diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 906-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 29039 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 906-h/906-h.htm | 1219 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 906.txt | 1107 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 906.zip | bin | 0 -> 25843 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
7 files changed, 2342 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/906-h.zip b/906-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..4ae451a --- /dev/null +++ b/906-h.zip diff --git a/906-h/906-h.htm b/906-h/906-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..42136b3 --- /dev/null +++ b/906-h/906-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1219 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<HTML><HEAD> +<TITLE>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Abraham Lincoln, by James Lowell</TITLE> +<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> +<STYLE TYPE="text/css"> +<!-- +DIV.book { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; text-align: justify; } +P { text-indent: 2em; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0; } +P.pg { text-indent: 0em; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; } +SUP { text-decoration: none; } +--> +</STYLE> +</HEAD> +<BODY> +<center><h1>The Project Gutenberg EBook of<br> +<a href="#title"><i>Abraham Lincoln</i></a><br>by James Russell Lowell</h1> +<h2>#2 in our series by James Russell Lowell</h2></center> +<DIV align="justify"> +<p class="pg"><br> +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. +<p class="pg"> +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. +<p class="pg"> +Please read the <a href="#legal">“legal small print,”</a> and <a href="#footer">other information</a> about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. +<p class="pg"> +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** +<p class="pg"> +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** +<p class="pg"> +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** +<p class="pg"> +Title: Abraham Lincoln +<p class="pg"> +Author: James Russell Lowell +<p class="pg"> +Release Date: May, 1997 [Etext #906] +<br>[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +<br>[This HTML edition was first posted on March 27, 2003] +<p class="pg"> +Edition: 10 +<p class="pg"> +Language: English +<p class="pg"> +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 +<p class="pg"> +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ABRAHAM LINCOLN *** +<p class="pg"><br><br> +This eBook was converted to HTML, with additional editing, by Jose Menendez +from the text edition produced by Tony Adam. +<br><br><br></DIV> +<DIV class="book"> +<a name="title"></a><hr size="3" noshade> +<center> +<h1>ABRAHAM LINCOLN</h1><h3>BY</h3><h2>JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL</h2> +<hr size="3" noshade></center> +<p><br><br> +<big>T</big>HERE have been many painful crises since the impatient vanity of +South Carolina hurried ten prosperous Commonwealths into a +crime whose assured retribution was to leave them either at the +mercy of the nation they had wronged, or of the anarchy they had +summoned but could not control, when no thoughtful American +opened his morning paper without dreading to find that he had no +longer a country to love and honor. Whatever the result of the +convulsion whose first shocks were beginning to be felt, there +would still be enough square miles of earth for elbow-room; but +that ineffable sentiment made up of memory and hope, of instinct +and tradition, which swells every man’s heart and shapes his +thought, though perhaps never present to his consciousness, would +be gone from it, leaving it common earth and nothing more. Men +might gather rich crops from it, but that ideal harvest of priceless +associations would be reaped no longer; that fine virtue which sent +up messages of courage and security from every sod of it would +have evaporated beyond recall. We should be irrevocably cut off +from our past, and be forced to splice the ragged ends of our lives +upon whatever new conditions chance might leave dangling for us. +<p> +We confess that we had our doubts at first whether the patriotism +of our people were not too narrowly provincial to embrace the +proportions of national peril. We felt an only too natural distrust of +immense public meetings and enthusiastic cheers. +<p> +That a reaction should follow the holiday enthusiasm with which +the war was entered on, that it should follow soon, and that the +slackening of public spirit should be proportionate to the previous +over-tension, might well be foreseen by all who had studied human +nature or history. Men acting gregariously are always in extremes; +as they are one moment capable of higher courage, so they are +liable, the next, to baser depression, and it is often a matter of +chance whether numbers shall multiply confidence or +discouragement. Nor does deception lead more surely to distrust of +men, than self-deception to suspicion of principles. The only faith +that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is +woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience. +Enthusiasm is good material for the orator, but the statesman needs +something more durable to work in,—must be able to rely on the +deliberate reason and consequent firmness of the people, without +which that presence of mind, no less essential in times of moral than +of material peril, will be wanting at the critical moment. Would this +fervor of the Free States hold out? Was it kindled by a just feeling +of the value of constitutional liberty? Had it body enough to +withstand the inevitable dampening of checks, reverses, delays? +Had our population intelligence enough to comprehend that the +choice was between order and anarchy, between the equilibrium of +a government by law and the tussle of misrule by +<i>pronunciamiento?</i> Could a war be maintained without the +ordinary stimulus of hatred and plunder, and with the impersonal +loyalty of principle? These were serious questions, and with no +precedent to aid in answering them. +<p> +At the beginning of the war there was, indeed, occasion for the +most anxious apprehension. A President known to be infected with +the political heresies, and suspected of sympathy with the treason, +of the Southern conspirators, had just surrendered the reins, we will +not say of power, but of chaos, to a successor known only as the +representative of a party whose leaders, with long training in +opposition, had none in the conduct of affairs; an empty treasury +was called on to supply resources beyond precedent in the history +of finance; the trees were yet growing and the iron unmined with +which a navy was to be built and armored; officers without +discipline were to make a mob into an army; and, above all, the +public opinion of Europe, echoed and reinforced with every vague +hint and every specious argument of despondency by a powerful +faction at home, was either contemptuously sceptical or actively +hostile. It would be hard to over-estimate the force of this latter +element of disintegration and discouragement among a people +where every citizen at home, and every soldier in the field, is a +reader of newspapers. The peddlers of rumor in the North were the +most effective allies of the rebellion. A nation can be liable to no +more insidious treachery than that of the telegraph, sending hourly +its electric thrill of panic along the remotest nerves of the +community, till the excited imagination makes every real danger +loom heightened with its unreal double. +<p> +And even if we look only at more palpable difficulties, the problem +to be solved by our civil war was so vast, both in its immediate +relations and its future consequences; the conditions of its solution +were so intricate and so greatly dependent on incalculable and +uncontrollable contingencies; so many of the data, whether for hope +or fear, were, from their novelty, incapable of arrangement under +any of the categories of historical precedent, that there were +moments of crisis when the firmest believer in the strength and +sufficiency of the democratic theory of government might well hold +his breath in vague apprehension of disaster. Our teachers of +political philosophy, solemnly arguing from the precedent of some +petty Grecian, Italian, or Flemish city, whose long periods of +aristocracy were broken now and then by awkward parentheses of +mob, had always taught us that democracies were incapable of the +sentiment of loyalty, of concentrated and prolonged effort, of +far-reaching conceptions; were absorbed in material interests; impatient +of regular, and much more of exceptional restraint; had no natural +nucleus of gravitation, nor any forces but centrifugal; were always +on the verge of civil war, and slunk at last into the natural +almshouse of bankrupt popular government, a military despotism. +Here was indeed a dreary outlook for persons who knew +democracy, not by rubbing shoulders with it lifelong, but merely +from books, and America only by the report of some fellow-Briton, +who, having eaten a bad dinner or lost a carpet-bag here, had +written to <i>The Times</i> demanding redress, and drawing a +mournful inference of democratic instability. Nor were men +wanting among ourselves who had so steeped their brains in +London literature as to mistake Cockneyism for European culture, +and contempt of their country for cosmopolitan breadth of view, +and who, owing all they had and all they were to democracy, thought +it had an air of high-breeding to join in the shallow epicedium that +our bubble had burst. +<p> +But beside any disheartening influences which might affect the timid +or the despondent, there were reasons enough of settled gravity +against any over-confidence of hope. A war—which, whether we +consider the expanse of the territory at stake, the hosts brought into +the field, or the reach of the principles involved, may fairly be +reckoned the most momentous of modern times—was to be waged +by a people divided at home, unnerved by fifty years of peace, +under a chief magistrate without experience and without reputation, +whose every measure was sure to be cunningly hampered by a +jealous and unscrupulous minority, and who, while dealing with +unheard-of complications at home, must soothe a hostile neutrality +abroad, waiting only a pretext to become war. All this was to be +done without warning and without preparation, while at the same +time a social revolution was to be accomplished in the political +condition of four millions of people, by softening the prejudices, +allaying the fears, and gradually obtaining the cooperation, of their +unwilling liberators. Surely, if ever there were an occasion when +the heightened imagination of the historian might see Destiny visibly +intervening in human affairs, here was a knot worthy of her shears. +Never, perhaps, was any system of government tried by so +continuous and searching a strain as ours during the last three +years; never has any shown itself stronger; and never could that +strength be so directly traced to the virtue and intelligence of the +people,—to that general enlightenment and prompt efficiency of +public opinion possible only under the influence of a political +framework like our own. We find it hard to understand how even a +foreigner should be blind to the grandeur of the combat of ideas +that has been going on here,—to the heroic energy, persistency, and +self-reliance of a nation proving that it knows how much dearer +greatness is than mere power; and we own that it is impossible for +us to conceive the mental and moral condition of the American who +does not feel his spirit braced and heightened by being even a +spectator of such qualities and achievements. That a steady +purpose and a definite aim have been given to the jarring forces +which, at the beginning of the war, spent themselves in the +discussion of schemes which could only become operative, if at all, +after the war was over; that a popular excitement has been slowly +intensified into an earnest national will; that a somewhat +impracticable moral sentiment has been made the unconscious +instrument of a practical moral end; that the treason of covert +enemies, the jealousy of rivals, the unwise zeal of friends, have been +made not only useless for mischief, but even useful for good; that +the conscientious sensitiveness of England to the horrors of civil +conflict has been prevented from complicating a domestic with a +foreign war;—all these results, any one of which might suffice to +prove greatness in a ruler, have been mainly due to the good sense, +the good-humor, the sagacity, the large-mindedness, and the +unselfish honesty of the unknown man whom a blind fortune, as it +seemed, had lifted from the crowd to the most dangerous and +difficult eminence of modern times. It is by presence of mind in +untried emergencies that the native metal of a man is tested; it is by +the sagacity to see, and the fearless honesty to admit, whatever of +truth there may be in an adverse opinion, in order more +convincingly to expose the fallacy that lurks behind it, that a +reasoner at length gains for his mere statement of a fact the force of +argument; it is by a wise forecast which allows hostile combinations +to go so far as by the inevitable reaction to become elements of his +own power, that a politician proves his genius for state-craft; and +especially it is by so gently guiding public sentiment that he seems +to follow it, by so yielding doubtful points that he can be firm +without seeming obstinate in essential ones, and thus gain the +advantages of compromise without the weakness of concession; by +so instinctively comprehending the temper and prejudices of a +people as to make them gradually conscious of the superior wisdom +of his freedom from temper and prejudice,—it is by qualities such as +these that a magistrate shows himself worthy to be chief in a +commonwealth of freemen. And it is for qualities such as these that +we firmly believe History will rank Mr. Lincoln among the most +prudent of statesmen and the most successful of rulers. If we wish +to appreciate him, we have only to conceive the inevitable chaos in +which we should now be weltering, had a weak man or an unwise +one been chosen in his stead. +<p> +“Bare is back,” says the Norse proverb, “without brother behind it;” +and this is, by analogy, true of an elective magistracy. The +hereditary ruler in any critical emergency may reckon on the +inexhaustible resources of <i>prestige,</i> of sentiment, of superstition, +of dependent interest, while the new man must slowly and painfully +create all these out of the unwilling material around him, by +superiority of character, by patient singleness of purpose, by +sagacious presentiment of popular tendencies and instinctive +sympathy with the national character. Mr. Lincoln’s task was one +of peculiar and exceptional difficulty. Long habit had accustomed +the American people to the notion of a party in power, and of a +President as its creature and organ, while the more vital fact, that +the executive for the time being represents the abstract idea of +government