7: Lincoln
<< 6: War || 8: The Rule of Lincoln >>
The history of the North had virtually become, by April, 1861,
the history of Lincoln himself, and during the remaining four
years of the President's life it is difficult to separate his
personality from the trend of national history. Any attempt to
understand the achievements and the omissions of the Northern
people without undertaking an intelligent estimate of their
leader would be only to duplicate the story of "Hamlet" with
Hamlet left out. According to the opinion of English military
experts1, "Against the great military genius of certain Southern
leaders fate opposed the unbroken resolution and passionate
devotion to the Union, which he worshiped, of the great Northern
President. As long as he lived and ruled the people of the
North, there could be no turning back."
Lincoln has been ranked with Socrates; but he has also been
compared with Rabelais. He has been the target of abuse that
knew no mercy; but he has been worshiped as a demigod. The ten
big volumes of his official biography are a sustained,
intemperate eulogy in which the hero does nothing that is not
admirable; but as large a book could be built up out of
contemporaneous Northern writings that would paint a picture of
unmitigated blackness—and the most eloquent portions of it would
be signed by Wendell Phillips.
The real Lincoln is, of course, neither the Lincoln of the
official biography nor the Lincoln of Wendell Phillips. He was
neither a saint nor a villain. What he actually was is not,
however, so easily stated. Prodigious men are never easy to sum
up; and Lincoln was a prodigious man. The more one studies him,
the more individual he appears to be. By degrees one comes to
understand how it was possible for contemporaries to hold
contradictory views of him and for each to believe frantically
that his views were proved by facts. For anyone who thinks he
can hit off in a few neat generalities this complex,
extraordinary personality, a single warning may suffice. Walt
Whitman, who was perhaps the most original thinker and the most
acute observer who ever saw Lincoln face to face has left us his
impression; but he adds that there was something in Lincoln's
face which defied description and which no picture had caught.
After Whitman's conclusion that "One of the great portrait
painters of two or three hundred years ago is needed," the mere
historian should proceed with caution.
There is historic significance in his very appearance. His huge,
loose-knit figure, six feet four inches high, lean, muscular,
ungainly, the evidence of his great physical strength, was a fit
symbol of those hard workers, the children of the soil, from whom
he sprang. His face was rugged like his figure, the complexion
swarthy, cheek bones high, and bushy black hair crowning a great
forehead beneath which the eyes were deep-set, gray, and
dreaming. A sort of shambling powerfulness formed the main
suggestion of face and figure, softened strangely by the
mysterious expression of the eyes, and by the singular delicacy
of the skin. The motions of this awkward giant lacked grace; the
top hat and black frock coat, sometimes rusty, which had served
him on the western circuit continued to serve him when he was
virtually the dictator of his country. It was in such dress that
he visited the army, where he towered above his generals.
Even in a book of restricted scope, such as this, one must insist
upon the distinction between the private and public Lincoln, for
there is as yet no accepted conception of him. What comes
nearest to an accepted conception is contained probably in the
version of the late Charles Francis Adams. He tells us how his
father, the elder Charles Francis Adams, ambassador to London,
found Lincoln in 1861 an offensive personality, and he insists
that Lincoln under strain passed through a transformation which
made the Lincoln of 1864 a different man from the Lincoln of
1861. Perhaps; but without being frivolous, one is tempted to
quote certain old-fashioned American papers that used to label
their news items "important if true."
What then, was the public Lincoln? What explains his vast
success? As a force in American history, what does he count for?
Perhaps the most significant detail in an answer to these
questions is the fact that he had never held conspicuous public
office until at the age of fifty-two he became President.
Psychologically his place is in that small group of great
geniuses whose whole significant period lies in what we commonly
think of as the decline of life. There are several such in
history: Rome had Caesar; America had both Lincoln and Lee. By
contrasting these instances with those of the other type, the
egoistic geniuses such as Alexander or Napoleon, we become aware
of some dim but profound dividing line separating the two groups.
The theory that genius, at bottom, is pure energy seems to fit
Napoleon; but does it fit these other minds who appear to meet
life with a certain indifference, with a carelessness of their
own fate, a willingness to leave much to chance? That
irresistible passion for authority which Napoleon had is lacking
in these others. Their basal inspiration seems to resemble the
impulse of the artist to express, rather than the impulse of the
man of action to possess. Had it not been for secession, Lee
would probably have ended his days as an exemplary superintendent
of West Point. And what of Lincoln? He dabbled in politics,
early and without success; he left politics for the law, and to
the law he gave during many years his chief devotion. But the
fortuitous break-up of parties, with the revival of the slavery
issue, touched some hidden spring; the able provincial lawyer
felt again the political impulse; he became a famous maker of
political phrases; and on this literary basis he became the
leader of a party.
