lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom."

More striking still, Lincoln's trust in G.o.d and His overruling providence. Mr. Herndon in his biography and Dr. Abbott in an editorial and an oration at Cooper Inst.i.tute emphasize the agnosticism of Lincoln.

The one says that in his youth he wrote an article against Christianity, and the other that he was not a technical Christian. Dr. Abbott thinks all this so important that he places the agnosticism of Lincoln at the forefront. But too much has been made of the schoolboy article of Lincoln on doubt and infidelity. In his youth Gladstone was a Tory, but he outgrew it. In the outset Paul was against Christianity. Tennyson and Wordsworth in their teens wrote puerile verse, just as Lincoln in his teens wrote a foolish paper. But it is cruelly unfair not to allow Abraham Lincoln the full benefit of what he came to be, and not to take the man at his best. It is unfair to say that a man is what he is at his worst and lowest point; a man is what he is at his best and highest point. Stephen A. Douglas said Lincoln was the most honest man he ever knew. Well, if Lincoln was an honest man in his character, he must have been honest in talking about his religion and his faith in G.o.d. Was Abraham Lincoln an agnostic in that hour when he spoke his farewell words to his neighbours in Springfield, about starting on the memorable journey to his inauguration? He said: "I feel that I cannot succeed without the same divine aid that sustained Was.h.i.+ngton, and on the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support; and I hope you, my friends, will all pray that I may receive that divine a.s.sistance without which I cannot succeed, but with which success is certain." Was Abraham Lincoln without faith, and did he play to the gallery, when he set apart a day of fasting and prayer after the defeat at Bull Run? Having said that Abraham Lincoln was an honest man, why not remember it, when these critics read his First Inaugural, in which he declares that "intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favoured land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty." When Abraham Lincoln wrote the mother, Mrs. Bixby, "I pray that the heavenly Father may a.s.suage the anguish of your bereavement," he meant that he believed in G.o.d, in a G.o.d who answered prayer, in a G.o.d who cared for the mother living, and the five brave boys dead. "The Almighty has His own purposes," said Lincoln, in the Second Inaugural, an address that is steeped in religion, that exhales trust in G.o.d. Take G.o.d out of that Second Inaugural, and it would be like taking health out of the body, wisdom out of the book, sweetness out of the song, culture out of the intellect, life out of the body. You cannot in one breath say that Lincoln was an agnostic, and then in the next one say that Lincoln was an honest man. I care not one whit what Mr. Herndon says. I care everything about what Abraham Lincoln says about himself in his greatest speeches, in his n.o.blest hours, when he gave his countrymen his latest, deepest, profoundest thoughts.

In trying to explain the character of Lincoln we therefore make our final appeal unto G.o.d, for G.o.d alone is equal to the making of this great man. When long time has pa.s.sed, the name of Lincoln will probably be mentioned with Moses, Julius Caesar, Paul, Shakespeare. Men will read a few of his paragraphs as a kind of Bible of Patriotism. Was.h.i.+ngton's name will not be less, but Lincoln's will certainly be more and more, and then still more. G.o.d and Sorrow made the man great.

And this is his life story. In the darkest hour of the Republic, when liberty and slavery were struggling to see which should rule the old homestead, it became evident that slavery would turn the garden into a desert, and the house into a ruin. And seeking a deliverer and a saviour, the great G.o.d, in His own purpose, pa.s.sed by the palace with its silken delights. He took a little babe in His arms, and called to His side His favourite angel, the angel of Sorrow. Stooping, he whispered, "Oh, Sorrow, thou well-beloved teacher, take thou this little child of Mine and make him great. Take him to yonder cabin in the wilderness; make his home a poor man's house; plant his narrow path thick with thorns, cut his little feet with sharp and cruel rocks; as he climbs the hills of difficulty, make each footprint red with his own life-blood; load his little back with burdens; give to him days of toil and nights of study and sleeplessness; wrest from his arms whatever he loves; make his heart, through sorrow, as sensitive to the sigh of a slave as a thread of silk in a window is sensitive to the slightest wind that blows; and when you have digged lines of pain in his cheeks, and made his face more marred than the face of any man of his time, bring him back to me, and with him I will free three million slaves." That is how G.o.d made Abraham Lincoln great.

And then,--we slew him. For that is the way our ignorant, sinful earth has always rewarded its greatest souls. Ours is a world where we crucify the Saviour in Jerusalem, where we poison Socrates in Athens, where we exile Dante in Italy, and burn Savonarola in Florence, and starve Cervantes in Madrid, and jail Bunyan in Bedford,--for the greatest manhood is always rewarded with martyrdom. And what better thing for Abraham Lincoln than a.s.sa.s.sination, because he has emanc.i.p.ated three million slaves and saved the Union, as the last, best hope of earth?

But, lo, who are these in bright array, looking over the battlements of heaven, while the forces of liberty and slavery in other forms struggle together on these earthly plains beneath? These with radiant faces unstained by tears, that seem never to have known the mark of pain or sorrow? Ah! these are they who have come out of great tribulation, anguish and martyrdom; Paul from the stones; Homer from his blindness; Socrates from his cup of poison; Milton from his heart-break; Savonarola from his f.a.gots, and Lincoln from his long martyrdom--the least part of which was the shot that freed his spirit in the hour of triumph and joy.