as a permanent principle superior to all party and all +private interest, had gradually become unfamiliar. They had so long +seen the public policy more or less directed by views of party, and +often even of personal advantage, as to be ready to suspect the +motives of a chief magistrate compelled, for the first time in our +history, to feel himself the head and hand of a great nation, and to +act upon the fundamental maxim, laid down by all publicists, that +the first duty of a government is to defend and maintain its own +existence. Accordingly, a powerful weapon seemed to be put into +the hands of the opposition by the necessity under which the +administration found itself of applying this old truth to new +relations. Nor were the opposition his only nor his most dangerous +opponents. +<p> +The Republicans had carried the country upon an issue in which +ethics were more directly and visibly mingled with politics than +usual. Their leaders were trained to a method of oratory which +relied for its effect rather on the moral sense than the +understanding. Their arguments were drawn, not so much from +experience as from general principles of right and wrong. When the +war came, their system continued to be applicable and effective, for +here again the reason of the people was to be reached and kindled +through their sentiments. It was one of those periods of +excitement, gathering, contagious, universal, which, while they last, +exalt and clarify the minds of men, giving to the mere words +<i>country, human rights, democracy,</i> a meaning and a force beyond +that of sober and logical argument. They were convictions, +maintained and defended by the supreme logic of passion. That +penetrating fire ran in and roused those primary instincts that make +their lair in the dens and caverns of the mind. What is called the +great popular heart was awakened, that indefinable something +which may be, according to circumstances, the highest reason or +the most brutish unreason. But enthusiasm, once cold, can never be +warmed over into anything better than cant,—and phrases, when +once the inspiration that filled them with beneficent power has +ebbed away, retain only that semblance of meaning which enables +them to supplant reason in hasty minds. Among the lessons taught +by the French Revolution there is none sadder or more striking than +this, that you may make everything else out of the passions of men +except a political system that will work, and that there is nothing so +pitilessly and unconsciously cruel as sincerity formulated into +dogma. It is always demoralizing to extend the domain of sentiment +over questions where it has no legitimate jurisdiction; and perhaps +the severest strain upon Mr. Lincoln was in resisting a tendency of +his own supporters which chimed with his own private desires, +while wholly opposed to his convictions of what would be wise +policy. +<p> +The change which three years have brought about is too remarkable +to be passed over without comment, too weighty in its lesson not to +be laid to heart. Never did a President enter upon office with less +means at his command, outside his own strength of heart and +steadiness of understanding, for inspiring confidence in the people, +and so winning it for himself, than Mr. Lincoln. All that was known +of him was that he was a good stump-speaker, nominated for his +<i>availability,</i>—that is, because he had no history,—and chosen by a +party with whose more extreme opinions he was not in sympathy. +It might well be feared that a man past fifty, against whom the +ingenuity of hostile partisans could rake up no accusation, must be +lacking in manliness of character, in decision of principle, in +strength of will; that a man who was at best only the representative +of a party, and who yet did not fairly represent even that, would fail +of political, much more of popular, support. And certainly no one +ever entered upon office with so few resources of power in the +past, and so many materials of weakness in the present, as Mr. +Lincoln. Even in that half of the Union which acknowledged him as +President, there was a large, and at that time dangerous, minority, +that hardly admitted his claim to the office, and even in the party +that elected him there was also a large minority that suspected him +of being secretly a communicant with the church of Laodicea. <a href="#f1"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> +All he did was sure to be virulently attacked as ultra by one side; all +that he left undone, to be stigmatized as proof of lukewarmness and +backsliding by the other. Meanwhile he was to carry on a truly +colossal war by means of both; he was to disengage the country +from diplomatic entanglements of unprecedented peril undisturbed +by the help or the hindrance of either, and to win from the crowning +dangers of his administration, in the confidence of the people, the +means of his safety and their own. He has contrived to do it, and +perhaps none of our Presidents since Washington has stood so firm +in the confidence of the people as he does after three years of +stormy administration. +<p> +Mr. Lincoln’s policy was a tentative one, and rightly so. He laid +down no programme which must compel him to be either +inconsistent or unwise, no cast-iron theorem to which +circumstances must be fitted as they rose, or else be useless to his +ends. He seemed to have chosen Mazarin’s motto, <i>Le temps et +moi.</i> <a href="#f2"><small><sup>2</sup></small></a> The <i>moi,</i> to be sure, was not very prominent at first; +but it has grown more and more so, till the world is beginning to be +persuaded that it stands for a character of marked individuality and +capacity for affairs. Time was his prime-minister, and, we began to +think, at one period, his general-in-chief also. At first he was so +slow that he tired out all those who see no evidence of progress but +in blowing up the engine; then he was so fast, that he took the +breath away from those who think there is no getting on safety +while there is a spark of fire under the boilers. God is the only +being who has time enough; but a prudent man, who knows how to +seize occasion, can commonly make a shift to find as much as he +needs. Mr. Lincoln, as it seems to us in reviewing his career, +though we have sometimes in our impatience thought otherwise, +has always waited, as a wise man should, till the right moment +brought up all his reserves. <i>Semper nocuit differre paratis,</i> <a href="#f3"><small><sup>3</sup></small></a> is +a sound axiom, but the really efficacious man will also be sure to +know when he is <i>not</i> ready, and be firm against all persuasion +and reproach till he is. +<p> +One would be apt to think, from some of the criticisms made on +Mr. Lincoln’s course by those who mainly agree with him in +principle, that the chief object of a statesman should be rather to +proclaim his adhesion to certain doctrines, than to achieve their +triumph by quietly accomplishing his ends. In our opinion, there is +no more unsafe politician than a conscientiously rigid <i>doctrinaire,</i> +nothing more sure to end in disaster than a theoretic scheme of +policy that admits of no pliability for contingencies. True, there is a +popular image of an impossible He, in whose plastic hands the +submissive destinies of mankind become as wax, and to whose +commanding necessity the toughest facts yield with the graceful +pliancy of fiction; but in real life we commonly find that the men +who control circumstances, as it is called, are those who have +learned to allow for the influence of their eddies, and have the nerve +to turn them to account at the happy instant. Mr. Lincoln’s perilous +task has been to carry a rather shaky raft through the rapids, +making fast the unrulier logs as he could snatch opportunity, and +the country is to be congratulated that he did not think it his duty to +run straight at all hazards, but cautiously to assure himself with his +setting-pole where the main current was, and keep steadily to that. +He is still in wild water, but we have faith that his skill and sureness +of eye will bring him out right at last. +<p> +A curious, and, as we think, not inapt parallel, might be drawn +between Mr. Lincoln and one of the most striking figures in modern +history,—Henry IV. of France. The career of the latter may be more +picturesque, as that of a daring captain always is; but in all its +vicissitudes there is nothing more romantic than that sudden +change, as by a rub of Aladdin’s lamp, from the attorney’s office in a +country town of Illinois to the helm of a great nation in times like +these. The analogy between the characters and circumstances of +the two men is in many respects singularly close. Succeeding to a +rebellion rather than a crown, Henry’s chief material dependence +was the Huguenot party, whose doctrines sat upon him with a +looseness distasteful certainly, if not suspicious, to the more +fanatical among them. King only in name over the greater part of +France, and with his capital barred against him, it yet gradually +became clear to the more far-seeing even of the Catholic party that +he was the only centre of order and legitimate authority round +which France could reorganize itself. While preachers who held the +divine right of kings made the churches of Paris ring with +declamations in favor of democracy rather than submit to the +heretic dog of Bearnois, <a href="#f4"><small><sup>4</sup></small></a>—much as our <i>soi-disant</i> Democrats +have lately been preaching the divine right of slavery, and +denouncing the heresies of the Declaration of Independence,—Henry +bore both parties in hand till he was convinced that only one +course of action could possibly combine his own interests and those +of France. Meanwhile the Protestants believed somewhat +doubtfully that he was theirs, the Catholics hoped somewhat +doubtfully that he would be theirs, and Henry himself turned aside +remonstrance, advice and curiosity alike with a jest or a proverb (if +a little <i>high,</i> he liked them none the worse), joking continually as +his manner was. We have seen Mr. Lincoln contemptuously +compared to Sancho Panza by persons incapable of appreciating +one of the deepest pieces of wisdom in the profoundest romance +ever written; namely, that, while Don Quixote was incomparable in +theoretic and ideal statesmanship, Sancho, with his stock of +proverbs, the ready money of human experience, made the best +possible practical governor. Henry IV. was as full of wise saws and +modern instances as Mr. Lincoln, but beneath all this was the +thoughtful, practical, humane, and thoroughly earnest man, around +whom the fragments of France were to gather themselves till she +took her place again as a planet of the first magnitude in the +European system. In one respect Mr. Lincoln was more fortunate +than Henry. However some may think him wanting in zeal, the +most fanatical can find no taint of apostasy in any measure of his, +nor can the most bitter charge him with being influenced by motives +of personal interest. The leading distinction between the policies of +the two is one of circumstances. Henry went over to the nation; +Mr. Lincoln has steadily drawn the nation over to him. One left a +united France; the other, we hope and believe, will leave a reunited +America. We leave our readers to trace the further points of +difference and resemblance for themselves, merely suggesting a +general similarity which has often occurred to us. One only point of +melancholy interest we will allow ourselves to touch upon. That +Mr. Lincoln is not handsome nor elegant, we learn from certain +English tourists who would consider similar revelations in regard to +Queen Victoria as thoroughly American in the want of +<i>bienseance.</i> It is no concern of ours, nor does it affect his fitness +for the high place he so worthily occupies; but he is certainly as +fortunate as Henry in the matter of good looks, if we may trust +contemporary evidence. Mr. Lincoln has also been reproached with +Americanism by some not unfriendly British critics; but, with all +deference, we cannot say that we like him any the worse for it, or +see in it any reason why he should govern Americans the less +wisely. +<p> +People of more sensitive organizations may be shocked, but we are +glad that in this our true war of independence, which is to free us +forever from the Old World, we have had at the head of our affairs +a man whom America made, as God made Adam, out of the very +earth, unancestried, unprivileged, unknown, to show us how much +truth, how much magnanimity, and how much statecraft await the +call of opportunity in simple manhood when it believes in the justice +of God and the worth of man. Conventionalities are all very well in +their proper place, but they shrivel at the touch of nature like +stubble in the fire. The genius that sways a nation by its arbitrary +will seems less august to us than that which multiplies and +reinforces itself in the instincts and convictions of an entire people. +Autocracy may have something in it more melodramatic than this, +but falls far short of it in human value and interest. +<p> +Experience would have bred in us a rooted distrust of improved +statesmanship, even if we did not believe politics to be a science, +which, if it cannot always command men of special aptitude and +great powers, at least demands the long and steady application of +the best powers of such men as it can command to master even its +first principles. It is curious, that, in a country which boasts of its +intelligence the theory should be so generally held that the most +complicated of human contrivances, and one which every day +becomes more complicated, can be worked at sight by any man able +to talk for an hour or two without stopping to think. +<p> +Mr. Lincoln is sometimes claimed as an example of a ready-made +ruler. But no case could well be less in point; for, besides that he +was a man of such fair-mindedness as is always the raw material of +wisdom, he had in his profession a training precisely the opposite of +that to which a partisan is subjected. His experience as a lawyer +compelled him not only to see that there is a principle underlying +every phenomenon in human affairs, but that there are always two +sides to every question, both of which must be fully understood in +order to understand either, and that it is of greater advantage to an +advocate to appreciate the strength than the weakness of his +antagonist’s position. Nothing is more remarkable than the unerring +tact with which, in his debate with Mr. Douglas, he went straight to +the reason of the question; nor have we ever had a more striking +lesson in political tactics than the fact, that opposed to a man +exceptionally adroit in using popular prejudice and bigotry to his +purpose, exceptionally unscrupulous in appealing to those baser +motives that turn a meeting of citizens into a mob of barbarians, he +should yet have won his case before a jury of the people. Mr. +Lincoln was as far as possible from an impromptu politician. His +wisdom was made up of a knowledge of things as well as of men; +his sagacity resulted from a clear perception and honest +acknowledgment of difficulties, which enabled him