Too little attention has been paid to this progression of Lincoln
through literature into politics. The ease with which he drifted
from one to the other is also still to be evaluated. Did it show
a certain slackness, a certain aimlessness, at the bottom of his
nature? Had it, in a way, some sort of analogy—to compare
homespun with things Olympian—to the vein of frivolity in the
great Caesar? One is tempted to think so. Surely, here was one
of those natures which need circumstance to compel them to
greatness and which are not foredoomed, Napoleon-like, to seize
greatness. Without encroaching upon the biographical task, one
may borrow from biography this insistent echo: the anecdotes of
Lincoln sound over and over the note of easy-going good nature;
but there is to be found in many of the Lincoln anecdotes an
overtone of melancholy which lingers after one's impression of
his good nature. Quite naturally, in such a biographical
atmosphere, we find ourselves thinking of him at first as a
little too good-humored, a little too easy-going, a little prone
to fall into reverie. We are not surprised when we find his
favorite poem beginning "Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be
proud."
This enigmatical man became President in his fifty-second year.
We have already seen that his next period, the winter of 1860-61,
has its biographical problems. The impression which he made on
the country as President-elect was distinctly unfavorable. Good
humor, or opportunism, or what you will, brought together in
Lincoln's Cabinet at least three men more conspicuous in the
ordinary sense than he was himself. We forget, today, how
insignificant he must have seemed in a Cabinet that embraced
Seward, Cameron, and Chase—all large national figures. What
would not history give for a page of self-revelation showing us
how he felt in the early days of that company! Was he troubled?
Did he doubt his ability to hold his own? Was he fatalistic?
Was his sad smile his refuge? Did he merely put things by,
ignoring tomorrow until tomorrow should arrive?
However we may guess at the answers to such questions, one thing
now becomes certain. His quality of good humor began to be his
salvation. It is doubtful if any President except Washington had
to manage so difficult a Cabinet. Washington had seen no
solution to the problem but to let Jefferson go. Lincoln found
his Cabinet often on the verge of a split, with two powerful
factions struggling to control it and neither ever gaining full
control. Though there were numerous withdrawals, no resigning
secretary really split Lincoln's Cabinet. By what turns and
twists and skillful maneuvers Lincoln prevented such a division
and kept such inveterate enemies as Chase and Seward steadily at
their jobs—Chase during three years, Seward to the end—will
partly appear in the following pages; but the whole delicate
achievement cannot be properly appreciated except in detailed
biography.
All criticism of Lincoln turns eventually on one question: Was he
an opportunist? Not only his enemies in his own time but many
politicians of a later day were eager to prove that he was the
latter—indeed, seeking to shelter their own opportunism behind
the majesty of his example. A modern instance will perhaps make
vivid this long standing debate upon Lincoln and his motives.
Merely for historic illumination and without becoming invidious,
we may recall the instance of President Wilson and the
resignation of his Secretary of War in 1916 because Congress
would not meet the issue of preparedness. The President accepted
the resignation without forcing the issue, and Congress went on
fiddling while Rome burned. Now, was the President an
opportunist, merely waiting to see what course events would take,
or was he a political strategist, astutely biding his time?
Similar in character is this old debate upon Lincoln, which is
perhaps best focussed in the removal of Secretary Blair which we
shall have to note in connection with the election of 1864.
It is difficult for the most objective historian to deal with
such questions without obtruding his personal views, but there is
nothing merely individual in recording the fact that the steady
drift of opinion has been away from the conception of Lincoln as
an opportunist. What once caused him to be thus conceived
appears now to have been a failure to comprehend intelligently
the nature of his undertaking. More and more, the tendency
nowadays is to conceive his career as one of those few instances
in which the precise faculties needed to solve a particular
problem were called into play at exactly the critical moment.
Our confusions with regard to Lincoln have grown out of our
failure to appreciate the singularity of the American people, and
their ultra-singularity during the years in which he lived. It
remains to be seen hereafter what strange elements of
sensibility, of waywardness, of lack of imagination, of
undisciplined ardor, of selfishness, of deceitfulness, of
treachery, combined with heroic ideality, made up the character
of that complex populace which it was Lincoln's task to control.
But he did more than control it: he somehow compounded much of it
into something like a unit. To measure Lincoln's achievement in
this respect, two things must be remembered: on the one hand, his
task was not as arduous as it might have been, because the most
intellectual part of the North had definitely committed itself
either irretrievably for, or irreconcilably against, his policy.
Lincoln, therefore, did not have to trouble himself with this
portion of the population. On the other hand, that part which he
had to master included such emotional rhetoricians as Horace
Greeley; such fierce zealots as Henry Winter Davis of Maryland,
who made him trouble indeed, and Benjamin Wade, whom we have met
already; such military egoists as McClellan and Pope; such crafty
double-dealers as his own Secretary of the Treasury; such astute
grafters as Cameron; such miserable creatures as certain powerful
capitalists who sacrificed his army to their own lust for profits
filched from army contracts.
The wonder of Lincoln's achievement is that he contrived at last
to extend his hold over all these diverse elements; that he
persuaded some, outwitted others, and overcame them all. The
subtlety of this task would have ruined any statesman of the
driving sort. Explain Lincoln by any theory you will, his
personality was the keystone of the Northern arch; subtract it,
and the arch falls. The popular element being as complex and
powerful as it was, how could the presiding statesman have
mastered the situation if he had not been of so peculiar a sort
that he could influence all these diverse and powerful interests,
slowly, by degrees, without heat, without the imperative note,
almost in silence, with the universal, enfolding irresistibility
of the gradual things in nature, of the sun and the rain. Such
was the genius of Lincoln—all but passionless, yet so quiet that
one cannot but believe in the great depth of his nature.
We are, even today, far from a definitive understanding of
Lincoln's statecraft, but there is perhaps justification for
venturing upon one prophecy. The farther from him we get and the
more clearly we see him in perspective, the more we shall realize
his creative influence upon his party. A Lincoln who is the
moulder of events and the great creator of public opinion will
emerge at last into clear view. In the Lincoln of his ultimate
biographer there will be more of iron than of a less enduring
metal in the figure of the Lincoln of present tradition. Though
none of his gentleness will disappear, there will be more
emphasis placed upon his firmness, and upon such episodes as that
of December, 1860, when his single will turned the scale against
compromise; upon his steadiness in the defeat of his party at the
polls in 1862; or his overruling of the will of Congress in the
summer of 1864 on the question of reconstruction; or his attitude
in the autumn of that year when he believed that he was losing
his second election. Behind all his gentleness, his slowness,
behind his sadness, there will eventually appear an inflexible
purpose, strong as steel, unwavering as fate.
The Civil War was in truth Lincoln's war. Those modern pacifists
who claim him for their own are beside the mark. They will never
get over their illusions about Lincoln until they see, as all the
world is beginning to see, that his career has universal
significance because of its bearing on the universal modern
problem of democracy. It will not do ever to forget that he was
a man of the people, always playing the hand of the people, in
the limited social sense of that word, though playing it with
none of the heat usually met with in the statesmen of successful
democracy from Cleon to Robespierre, from Andrew Jackson to Lloyd
George. His gentleness does not remove Lincoln from that stern
category. Throughout his life, besides his passion for the Union,
besides his antipathy to slavery, there dwelt in his very heart
love of and faith in the plain people. We shall never see him in
true historic perspective until we conceive him as the instrument
of a vast social idea—the determination to make a government
based on the plain people successful in war.
He did not scruple to seize power when he thought the cause of
the people demanded it, and his enemies were prompt to accuse him
of holding to the doctrine that the end justified the means—a
hasty conclusion which will have to be reconsidered; what
concerns us more closely is the definite conviction that he felt
no sacrifice too great if it advanced the happiness of the
generality of mankind.
The final significance of Lincoln as a statesman of democracy is
brought out most clearly in his foreign relations. Fate put it
into the hands of England to determine whether his Government
should stand or fall. Though it is doubtful how far the turning
of the scale of English policy in Lincoln's favor was due to the
influence of the rising power of English democracy, it is plain
that Lincoln thought of himself as having one purpose with that
movement which he regarded as an ally. Beyond all doubt among
the most grateful messages he ever received were the New Year
greetings of confidence and sympathy which were sent by English
workingmen in 1863. A few sentences in his "Letter to the
Workingmen of London" help us to look through his eyes and see
his life and its struggles as they appeared to him in relation to
world history:
"As these sentiments [expressed by the English workmen] are
manifestly the enduring support of the free institutions of
England, so am I sure that they constitute the only reliable
basis for free institutions throughout the world.... The
resources, advantages, and power of the American people are very
great, and they have consequently succeeded to equally great
responsibilities. It seems to have devolved upon them to test
whether a government established on the principles of human
freedom can be maintained against an effort to build one upon the
exclusive foundation of human bondage. They will rejoice with me
in the new evidence which your proceedings furnish that the
magnanimity they are exhibiting is justly estimated by the true
friends of freedom and humanity in foreign countries."
Written at the opening of that terrible year, 1863, these words
are a forward link with those more celebrated words spoken toward
its close at Gettysburg. Perhaps at no time during the war,
except during the few days immediately following his own
reelection a year later, did Lincoln come so near being free from
care as then. Perhaps that explains why his fundamental literary
power reasserted itself so remarkably, why this speech of his at
the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg on the 19th
of November, 1863, remains one of the most memorable orations
ever delivered:
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon
this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated
to the proposition that all men are created equal.
"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that
nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long
endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have
come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place
for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
"But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate,
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to
add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It
is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly
advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great
task remaining before us: that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last
full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these
dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the
people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from
the earth."
1 Wood and Edmonds. The Civil War in the United States.
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