to see that the +only durable triumph of political opinion is based, not on any +abstract right, but upon so much of justice, the highest attainable at +any given moment in human affairs, as may be had in the balance of +mutual concession. Doubtless he had an ideal, but it was the ideal +of a practical statesman,—to aim at the best, and to take the next +best, if he is lucky enough to get even that. His slow, but singularly +masculine, intelligence taught him that precedent is only another +name for embodied experience, and that it counts for even more in +the guidance of communities of men than in that of the individual +life. He was not a man who held it good public economy to pull +down on the mere chance of rebuilding better. Mr. Lincoln’s faith +in God was qualified by a very well-founded distrust of the wisdom +of man. Perhaps it was his want of self-confidence that more than +anything else won him the unlimited confidence of the people, for +they felt that there would be no need of retreat from any position he +had deliberately taken. The cautious, but steady, advance of his +policy during the war was like that of a Roman army. He left +behind him a firm road on which public confidence could follow; he +took America with him where he went; what he gained he occupied, +and his advanced posts became colonies. The very homeliness of +his genius was its distinction. His kingship was conspicuous by its +workday homespun. Never was ruler so absolute as he, nor so little +conscious of it; for he was the incarnate common-sense of the +people. With all that tenderness of nature whose sweet sadness +touched whoever saw him with something of its own pathos, there +was no trace of sentimentalism in his speech or action. He seems to +have had one rule of conduct, always that of practical and +successful politics, to let himself be guided by events, when they +were sure to bring him out where he wished to go, though by what +seemed to unpractical minds, which let go the possible to grasp at +the desirable, a longer road. +<p> +Undoubtedly the highest function of statesmanship is by degrees to +accommodate the conduct of communities to ethical laws, and to +subordinate the conflicting self-interests of the day to higher and +more permanent concerns. But it is on the understanding, and not +on the sentiment, of a nation that all safe legislation must be based. +Voltaire’s saying, that “a consideration of petty circumstances is the +tomb of great things,” may be true of individual men, but it certainly +is not true of governments. It is by a multitude of such +considerations, each in itself trifling, but all together weighty, that +the framers of policy can alone divine what is practicable and +therefore wise. The imputation of inconsistency is one to which +every sound politician and every honest thinker must sooner or later +subject himself. The foolish and the dead alone never change their +opinion. The course of a great statesman resembles that of +navigable rivers, avoiding immovable obstacles with noble bends of +concession, seeking the broad levels of opinion on which men +soonest settle and longest dwell, following and marking the almost +imperceptible slopes of national tendency, yet always aiming at +direct advances, always recruited from sources nearer heaven, and +sometimes bursting open paths of progress and fruitful human +commerce through what seem the eternal barriers of both. It is +loyalty to great ends, even though forced to combine the small and +opposing motives of selfish men to accomplish them; it is the +anchored cling to solid principles of duty and action, which knows +how to swing with the tide, but is never carried away by it,—that we +demand in public men, and not sameness of policy, or a +conscientious persistency in what is impracticable. For the +impracticable, however theoretically enticing, is always politically +unwise, sound statesmanship being the application of that prudence +to the public business which is the safest guide in that of private +men. +<p> +No doubt slavery was the most delicate and embarrassing question +with which Mr. Lincoln was called on to deal, and it was one which +no man in his position, whatever his opinions, could evade; for, +though he might withstand the clamor of partisans, he must sooner +or later yield to the persistent importunacy of circumstances, which +thrust the problem upon him at every turn and in every shape. +<p> +It has been brought against us as an accusation abroad, and +repeated here by people who measure their country rather by what +is thought of it than by what is, that our war has not been distinctly +and avowedly for the extinction of slavery, but a war rather for the +preservation of our national power and greatness, in which the +emancipation of the negro has been forced upon us by +circumstances and accepted as a necessity. We are very far from +denying this; nay, we admit that it is so far true that we were slow +to renounce our constitutional obligations even toward those who +had absolved us by their own act from the letter of our duty. We +are speaking of the government which, legally installed for the +whole country, was bound, so long as it was possible, not to +overstep the limits of orderly prescription, and could not, without +abnegating its own very nature, take the lead off a Virginia reel. +They forgot, what should be forgotten least of all in a system like +ours, that the administration for the time being represents not only +the majority which elects it, but the minority as well,—a minority in +this case powerful, and so little ready for emancipation that it was +opposed even to war. Mr. Lincoln had not been chosen as general +agent of the an anti-slavery society, but President of the United +States, to perform certain functions exactly defined by law. +Whatever were his wishes, it was no less duty than policy to mark +out for himself a line of action that would not further distract the +country, by raising before their time questions which plainly would +soon enough compel attention, and for which every day was making +the answer more easy. +<p> +Meanwhile he must solve the riddle of this new Sphinx, or be +devoured. Though Mr. Lincoln’s policy in this critical affair has not +been such as to satisfy those who demand an heroic treatment for +even the most trifling occasion, and who will not cut their coat +according to their cloth, unless they can borrow the scissors of +Atropos, <a href="#f5"><small><sup>5</sup></small></a> it has been at least not unworthy of the long-headed +king of Ithaca. <a href="#f6"><small><sup>6</sup></small></a> Mr. Lincoln had the choice of Bassanio <a href="#f7"><small><sup>7</sup></small></a> +offered him. Which of the three caskets held the prize that was to +redeem the fortunes of the country? There was the golden one +whose showy speciousness might have tempted a vain man; the +silver of compromise, which might have decided the choice of a +merely acute one; and the leaden,—dull and homely-looking, as +prudence always is,—yet with something about it sure to attract the +eye of practical wisdom. Mr. Lincoln dallied with his decision +perhaps longer than seemed needful to those on whom its awful +responsibility was not to rest, but when he made it, it was worthy of +his cautious but sure-footed understanding. The moral of the +Sphinx-riddle, and it is a deep one, lies in the childish simplicity of +the solution. Those who fail in guessing it, fail because they are +over-ingenious, and cast about for an answer that shall suit their +own notion of the gravity of the occasion and of their own dignity, +rather than the occasion itself. +<p> +In a matter which must be finally settled by public opinion, and in +regard to which the ferment of prejudice and passion on both sides +has not yet subsided to that equilibrium of compromise from which +alone a sound public opinion can result, it is proper enough for the +private citizen to press his own convictions with all possible force +of argument and persuasion; but the popular magistrate, whose +judgment must become action, and whose action involves the whole +country, is bound to wait till the sentiment of the people is so far +advanced toward his own point of view, that what he does shall find +support in it, instead of merely confusing it with new elements of +division. It was not unnatural that men earnestly devoted to the +saving of their country, and profoundly convinced that slavery was +its only real enemy, should demand a decided policy round which all +patriots might rally,—and this might have been the wisest course for +an absolute ruler. But in the then unsettled state of the public mind, +with a large party decrying even resistance to the slaveholders’ +rebellion as not only unwise, but even unlawful; with a majority, +perhaps, even of the would-be loyal so long accustomed to regard +the Constitution as a deed of gift conveying to the South their own +judgment as to policy and instinct as to right, that they were in +doubt at first whether their loyalty were due to the country or to +slavery; and with a respectable body of honest and influential men +who still believed in the possibility of conciliation,—Mr. Lincoln +judged wisely, that, in laying down a policy in deference to one +party, he should be giving to the other the very fulcrum for which +their disloyalty had been waiting. +<p> +It behooved a clear-headed man in his position not to yield so far to +an honest indignation against the brokers of treason in the North as +to lose sight of the materials for misleading which were their stock +in trade, and to forget that it is not the falsehood of sophistry which +is to be feared, but the grain of truth mingled with it to make it +specious,—that it is not the knavery of the leaders so much as the +honesty of the followers they may seduce, that gives them power +for evil. It was especially his duty to do nothing which might help +the people to forget the true cause of the war in fruitless disputes +about its inevitable consequences. +<p> +The doctrine of State rights can be so handled by an adroit +demagogue as easily to confound the distinction between liberty +and lawlessness in the minds of ignorant persons, accustomed +always to be influenced by the sound of certain words, rather than +to reflect upon the principles which give them meaning. For, +though Secession involves the manifest absurdity of denying to the +State the right of making war against any foreign power while +permitting it against the United States; though it supposes a +compact of mutual concessions and guaranties among States +without any arbiter in case of dissension; though it contradicts +common-sense in assuming that the men who framed our +government did not know what they meant when they substituted +Union for confederation; though it falsifies history, which shows +that the main opposition to the adoption of the Constitution was +based on the argument that it did not allow that independence in the +several States which alone would justify them in seceding;—yet, as +slavery was universally admitted to be a reserved right, an inference +could be drawn from any direct attack upon it (though only in +self-defence) to a natural right of resistance, logical enough to satisfy +minds untrained to detect fallacy, as the majority of men always are, +and now too much disturbed by the disorder of the times, to +consider that the order of events had any legitimate bearing on the +argument. Though Mr. Lincoln was too sagacious to give the +Northern allies of the Rebels the occasion they desired and even +strove to provoke, yet from the beginning of the war the most +persistent efforts have been made to confuse the public mind as to +its origin and motives, and to drag the people of the loyal States +down from the national position they had instinctively taken to the +old level of party squabbles and antipathies. The wholly +unprovoked rebellion of an oligarchy proclaiming negro slavery the +corner-stone of free institutions, and in the first flush of over-hasty +confidence venturing to parade the logical sequence of their leading +dogma, “that slavery is right in principle, and has nothing to do with +difference of complexion,” has been represented as a legitimate and +gallant attempt to maintain the true principles of democracy. The +rightful endeavor of an established government, the least onerous +that ever existed, to defend itself against a treacherous attack on its +very existence, has been cunningly made to seem the wicked effort +of a fanatical clique to force its doctrines on an oppressed +population. +<p> +Even so long ago as when Mr. Lincoln, not yet convinced of the +danger and magnitude of the crisis, was endeavoring to persuade +himself of Union majorities at the South, and to carry on a war that +was half peace in the hope of a peace that would have been all +war,—while he was still enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law, under some +theory that Secession, however it might absolve States from their +obligations, could not escheat them of their claims under the +Constitution, and that slaveholders in rebellion had alone among +mortals the privilege of having their cake and eating it at the same +time,—the enemies of free government were striving to persuade the +people that the war was an Abolition crusade. To rebel without +reason was proclaimed as one of the rights of man, while it was +carefully kept out of sight that to suppress rebellion is the first duty +of government. All the evils that have come upon the country have +been attributed to the Abolitionists, though it is hard to see how any +party can become permanently powerful except in one of two ways, +either by the greater truth of its principles, or the extravagance of +the party opposed to it. To fancy the ship of state, riding safe at +her constitutional moorings, suddenly engulfed by a huge kraken of +Abolitionism, rising from unknown depths and grasping it with +slimy tentacles, is to look at the natural history of the matter with +the eyes of Pontoppidan. <a href="#f8"><small><sup>8</sup></small></a> To believe that the leaders in the +Southern treason feared any danger from Abolitionism, would be to +deny them ordinary intelligence, though there can be little doubt +that they made use of it to stir the passions and excite the fears of +their deluded accomplices. They rebelled, not because they thought +slavery weak, but because they believed it strong enough, not to +overthrow the government, but to get possession of it; for it +becomes daily clearer that they used rebellion only as a means of +revolution, and if they got revolution, though not in the shape they +looked for, is the American people to save them from its +consequences at the cost of its own existence? The election of Mr. +Lincoln, which it was clearly in their power to prevent had they +wished, was the occasion merely, and not the cause of their revolt. +Abolitionism, till within a year or two, was the despised heresy of a +few earnest persons, without political weight enough to carry the +election of a parish constable; and their cardinal principle was +disunion, because they were convinced that within the Union the +position of slavery was impregnable. In spite of the proverb, great +effects do not follow from small causes,—that is, disproportionately +small,—but from adequate causes acting under certain required +conditions. To contrast the size of the oak with that of the parent +acorn, as if the poor seed had paid all costs from its slender strong-box, +may serve for a child’s wonder; but the real miracle lies in that +divine league which bound all the forces of nature to the service of +the tiny germ in fulfilling its destiny. Everything has been at work +for the past ten years in the cause of anti-slavery, but Garrison and +Phillips have been far less successful propagandists than the +slaveholders themselves, with the constantly growing arrogance of +their pretensions and encroachments. They have forced the +question upon the attention of every voter in the Free States, by +defiantly putting freedom and democracy on the defensive. But, +even after the Kansas outrages, there was no wide-spread desire on +the part of the North to commit aggressions, though there was a +growing determination to resist them. The popular unanimity in +favor of the war three years ago was but in small measure the result +of anti-slavery sentiment, far less of any zeal for abolition. But +every month of the war, every movement of the allies of slavery in +the Free States, has been making Abolitionists by the thousand. +The masses of any people, however intelligent, are very little moved +by abstract principles of humanity and justice, until those principles +are interpreted for them by the stinging commentary of some +infringement upon their own rights, and then their instincts and +passions, once aroused, do indeed derive an incalculable +reinforcement of impulse and intensity from those higher ideas, +those sublime traditions, which have no motive political force till +they are allied with a sense of immediate personal wrong or +imminent peril. Then at last the stars in their courses begin to fight +against Sisera. Had any one doubted before that the rights of +human nature are unitary, that oppression is of one hue the world +over, no matter what the color of the oppressed,—had any one +failed to see what the real essence of the contest was,—the efforts of +the advocates of slavery among ourselves to throw discredit upon +the fundamental axioms of the Declaration of Independence and the +radical doctrines of Christianity, could not fail to sharpen his eyes. +<p> +While every day was bringing the people nearer to the conclusion +which all thinking men saw to be inevitable from the beginning, it +was wise in Mr. Lincoln to leave the shaping of his policy to events. +In this country, where the rough and ready understanding of the +people is sure at last to be the controlling power, a profound +common-sense is the best genius for statesmanship. Hitherto the +wisdom of the President’s measures has been justified by the fact +that they have always resulted in more firmly uniting public opinion. +One of the things particularly admirable in the public utterances of +President Lincoln is a certain tone of familiar dignity, which, while +it is perhaps the most difficult attainment of mere style, is also no +doubtful indication of personal character. There must be something +essentially noble in an elective ruler who can descend to the level of +confidential ease without losing respect, something very manly in +one who can break through the etiquette of his conventional rank +and trust himself to the reason and intelligence of those who have +elected him. No higher compliment was ever paid to a nation than +the simple confidence, the fireside plainness, with which Mr. +Lincoln always addresses himself to the reason of the American +people. This was, indeed, a true democrat, who grounded himself +on the assumption that a democracy can think. “Come, let us +reason together about this matter,” has been the tone of all his +addresses to the people; and accordingly we have never had a chief +magistrate who so won to himself the love and at the same time the +judgment of his countrymen. To us, that simple confidence of his in +the right-mindedness of his fellowmen is very touching, and its +success is as strong an argument as we have ever seen in favor of +the theory that men can govern themselves. He never appeals to +any vulgar sentiment, he never alludes to the humbleness of his +origin; it probably never occurred to him, indeed, that there was +anything higher to start from than manhood; and he put himself on a +level with those he addressed, not by going down to them, but only +by taking it for granted that they had brains and would come up to +a common ground of reason. In an article lately printed in <i>The +Nation,</i> Mr. Bayard Taylor mentions the striking fact, that in the +foulest dens of the Five Points he found the portrait of Lincoln. +The wretched population that makes its hive there threw all its +votes and more against him, and yet paid this instinctive tribute to +the sweet humanity of his nature. Their ignorance sold its vote and +took its money, but all that was left of manhood in them recognized +its saint and martyr. +<p> +Mr. Lincoln is not in the habit of saying, “This is <i>my</i> opinion, or +<i>my</i> theory,” but “This is the conclusion to which, in my +judgment, the time has come, and to which, accordingly, the sooner +we come the better for us.” His policy has been the policy of public +opinion based on adequate discussion and on a timely recognition +of the influence of passing events in shaping the features of events +to come. +<p> +One secret of Mr. Lincoln’s remarkable success in captivating the +popular mind is undoubtedly an unconsciousness of self which +enables him, though under the necessity of constantly using the +capital <i>I</i>, to do it without any suggestion of egotism. There is no +single vowel which men’s mouths can pronounce with such +difference of effect. That which one shall hide away, as it were, +behind the substance of his discourse, or, if he bring it to the front, +shall use merely to give an agreeable accent of individuality to what +he says, another shall make an offensive challenge to the +self-satisfaction of all his hearers, and an unwarranted intrusion upon +each man’s sense of personal importance, irritating every pore of his +vanity, like a dry northeast wind, to a goose-flesh of opposition and +hostility. Mr. Lincoln has never studied Quintilian; <a href="#f9"><small><sup>9</sup></small></a> but he has, in +the earnest simplicity and unaffected Americanism of his own +character, one art of oratory worth all the rest. He forgets himself +so entirely in his object as to give his <i>I</i> the sympathetic and +persuasive effect of <i>We</i> with the great body of his countrymen. +Homely, dispassionate, showing all the rough-edged process of his +thought as it goes along, yet arriving at his conclusions with an +honest kind of every-day logic, he is so eminently our +representative man, that, when he speaks, it seems as if the people +were listening to their own thinking aloud. The dignity of his +thought owes nothing to any ceremonial garb of words, but to the +manly movement that comes of settled purpose and an energy of +reason that knows not what rhetoric means. There has been +nothing of Cleon, still less of Strepsiades <a href="#f10"><small><sup>10</sup></small></a> striving to underbid +him in demagogism, to be found in the public utterances of Mr. +Lincoln. He has always addressed the intelligence of men, never +their prejudice, their passion, or their ignorance. +<br><br><center><hr width="300"></center><br> +<p> +On the day of his death, this simple Western attorney, who +according to one party was a vulgar joker, and whom the +<i>doctrinaires</i> among his own supporters accused of wanting every +element of statesmanship, was the most absolute ruler in +Christendom, and this solely by the hold his good-humored sagacity +had laid on the hearts and understandings of his countrymen. Nor +was this all, for it appeared that he had drawn the great majority, +not only of his fellow-citizens, but of mankind also, to his side. So +strong and so persuasive is honest manliness without a single +quality of romance or unreal sentiment to help it! A civilian during +times of the most captivating military achievement, awkward, with +no skill in the lower technicalities of manners, he left behind him a +fame beyond that of any conqueror, the memory of a grace higher +than that of outward person, and of a gentlemanliness deeper than +mere breeding. Never before that startled April morning did such +multitudes of men shed tears for the death of one they had never +seen, as if with him a friendly presence had been taken away from +their lives, leaving them colder and darker. Never was funeral +panegyric so eloquent as the silent look of sympathy which +strangers exchanged when they met on that day. Their common +manhood had lost a kinsman. +<br><br><hr><br> +<a name="f1">1.</a> See <i>Revelation,</i> chapter 3, verse 15.<br> +<a name="f2">2.</a> Time and I. Cardinal Mazarin was prime-minister of Louis +XIV. of France. Time, Mazarin said, was his prime-minister.<br> +<a name="f3">3.</a> It is always bad for those who are ready to put off action.<br> +<a name="f4">4.</a> One of Henry’s titles was Prince of Bearn, that being the old +province of France from which he came.<br> +<a name="f5">5.</a> One of the three Fates.<br> +<a name="f6">6.</a> Odysseus, or Ulysses, the hero of Homer’s <i>Odyssey</i>.<br> +<a name="f7">7.</a> See Shakespeare’s <i>Merchant of Venice.</i><br> +<a name="f8">8.</a> A Danish antiquary and theologian.<br> +<a name="f9">9.</a> A famous Latin writer on the <i>Art of Oratory.</i><br> +<a name="f10">10.</a> Two Athenian demagogues, satirized by the dramatist +Aristophanes.<br> +<br><hr size="3" noshade></DIV> +<br><DIV align="justify"> +<a name="footer">*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ABRAHAM LINCOLN ***</a> +<p class="pg"> +This file should be named 1lncn10h.htm or 1lncn10h.zip<br> +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 1lncn11h.htm<br> +VERSIONS based on separate sources get a new LETTER, 1lncn10a.htm +<p class="pg"> +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. +<p class="pg"> +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. +<p class="pg"> +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. +<p class="pg"> +Most people start at our Web sites at:<br> +<a href="https://gutenberg.org">https://gutenberg.org</a> or<br> +<a href="http://promo.net/pg">http://promo.net/pg</a> +<p class="pg"> +These Web sites include award-winning information about Project +Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new +eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!). +<p class="pg"><br> +Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement +can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. +<p class="pg"> +<a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04">http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04</a> or<br> +<a href="ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext04">ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext04</a> +<p class="pg"> +Or /etext03, 02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 91 or 90 +<p class="pg"> +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. +<p class="pg"><br> +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) +<p class="pg"> +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text +files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ +We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 +If they reach just 1–2% of the world’s population then the total +will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year’s end. +<p class="pg"> +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. +<p class="pg"> +Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated): +<br><br> +<table width="375" cellpadding="0" summary="eBooks released"> +<col align="right" width="100"> +<col align="center" width="100"> +<col align="left" width="175"> +<tr><th>eBooks<th>Year<th>Month</tr> +<tr><td>1<td>1971<td>July</tr> +<tr><td>10<td>1991<td>January</tr> +<tr><td>100<td>1994<td>January</tr> +<tr><td>1000<td>1997<td>August</tr> +<tr><td>1500<td>1998<td>October</tr> +<tr><td>2000<td>1999<td>December</tr> +<tr><td>2500<td>2000<td>December</tr> +<tr><td>3000<td>2001<td>November</tr> +<tr><td>4000<td>2001<td>October/November</tr> +<tr><td>6000<td>2002<td>December*</tr> +<tr><td>9000<td>2003<td>November*</tr> +<tr><td>10000<td>2004<td>January*</tr> +</table> +<p class="pg"><br> +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created +to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium. +<p class="pg"> +We need your donations more than ever! +<p class="pg"> +As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people +and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, +Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, +Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, +Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New +Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, +Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South +Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West +Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. +<p class="pg"> +We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones +that have responded. +<p class="pg"> +As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list +will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. +Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state. +<p class="pg"> +In answer to various questions we have received on this: +<p class="pg"> +We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally +request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and +you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, +just ask. +<p class="pg"> +While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are +not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting +donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to +donate. +<p class="pg"> +International donations are accepted, but we don’t know ANYTHING about +how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made +deductible, and don’t have the staff to handle it even if there are +ways. +<p class="pg"> +Donations by check or money order may be sent to: +<p class="pg"> +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation<br> +PMB 113<br> +1739 University Ave.<br> +Oxford, MS 38655–4109<br> +<p class="pg"> +Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment +method other than by check or money order. +<p class="pg"> +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by +the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN +[Employee Identification Number] 64–622154. Donations are +tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising +requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be +made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states. +<p class="pg"> +We need your donations more than ever! +<p class="pg"> +You can get up to date donation information online at: +<p class="pg"> +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/donation.html">https://www.gutenberg.org/donation.html</a> +<p class="pg"><br> +*** +<p class="pg"> +If you can’t reach Project Gutenberg,<br> +you can always email directly to: +<p class="pg"> +Michael S. Hart <a href="mailto:hart@pobox.com">hart@pobox.com</a> +<p class="pg"> +Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. +<p class="pg"> +We would prefer to send you information by email. +<p class="pg"><br> +<a name="legal">**The Legal Small Print**</a> +<p class="pg"><br> +(Three Pages) +<p class="pg"> +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***<br> +Why is this “Small Print!” statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what’s wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this “Small Print!” statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to. +<p class="pg"> +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK<br> +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG–tm +eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this “Small Print!” statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. +<p class="pg"> +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG–TM EBOOKS<br> +This PROJECT GUTENBERG–tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG–tm eBooks, +is a “public domain” work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the “Project”). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook +under the “PROJECT GUTENBERG” trademark. +<p class="pg"> +Please do not use the “PROJECT GUTENBERG” trademark to market +any commercial products without permission. +<p class="pg"> +To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project’s eBooks and any +medium they may be on may contain “Defects”. Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. +<p class="pg"> +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES<br> +But for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described below, +[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may +receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG–tm eBook) disclaims +all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. +<p class="pg"> +If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. +<p class="pg"> +THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU “AS-IS”. NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. +<p class="pg"> +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. +<p class="pg"> +INDEMNITY<br> +You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, +and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated +with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including +legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the +following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this eBook, +[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook, +or [3] any Defect. +<p class="pg"> +DISTRIBUTION UNDER “PROJECT GUTENBERG–tm”<br> +You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +“Small Print!” and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: +<table width="90%" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" summary="legal fine print"> +<tr><td width="5%"> </td><td width="5%"> </td><td width="80%"> </td></tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td align="right">[1]</td> +<td colspan="2"><DIV align="justify">Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this +requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the +eBook or this “small print!” statement. You may however, +if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable +binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, +including any form resulting from conversion by word +processing or hypertext software, but only so long as +*EITHER*:</DIV></td></tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td colspan="2" align="right">[*]</td> +<td><DIV align="justify">The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and +does *not* contain characters other than those +intended by the author of the work, although tilde +(~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may +be used to convey punctuation intended by the +author, and additional characters may be used to +indicate hypertext links; OR</DIV></td></tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td colspan="2" align="right">[*]</td> +<td><DIV align="justify">The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at +no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent +form by the program that displays the eBook (as is +the case, for instance, with most word processors); +OR</DIV></td></tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td colspan="2" align="right">[*]</td> +<td><DIV align="justify">You provide, or agree to also provide on request at +no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the +eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC +or other equivalent proprietary form).</DIV></td></tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td align="right">[2]</td> +<td colspan="2"><DIV align="justify">Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this +“Small Print!” statement.</DIV></td></tr> +<tr valign="top"> +<td align="right">[3]</td> +<td colspan="2"><DIV align="justify">Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the +gross profits you derive calculated using the method you +already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you +don’t derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are +payable to “Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation” +the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were +legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent +periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to +let us know your plans and to work out the details.</DIV></td></tr> +</table> +<p class="pg"><br> +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON’T HAVE TO?<br> +Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of +public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed +in machine readable form. +<p class="pg"> +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses. +Money should be paid to the:<br> +“Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.” +<p class="pg"> +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:<br> +<a href="mailto:hart@pobox.com">hart@pobox.com</a> +<p class="pg"> +[Portions of this eBook’s header and trailer may be reprinted only +when distributed free of all fees. Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by +Michael S. Hart. Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be +used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be +they hardware or software or any other related product without +express permission.] +<p class="pg"> +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* +</DIV></BODY></HTML>
\ No newline at end of file @@ -0,0 +1,1107 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Abraham Lincoln, by James Lowell +#2 in our series by James Russell Lowell + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. We need your donations. + + +Abraham Lincoln + +by James Russell Lowell + +May, 1997 [Etext #906] + + +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Abraham Lincoln, by James Lowell +*****This file should be named 906.txt or 906.zip****** + +This Etext prepared by Tony Adam +anthony-adam@tamu.edu + + +We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance +of the official release dates, for time for better editing. + +Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an +up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes +in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has +a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a +look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a +new copy has at least one byte more or less. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take +to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text +files per month: or 400 more Etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. +If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the +total should reach 80 billion Etexts. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext +Files by the December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion] +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only 10% of the present number of computer users. 2001 +should have at least twice as many computer users as that, so it +will require us reaching less than 5% of the users in 2001. + + +We need your donations more than ever! + + +All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are +tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = Carnegie- +Mellon University). + +For these and other matters, please mail to: + +Project Gutenberg +P. O. Box 2782 +Champaign, IL 61825 + +When all other email fails try our Executive Director: +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +We would prefer to send you this information by email +(Internet, Bitnet, Compuserve, ATTMAIL or MCImail). + +****** +If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please +FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives: +[Mac users, do NOT point and click. . .type] + +ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu +login: anonymous +password: your@login +cd etext/etext90 through /etext96 +or cd etext/articles [get suggest gut for more information] +dir [to see files] +get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files] +GET INDEX?00.GUT +for a list of books +and +GET NEW GUT for general information +and +MGET GUT* for newsletters. + +**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor** +(Three Pages) + + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG- +tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor +Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at +Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project"). Among other +things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext +under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this +etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors, +officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost +and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or +indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause: +[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification, +or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word pro- + cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the etext (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the + net profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon + University" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Carnegie-Mellon University". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This Etext prepared by Tony Adam +anthony-adam@tamu.edu + + + + + +Abraham Lincoln +by James Russell Lowell + + +THERE have been many painful crises since the impatient vanity of +South Carolina hurried ten prosperous Commonwealths into a +crime whose assured retribution was to leave them either at the +mercy of the nation they had wronged, or of the anarchy they had +summoned but could not control, when no thoughtful American +opened his morning paper without dreading to find that he had no +longer a country to love and honor. Whatever the result of the +convulsion whose first shocks were beginning to be felt, there +would still be enough square miles of earth for elbow-room; but +that ineffable sentiment made up of memory and hope, of instinct +and tradition, which swells every man's heart and shapes his +thought, though perhaps never present to his consciousness, would +be gone from it, leaving it common earth and nothing more. Men +might gather rich crops from it, but that ideal harvest of priceless +associations would be reaped no longer; that fine virtue which sent +up messages of courage and security from every sod of it would +have evaporated beyond recall. We should be irrevocably cut off +from our past, and be forced to splice the ragged ends of our lives +upon whatever new conditions chance might leave dangling for us. + +We confess that we had our doubts at first whether the patriotism +of our people were not too narrowly provincial to embrace the +proportions of national peril. We felt an only too natural distrust of +immense public meetings and enthusiastic cheers. + +That a reaction should follow the holiday enthusiasm with which +the war was entered on, that it should follow soon, and that the +slackening of public spirit should be proportionate to the previous +over-tension, might well be foreseen by all who had studied human +nature or history. Men acting gregariously are always in extremes; +as they are one moment capable of higher courage, so they are +liable, the next, to baser depression, and it is often a matter of +chance whether numbers shall multiply confidence or +discouragement. Nor does deception lead more surely to distrust of +men, than self-deception to suspicion of principles. The only faith +that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is +woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience. +Enthusiasm is good material for the orator, but the statesman needs +something more durable to work in,--must be able to rely on the +deliberate reason and consequent firmness of the people, without +which that presence of mind, no less essential in times of moral than +of material peril, will be wanting at the critical moment. Would this +fervor of the Free States hold out? Was it kindled by a just feeling +of the value of constitutional liberty? Had it body enough to +withstand the inevitable dampening of checks, reverses, delays? +Had our population intelligence enough to comprehend that the +choice was between order and anarchy, between the equilibrium of +a government by law and the tussle of misrule by +*pronunciamiento?* Could a war be maintained without the +ordinary stimulus of hatred and plunder, and with the impersonal +loyalty of principle? These were serious questions, and with no +precedent to aid in answering them. + +At the beginning of the war there was, indeed, occasion for the +most anxious apprehension. A President known to be infected with +the political heresies, and suspected of sympathy with the treason, +of the Southern conspirators, had just surrendered the reins, we will +not say of power, but of chaos, to a successor known only as the +representative of a party whose leaders, with long training in +opposition, had none in the conduct of affairs; an empty treasury +was called on to supply resources beyond precedent in the history +of finance; the trees were yet growing and the iron unmined with +which a navy was to be built and armored; officers without +discipline were to make a mob into an army; and, above all, the +public opinion of Europe, echoed and reinforced with every vague +hint and every specious argument of despondency by a powerful +faction at home, was either contemptuously sceptical or actively +hostile. It would be hard to over-estimate the force of this latter +element of disintegration and discouragement among a people +where every citizen at home, and every soldier in the field, is a +reader of newspapers. The peddlers of rumor in the North were the +most effective allies of the rebellion. A nation can be liable to no +more insidious treachery than that of the telegraph, sending hourly +its electric thrill of panic along the remotest nerves of the +community, till the excited imagination makes every real danger +loom heightened with its unreal double. + +And even if we look only at more palpable difficulties, the problem +to be solved by our civil war was so vast, both in its immediate +relations and its future consequences; the conditions of its solution +were so intricate and so greatly dependent on incalculable and +uncontrollable contingencies; so many of the data, whether for hope +or fear, were, from their novelty, incapable of arrangement under +any of the categories of historical precedent, that there were +moments of crisis when the firmest believer in the strength and +sufficiency of the democratic theory of government might well hold +his breath in vague apprehension of disaster. Our teachers of +political philosophy, solemnly arguing from the precedent of some +petty Grecian, Italian, or Flemish city, whose long periods of +aristocracy were broken now and then by awkward parentheses of +mob, had always taught us that democracies were incapable of the +sentiment of loyalty, of concentrated and prolonged effort, of far- +reaching conceptions; were absorbed in material interests; impatient +of regular, and much more of exceptional restraint; had no natural +nucleus of gravitation, nor any forces but centrifugal; were always +on the verge of civil war, and slunk at last into the natural +almshouse of bankrupt popular government, a military despotism. +Here was indeed a dreary outlook for persons who knew +democracy, not by rubbing shoulders with it lifelong, but merely +from books, and America only by the report of some fellow-Briton, +who, having eaten a bad dinner or lost a carpet-bag here, had +written to *The Times* demanding redress, and drawing a +mournful inference of democratic instability. Nor were men +wanting among ourselves who had so steeped their brains in +London literature as to mistake Cockneyism for European culture, +and contempt of their country for cosmopolitan breadth of view, +and who, owing all they had an all they were to democracy, thought +it had an air of high-breeding to join in the shallow epicedium that +our bubble had burst. + +But beside any disheartening influences which might affect the timid +or the despondent, there were reasons enough of settled gravity +against any over-confidence of hope. A war--which, whether we +consider the expanse of the territory at stake, the hosts brought into +the field, or the reach of the principles involved, may fairly be +reckoned the most momentous of modern times--was to be waged +by a people divided at home, unnerved by fifty years of peace, +under a chief magistrate without experience and without reputation, +whose every measure was sure to be cunningly hampered by a +jealous and unscrupulous minority, and who, while dealing with +unheard-of complications at home, must soothe a hostile neutrality +abroad, waiting only a pretext to become war. All this was to be +done without warning and without preparation, while at the same +time a social revolution was to be accomplished in the political +condition of four millions of people, by softening the prejudices, +allaying the fears, and gradually obtaining the cooperation, of their +unwilling liberators. Surely, if ever there were an occasion when +the heightened imagination of the historian might see Destiny visibly +intervening in human affairs, here was a knot worthy of her shears. +Never, perhaps, was any system of government tried by so +continuous and searching a strain as ours during the last three +years; never has any shown itself stronger; and never could that +strength be so directly traced to the virtue and intelligence of the +people,--to that general enlightenment and prompt efficiency of +public opinion possible only under the influence of a political +framework like our own. We find it hard to understand how even a +foreigner should be blind to the grandeur of the combat of ideas +that has been going on here,--to the heroic energy, persistency, and +self-reliance of a nation proving that it knows how much dearer +greatness is than mere power; and we own that it is impossible for +us to conceive the mental and moral condition of the American who +does not feel his spirit braced and heightened by being even a +spectator of such qualities and achievements. That a steady +purpose and a definite aim have been given to the jarring forces +which, at the beginning of the war, spent themselves in the +discussion of schemes which could only become operative, if at all, +after the war was over; that a popular excitement has been slowly +intensified into an earnest national will; that a somewhat +impracticable moral sentiment has been made the unconscious +instrument of a practical moral end; that the treason of covert +enemies, the jealousy of rivals, the unwise zeal of friends, have been +made not only useless for mischief, but even useful for good; that +the conscientious sensitiveness of England to the horrors of civil +conflict has been prevented from complicating a domestic with a +foreign war;--all these results, any one of which might suffice to +prove greatness in a ruler, have been mainly due to the good sense, +the good-humor, the sagacity, the large-mindedness, and the +unselfish honesty of the unknown man whom a blind fortune, as it +seemed, had lifted from the crowd to the most dangerous and +difficult eminence of modern times. It is by presence of mind in +untried emergencies that the native metal of a man is tested; it is by +the sagacity to see, and the fearless honesty to admit, whatever of +truth there may be in an adverse opinion, in order more +convincingly to expose the fallacy that lurks behind it, that a +reasoner at length gains for his mere statement of a fact the force of +argument; it is by a wise forecast which allows hostile combinations +to go so far as by the inevitable reaction to become elements of his +own power, that a politician proves his genius for state-craft; and +especially it is by so gently guiding public sentiment that he seems +to follow it, by so yielding doubtful points that he can be firm +without seeming obstinate in essential ones, and thus gain the +advantages of compromise without the weakness of concession; by +so instinctively comprehending the temper and prejudices of a +people as to make them gradually conscious of the superior wisdom +of his freedom from temper and prejudice,--it is by qualities such as +these that a magistrate shows himself worthy to be chief in a +commonwealth of freemen. And it is for qualities such as these that +we firmly believe History will rank Mr. Lincoln among the most +prudent of statesmen and the most successful of rulers. If we wish +to appreciate him, we have only to conceive the inevitable chaos in +which we should now be weltering, had a weak man or an unwise +one been chosen in his stead. + +"Bare is back," says the Norse proverb, "without brother behind it;" +and this is, by analogy, true of an elective magistracy. The +hereditary ruler in any critical emergency may reckon on the +inexhaustible resources of *prestige,* of sentiment, of superstition, +of dependent interest, while the new man must slowly and painfully +create all these out of the unwilling material around him, by +superiority of character, by patient singleness of purpose, by +sagacious presentiment of popular tendencies and instinctive +sympathy with the national character. Mr. Lincoln's task was one +of peculiar and exceptional difficulty. Long habit had accustomed +the American people to the notion of a party in power, and of a +President as its creature and organ, while the more vital fact, that +the executive for the time being represents the abstract idea of +government as a permanent principle superior to all party and all +private interest, had gradually become unfamiliar. They had so long +seen the public policy more or less directed by views of party, and +often even of personal advantage, as to be ready to suspect the +motives of a chief magistrate compelled, for the first time in our +history, to feel himself the head and hand of a great nation, and to +act upon the fundamental maxim, laid down by all publicists, that +the first duty of a government is to depend and maintain its own +existence. Accordingly, a powerful weapon seemed to be put into +the hands of the opposition by the necessity under which the +administration found itself of applying this old truth to new +relations. Nor were the opposition his only nor his most dangerous +opponents. + +The Republicans had carried the country upon an issue in which +ethics were more directly and visibly mingled with politics than +usual. Their leaders were trained to a method of oratory which +relied for its effect rather on the moral sense than the +understanding. Their arguments were drawn, not so much from +experience as from general principles of right and wrong. When the +war came, their system continued to be applicable and effective, for +here again the reason of the people was to be reached and kindled +through their sentiments. It was one of those periods of +excitement, gathering, contagious, universal, which, while they last, +exalt and clarify the minds of men, giving to the mere words +*country, human rights, democracy,* a meaning and a force beyond +that of sober and logical argument. They were convictions, +maintained and defended by the supreme logic of passion. That +penetrating fire ran in and roused those primary instincts that make +their lair in the dens and caverns of the mind. What is called the +great popular heart was awakened, that indefinable something +which may be, according to circumstances, the highest reason or +the most brutish unreason. But enthusiasm, once cold, can never be +warmed over into anything better than cant,--and phrases, when +once the inspiration that filled them with beneficent power has +ebbed away, retain only that semblance of meaning which enables +them to supplant reason in hasty minds. Among the lessons taught +by the French Revolution there is none sadder or more striking than +this, that you may make everything else out of the passions of men +except a political system that will work, and that there is nothing so +pitilessly and unconsciously cruel as sincerity formulated into +dogma. It is always demoralizing to extend the domain of sentiment +over questions where it has no legitimate jurisdiction; and perhaps +the severest strain upon Mr. Lincoln was in resisting a tendency of +his own supporters which chimed with his own private desires, +while wholly opposed to his convictions of what would be wise +policy. + +The change which three years have brought about is too remarkable +to be passed over without comment, too weighty in its lesson not to +be laid to heart. Never did a President enter upon office with less +means at his command, outside his own strength of heart and +steadiness of understanding, for inspiring confidence in the people, +and so winning it for himself, than Mr. Lincoln. All that was known +of him was that he was a good stump-speaker, nominated for his +*availability,*--that is, because he had no history,--and chosen by a +party with whose more extreme opinions he was not in sympathy. +It might well be feared that a man past fifty, against whom the +ingenuity of hostile partisans could rake up no accusation, must be +lacking in manliness of character, in decision of principle, in +strength of will; that a man who was at best only the representative +of a party, and who yet did not fairly represent even that, would fail +of political, much more of popular, support. And certainly no one +ever entered upon office with so few resources of power in the +past, and so many materials of weakness in the present, as Mr. +Lincoln. Even in that half of the Union which acknowledged him as +President, there was a large, and at that time dangerous, minority, +that hardly admitted his claim to the office, and even in the party +that elected him there was also a large minority that suspected him +of being secretly a communicant with the church of Laodicea.(1) +All he did was sure to be virulently attacked as ultra by one side; all +that he left undone, to be stigmatized as proof of lukewarmness and +backsliding by the other. Meanwhile he was to carry on a truly +colossal war by means of both; he was to disengage the country +from diplomatic entanglements of unprecedented peril undisturbed +by the help or the hindrance of either, and to win from the crowning +dangers of his administration, in the confidence of the people, the +means of his safety and their own. He has contrived to do it, and +perhaps none of our Presidents since Washington has stood so firm +in the confidence of the people as he does after three years of +stormy administration. + +(1) See *Revelation,* chapter 3, verse 15. + +Mr. Lincoln's policy was a tentative one, and rightly so. He laid +down no programme which must compel him to be either +inconsistent or unwise, no cast-iron theorem to which +circumstances must be fitted as they rose, or else be useless to his +ends. He seemed to have chosen Mazarin's motto, *Le temps et +moi.*(1) The *moi,* to be sure, was not very prominent at first; +but it has grown more and more so, till the world is beginning to be +persuaded that it stands for a character of marked individuality and +capacity for affairs. Time was his prime-minister, and, we began to +think, at one period, his general-in-chief also. At first he was so +slow that he tired out all those who see no evidence of progress but +in blowing up the engine; then he was so fast, that he took the +breath away from those who think there is no getting on safety +while there is a spark of fire under the boilers. God is the only +being who has time enough; but a prudent man, who knows how to +seize occasion, can commonly make a shift to find as much as he +needs. Mr. Lincoln, as it seems to us in reviewing his career, +though we have sometimes in our impatience thought otherwise, +has always waited, as a wise man should, till the right moment +brought up all his reserves. *Semper nocuit differre paratis,*(2) is +a sound axiom, but the really efficacious man will also be sure to +know when he is *not* ready, and be firm against all persuasion +and reproach till he is. + +(1) Time and I. Cardinal Mazarin was prime-minister of Louis +XIV. of France. Time, Mazarin said, was his prime-minister. +(2) It is always bad for those who are ready to put off action. + +One would be apt to think, from some of the criticisms made on +Mr. Lincoln's course by those who mainly agree with him in +principle, that the chief object of a statesman should be rather to +proclaim his adhesion to certain doctrines, than to achieve their +triumph by quietly accomplishing his ends. In our opinion, there is +no more unsafe politician than a conscientiously rigid *doctrinaire,* +nothing more sure to end in disaster than a theoretic scheme of +policy that admits of no pliability for contingencies. True, there is a +popular image of an impossible He, in whose plastic hands the +submissive destinies of mankind become as wax, and to whose +commanding necessity the toughest facts yield with the graceful +pliancy of fiction; but in real life we commonly find that the men +who control circumstances, as it is called, are those who have +learned to allow for the influence of their eddies, and have the nerve +to turn them to account at the happy instant. Mr. Lincoln's perilous +task has been to carry a rather shaky raft through the rapids, +making fast the unrulier logs as he could snatch opportunity, and +the country is to be congratulated that he did not think it his duty to +run straight at all hazards, but cautiously to assure himself with his +setting-pole where the main current was, and keep steadily to that. +He is still in wild water, but we have faith that his skill and sureness +of eye will bring him out right at last. + +A curious, and, as we think, not inapt parallel, might be drawn +between Mr. Lincoln and one of the most striking figures in modern +history,--Henry IV. of France. The career of the latter may be more +picturesque, as that of a daring captain always is; but in all its +vicissitudes there is nothing more romantic than that sudden +change, as by a rub of Aladdin's lamp, from the attorney's office in a +country town of Illinois to the helm of a great nation in times like +these. The analogy between the characters and circumstances of +the two men is in many respects singularly close. Succeeding to a +rebellion rather than a crown, Henry's chief material dependence +was the Huguenot party, whose doctrines sat upon him with a +looseness distasteful certainly, if not suspicious, to the more +fanatical among them. King only in name over the greater part of +France, and with his capital barred against him, it yet gradually +became clear to the more far-seeing even of the Catholic party that +he was the only centre of order and legitimate authority round +which France could reorganize itself. While preachers who held the +divine right of kings made the churches of Paris ring with +declamations in favor of democracy rather than submit to the +heretic dog of Bearnois,(1)--much as our *soi-disant* Democrats +have lately been preaching the divine right of slavery, and +denouncing the heresies of the Declaration of Independence,-- +Henry bore both parties in hand till he was convinced that only one +course of action could possibly combine his own interests and those +of France. Meanwhile the Protestants believed somewhat +doubtfully that he was theirs, the Catholics hoped somewhat +doubtfully that he would be theirs, and Henry himself turned aside +remonstrance, advice and curiosity alike with a jest or a proverb (if +a little *high,* he liked them none the worse), joking continually as +his manner was. We have seen Mr. Lincoln contemptuously +compared to Sancho Panza by persons incapable of appreciating +one of the deepest pieces of wisdom in the profoundest romance +ever written; namely, that, while Don Quixote was incomparable in +theoretic and ideal statesmanship, Sancho, with his stock of +proverbs, the ready money of human experience, made the best +possible practical governor. Henry IV. was as full of wise saws and +modern instances as Mr. Lincoln, but beneath all this was the +thoughtful, practical, humane, and thoroughly earnest man, around +whom the fragments of France were to gather themselves till she +took her place again as a planet of the first magnitude in the +European system. In one respect Mr. Lincoln was more fortunate +than Henry. However some may think him wanting in zeal, the +most fanatical can find no taint of apostasy in any measure of his, +nor can the most bitter charge him with being influenced by motives +of personal interest. The leading distinction between the policies of +the two is one of circumstances. Henry went over to the nation; +Mr. Lincoln has steadily drawn the nation over to him. One left a +united France; the other, we hope and believe, will leave a reunited +America. We leave our readers to trace the further points of +difference and resemblance for themselves, merely suggesting a +general similarity which has often occurred to us. One only point of +melancholy interest we will allow ourselves to touch upon. That +Mr. Lincoln is not handsome nor elegant, we learn from certain +English tourists who would consider similar revelations in regard to +Queen Victoria as thoroughly American in the want of +*bienseance.* It is no concern of ours, nor does it affect his fitness +for the high place he so worthily occupies; but he is certainly as +fortunate as Henry in the matter of good looks, if we may trust +contemporary evidence. Mr. Lincoln has also been reproached with +Americanism by some not unfriendly British critics; but, with all +deference, we cannot say that we like him any the worse for it, or +see in it any reason why he should govern Americans the less +wisely. + +(1) One of Henry's titles was Prince of Bearn, that being the old +province of France from which he came. + +People of more sensitive organizations may be shocked, but we are +glad that in this our true war of independence, which is to free us +forever from the Old World, we have had at the head of our affairs +a man whom America made, as God made Adam, out of the very +earth, unancestried, unprivileged, unknown, to show us how much +truth, how much magnanimity, and how much statecraft await the +call of opportunity in simple manhood when it believes in the justice +of God and the worth of man. Conventionalities are all very well in +their proper place, but they shrivel at the touch of nature like +stubble in the fire. The genius that sways a nation by its arbitrary +will seems less august to us than that which multiplies and +reinforces itself in the instincts and convictions of an entire people. +Autocracy may have something in it more melodramatic than this, +but falls far short of it in human value and interest. + +Experience would have bred in us a rooted distrust of improved +statesmanship, even if we did not believe politics to be a science, +which, if it cannot always command men of special aptitude and +great powers, at least demands the long and steady application of +the best powers of such men as it can command to master even its +first principles. It is curious, that, in a country which boasts of its +intelligence the theory should be so generally held that the most +complicated of human contrivances, and one which every day +becomes more complicated, can be worked at sight by any man able +to talk for an hour or two without stopping to think. + +Mr. Lincoln is sometimes claimed as an example of a ready-made +ruler. But no case could well be less in point; for, besides that he +was a man of such fair-mindedness as is always the raw material of +wisdom, he had in his profession a training precisely the opposite of +that to which a partisan is subjected. His experience as a lawyer +compelled him not only to see that there is a principle underlying +every phenomenon in human affairs, but that there are always two +sides to every question, both of which must be fully understood in +order to understand either, and that it is of greater advantage to an +advocate to appreciate the strength than the weakness of his +antagonist's position. Nothing is more remarkable than the unerring +tact with which, in his debate with Mr. Douglas, he went straight to +the reason of the question; nor have we ever had a more striking +lesson in political tactics than the fact, that opposed to a man +exceptionally adroit in using popular prejudice and bigotry to his +purpose, exceptionally unscrupulous in appealing to those baser +motives that turn a meeting of citizens into a mob of barbarians, he +should yet have won his case before a jury of the people. Mr. +Lincoln was as far as possible from an impromptu politician. His +wisdom was made up of a knowledge of things as well as of men; +his sagacity resulted from a clear perception and honest +acknowledgment of difficulties, which enabled him to see that the +only durable triumph of political opinion is based, not on any +abstract right, but upon so much of justice, the highest attainable at +any given moment in human affairs, as may be had in the balance of +mutual concession. Doubtless he had an ideal, but it was the ideal +of a practical statesman,--to aim at the best, and to take the next +best, if he is lucky enough to get even that. His slow, but singularly +masculine, intelligence taught him that precedent is only another +name for embodied experience, and that it counts for even more in +the guidance of communities of men than in that of the individual +life. He was not a man who held it good public economy to pull +down on the mere chance of rebuilding better. Mr. Lincoln's faith +in God was qualified by a very well-founded distrust of the wisdom +of man. perhaps it was his want of self-confidence that more than +anything else won him the unlimited confidence of the people, for +they felt that there would be no need of retreat from any position he +had deliberately taken. The cautious, but steady, advance of his +policy during the war was like that of a Roman army. He left +behind him a firm road on which public confidence could follow; he +took America with him where he went; what he gained he occupied, +and his advanced posts became colonies. The very homeliness of +his genius was its distinction. His kingship was conspicuous by its +workday homespun. Never was ruler so absolute as he, nor so little +conscious of it; for he was the incarnate common-sense of the +people. With all that tenderness of nature whose sweet sadness +touched whoever saw him with something of its own pathos, there +was no trace of sentimentalism in his speech or action. He seems to +have had one rule of conduct, always that of practical and +successful politics, to let himself be guided by events, when they +were sure to bring him out where he wished to go, though by what +seemed to unpractical minds, which let go the possible to grasp at +the desirable, a longer road. + +Undoubtedly the highest function of statesmanship is by degrees to +accommodate the conduct of communities to ethical laws, and to +subordinate the conflicting self-interests of the day to higher and +more permanent concerns. But it is on the understanding, and not +on the sentiment, of a nation that all safe legislation must be based. +Voltaire's saying, that "a consideration of petty circumstances is the +tomb of great things," may be true of individual men, but it certainly +is not true of governments. It is by a multitude of such +considerations, each in itself trifling, but all together weighty, that +the framers of policy can alone divine what is practicable and +therefore wise. The imputation of inconsistency is one to which +every sound politician and every honest thinker must sooner or later +subject himself. The foolish and the dead alone never change their +opinion. The course of a great statesman resembles that of +navigable rivers, avoiding immovable obstacles with noble bends of +concession, seeking the broad levels of opinion on which men +soonest settle and longest dwell, following and marking the almost +imperceptible slopes of national tendency, yet always aiming at +direct advances, always recruited from sources nearer heaven, and +sometimes bursting open paths of progress and fruitful human +commerce through what seem the eternal barriers of both. It is +loyalty to great ends, even though forced to combine the small and +opposing motives of selfish men to accomplish them; it is the +anchored cling to solid principles of duty and action, which knows +how to swing with the tide, but is never carried away by it,--that we +demand in public men, and not sameness of policy, or a +conscientious persistency in what is impracticable. For the +impracticable, however theoretically enticing, is always politically +unwise, sound statesmanship being the application of that prudence +to the public business which is the safest guide in that of private +men. + +No doubt slavery was the most delicate and embarrassing question +with which Mr. Lincoln was called on to deal, and it was one which +no man in his position, whatever his opinions, could evade; for, +though he might withstand the clamor of partisans, he must sooner +or later yield to the persistent importunacy of circumstances, which +thrust the problem upon him at every turn and in every shape. + +It has been brought against us as an accusation abroad, and +repeated here by people who measure their country rather by what +is thought of it than by what is, that our war has not been distinctly +and avowedly for the extinction of slavery, but a war rather for the +preservation of our national power and greatness, in which the +emancipation of the negro has been forced upon us by +circumstances and accepted as a necessity. We are very far from +denying this; nay, we admit that it is so far true that we were slow +to renounce our constitutional obligations even toward those who +had absolved us by their own act from the letter of our duty. We +are speaking of the government which, legally installed for the +whole country, was bound, so long as it was possible, not to +overstep the limits of orderly prescription, and could not, without +abnegating its own very nature, take the lead off a Virginia reel. +They forgot, what should be forgotten least of all in a system like +ours, that the administration for the time being represents not only +the majority which elects it, but the minority as well,--a minority in +this case powerful, and so little ready for emancipation that it was +opposed even to war. Mr. Lincoln had not been chosen as general +agent of the an anti-slavery society, but President of the United +States, to perform certain functions exactly defined by law. +Whatever were his wishes, it was no less duty than policy to mark +out for himself a line of action that would not further distract the +country, by raising before their time questions which plainly would +soon enough compel attention, and for which every day was making +the answer more easy. + +Meanwhile he must solve the riddle of this new Sphinx, or be +devoured. Though Mr. Lincoln's policy in this critical affair has not +been such as to satisfy those who demand an heroic treatment for +even the most trifling occasion, and who will not cut their coat +according to their cloth, unless they can borrow the scissors of +Atropos,(1) it has been at least not unworthy of the long-headed +king of Ithaca.(2) Mr. Lincoln had the choice of Bassanio(3) +offered him. Which of the three caskets held the prize that was to +redeem the fortunes of the country? There was the golden one +whose showy speciousness might have tempted a vain man; the +silver of compromise, which might have decided the choice of a +merely acute one; and the leaden,--dull and homely-looking, as +prudence always is,--yet with something about it sure to attract the +eye of practical wisdom. Mr. Lincoln dallied with his decision +perhaps longer than seemed needful to those on whom its awful +responsibility was not to rest, but when he made it, it was worthy of +his cautious but sure-footed understanding. The moral of the +Sphinx-riddle, and it is a deep one, lies in the childish simplicity of +the solution. Those who fail in guessing it, fail because they are +over-ingenious, and cast about for an answer that shall suit their +own notion of the gravity of the occasion and of their own dignity, +rather than the occasion itself. + +In a matter which must be finally settled by public opinion, and in +regard to which the ferment of prejudice and passion on both sides +has not yet subsided to that equilibrium of compromise from which +alone a sound public opinion can result, it is proper enough for the +private citizen to press his own convictions with all possible force +of argument and persuasion; but the popular magistrate, whose +judgment must become action, and whose action involves the whole +country, is bound to wait till the sentiment of the people is so far +advanced toward his own point of view, that what he does shall find +support in it, instead of merely confusing it with new elements of +division. It was not unnatural that men earnestly devoted to the +saving of their country, and profoundly convinced that slavery was +its only real enemy, should demand a decided policy round which all +patriots might rally,--and this might have been the wisest course for +an absolute ruler. But in the then unsettled state of the public mind, +with a large party decrying even resistance to the slaveholders' +rebellion as not only unwise, but even unlawful; with a majority, +perhaps, even of the would-be loyal so long accustomed to regard +the Constitution as a deed of gift conveying to the South their own +judgment as to policy and instinct as to right, that they were in +doubt at first whether their loyalty were due to the country or to +slavery; and with a respectable body of honest and influential men +who still believed in the possibility of conciliation,--Mr. Lincoln +judged wisely, that, in laying down a policy in deference to one +party, he should be giving to the other the very fulcrum for which +their disloyalty had been waiting. + +(1) One of the three Fates. +(2) Odysseus, or Ulysses, the hero of Homer's Odyssey. +(3) See Shakespeare's *Merchant of Venice.* + +It behooved a clear-headed man in his position not to yield so far to +an honest indignation against the brokers of treason in the North as +to lose sight of the materials for misleading which were their stock +in trade, and to forget that it is not the falsehood of sophistry which +is to be feared, but the grain of truth mingled with it to make it +specious,--that it is not the knavery of the leaders so much as the +honesty of the followers they may seduce, that gives them power +for evil. It was especially his duty to do nothing which might help +the people to forget the true cause of the war in fruitless disputes +about its inevitable consequences. + +The doctrine of State rights can be so handled by an adroit +demagogue as easily to confound the distinction between liberty +and lawlessness in the minds of ignorant persons, accustomed +always to be influenced by the sound of certain words, rather than +to reflect upon the principles which give them meaning. For, +though Secession involves the manifest absurdity of denying to the +State the right of making war against any foreign power while +permitting it against the United States; though it supposes a +compact of mutual concessions and guaranties among States +without any arbiter in case of dissension; though it contradicts +common-sense in assuming that the men who framed our +government did not know what they meant when they substituted +Union for confederation; though it falsifies history, which shows +that the main opposition to the adoption of the Constitution was +based on the argument that it did not allow that independence in the +several States which alone would justify them in seceding;--yet, as +slavery was universally admitted to be a reserved right, an inference +could be drawn from any direct attack upon it (though only in self- +defence) to a natural right of resistance, logical enough to satisfy +minds untrained to detect fallacy, as the majority of men always are, +and now too much disturbed by the disorder of the times, to +consider that the order of events had any legitimate bearing on the +argument. Though Mr. Lincoln was too sagacious to give the +Northern allies of the Rebels the occasion they desired and even +strove to provoke, yet from the beginning of the war the most +persistent efforts have been made to confuse the public mind as to +its origin and motives, and to drag the people of the loyal States +down from the national position they had instinctively taken to the +old level of party squabbles and antipathies. The wholly +unprovoked rebellion of an oligarchy proclaiming negro slavery the +corner-stone of free institutions, and in the first flush of over-hasty +confidence venturing to parade the logical sequence of their leading +dogma, "that slavery is right in principle, and has nothing to do with +difference of complexion," has been represented as a legitimate and +gallant attempt to maintain the true principles of democracy. The +rightful endeavor of an established government, the least onerous +that ever existed, to defend itself against a treacherous attack on its +very existence, has been cunningly made to seem the wicked effort +of a fanatical clique to force its doctrines on an oppressed +population. + +Even so long ago as when Mr. Lincoln, not yet convinced of the +danger and magnitude of the crisis, was endeavoring to persuade +himself of Union majorities at the South, and to carry on a war that +was half peace in the hope of a peace that would have been all war,- +-while he was still enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law, under some +theory that Secession, however it might absolve States from their +obligations, could not escheat them of their claims under the +Constitution, and that slaveholders in rebellion had alone among +mortals the privilege of having their cake and eating it at the same +time,--the enemies of free government were striving to persuade the +people that the war was an Abolition crusade. To rebel without +reason was proclaimed as one of the rights of man, while it was +carefully kept out of sight that to suppress rebellion is the first duty +of government. All the evils that have come upon the country have +been attributed to the Abolitionists, though it is hard to see how any +party can become permanently powerful except in one of two ways, +either by the greater truth of its principles, or the extravagance of +the party opposed to it. To fancy the ship of state, riding safe at +her constitutional moorings, suddenly engulfed by a huge kraken of +Abolitionism, rising from unknown depths and grasping it with +slimy tentacles, is to look at the natural history of the matter with +the eyes of Pontoppidan.(1) To believe that the leaders in the +Southern treason feared any danger from Abolitionism, would be to +deny them ordinary intelligence, though there can be little doubt +that they made use of it to stir the passions and excite the fears of +their deluded accomplices. They rebelled, not because they thought +slavery weak, but because they believed it strong enough, not to +overthrow the government, but to get possession of it; for it +becomes daily clearer that they used rebellion only as a means of +revolution, and if they got revolution, though not in the shape they +looked for, is the American people to save them from its +consequences at the cost of its own existence? The election of Mr. +Lincoln, which it was clearly in their power to prevent had they +wished, was the occasion merely, and not the cause of their revolt. +Abolitionism, till within a year or two, was the despised heresy of a +few earnest persons, without political weight enough to carry the +election of a parish constable; and their cardinal principle was +disunion, because they were convinced that within the Union the +position of slavery was impregnable. In spite of the proverb, great +effects do not follow from small causes,--that is, disproportionately +small,--but from adequate causes acting under certain required +conditions. To contrast the size of the oak with that of the parent +acorn, as if the poor seed had paid all costs from its slender strong- +box, may serve for a child's wonder; but the real miracle lies in that +divine league which bound all the forces of nature to the service of +the tiny germ in fulfilling its destiny. Everything has been at work +for the past ten years in the cause of anti-slavery, but Garrison and +Phillips have been far less successful propagandists than the +slaveholders themselves, with the constantly growing arrogance of +their pretensions and encroachments. They have forced the +question upon the attention of every voter in the Free States, by +defiantly putting freedom and democracy on the defensive. But, +even after the Kansas outrages, there was no wide-spread desire on +the part of the North to commit aggressions, though there was a +growing determination to resist them. The popular unanimity in +favor of the war three years ago was but in small measure the result +of anti-slavery sentiment, far less of any zeal for abolition. But +every month of the war, every movement of the allies of slavery in +the Free States, has been making Abolitionists by the thousand. +The masses of any people, however intelligent, are very little moved +by abstract principles of humanity and justice, until those principles +are interpreted for them by the stinging commentary of some +infringement upon their own rights, and then their instincts and +passions, once aroused, do indeed derive an incalculable +reinforcement of impulse and intensity from those higher ideas, +those sublime traditions, which have no motive political force till +they are allied with a sense of immediate personal wrong or +imminent peril. Then at last the stars in their courses begin to fight +against Sisera. Had any one doubted before that the rights of +human nature are unitary, that oppression is of one hue the world +over, no matter what the color of the oppressed,--had any one +failed to see what the real essence of the contest was,--the efforts of +the advocates of slavery among ourselves to throw discredit upon +the fundamental axioms of the Declaration of Independence and the +radical doctrines of Christianity, could not fail to sharpen his eyes. + +(1) A Danish antiquary and theologian. + +While every day was bringing the people nearer to the conclusion +which all thinking men saw to be inevitable from the beginning, it +was wise in Mr. Lincoln to leave the shaping of his policy to events. +In this country, where the rough and ready understanding of the +people is sure at last to be the controlling power, a profound +common-sense is the best genius for statesmanship. Hitherto the +wisdom of the President's measures has been justified by the fact +that they have always resulted in more firmly uniting public opinion. +One of the things particularly admirable in the public utterances of +President Lincoln is a certain tone of familiar dignity, which, while +it is perhaps the most difficult attainment of mere style, is also no +doubtful indication of personal character. There must be something +essentially noble in an elective ruler who can descend to the level of +confidential ease without losing respect, something very manly in +one who can break through the etiquette of his conventional rank +and trust himself to the reason and intelligence of those who have +elected him. No higher compliment was ever paid to a nation than +the simple confidence, the fireside plainness, with which Mr. +Lincoln always addresses himself to the reason of the American +people. This was, indeed, a true democrat, who grounded himself +on the assumption that a democracy can think. "Come, let us +reason together about this matter," has been the tone of all his +addresses to the people; and accordingly we have never had a chief +magistrate who so won to himself the love and at the same time the +judgment of his countrymen. To us, that simple confidence of his in +the right-mindedness of his fellowmen is very touching, and its +success is as strong an argument as we have ever seen in favor of +the theory that men can govern themselves. He never appeals to +any vulgar sentiment, he never alludes to the humbleness of his +origin; it probably never occurred to him, indeed, that there was +anything higher to start from than manhood; and he put himself on a +level with those he addressed, not by going down to them, but only +by taking it for granted that they had brains and would come up to +a common ground of reason. In an article lately printed in *The +Nation,* Mr. Bayard Taylor mentions the striking fact, that in the +foulest dens of the Five Points he found the portrait of Lincoln. +The wretched population that makes its hive there threw all its +votes and more against him, and yet paid this instinctive tribute to +the sweet humanity of his nature. Their ignorance sold its vote and +took its money, but all that was left of manhood in them recognized +its saint and martyr. + +Mr. Lincoln is not in the habit of saying, "This is *my* opinion, or +*my* theory," but "This is the conclusion to which, in my +judgment, the time has come, and to which, accordingly, the sooner +we come the better for us." His policy has been the policy of public +opinion based on adequate discussion and on a timely recognition +of the influence of passing events in shaping the features of events +to come. + +One secret of Mr. Lincoln's remarkable success in captivating the +popular mind is undoubtedly an unconsciousness of self which +enables him, though under the necessity of constantly using the +capital *I*, to do it without any suggestion of egotism. There is no +single vowel which men's mouths can pronounce with such +difference of effect. That which one shall hide away, as it were, +behind the substance of his discourse, or, if he bring it to the front, +shall use merely to give an agreeable accent of individuality to what +he says, another shall make an offensive challenge to the self- +satisfaction of all his hearers, and an unwarranted intrusion upon +each man's sense of personal importance, irritating every pore of his +vanity, like a dry northeast wind, to a goose-flesh of opposition and +hostility. Mr. Lincoln has never studied Quintilian;(1) but he has, in +the earnest simplicity and unaffected Americanism of his own +character, one art of oratory worth all the rest. He forgets himself +so entirely in his object as to give his *I* the sympathetic and +persuasive effect of *We* with the great body of his countrymen. +Homely, dispassionate, showing all the rough-edged process of his +thought as it goes along, yet arriving at his conclusions with an +honest kind of every-day logic, he is so eminently our +representative man, that, when he speaks, it seems as if the people +were listening to their own thinking aloud. The dignity of his +thought owes nothing to any ceremonial garb of words, but to the +manly movement that comes of settled purpose and an energy of +reason that knows not what rhetoric means. There has been +nothing of Cleon, still less of Strepsiades(2) striving to underbid +him in demagogism, to be found in the public utterances of Mr. +Lincoln. He has always addressed the intelligence of men, never +their prejudice, their passion, or their ignorance. + +(1) A famous Latin writer on the *Art of Oratory.* +(2) Two Athenian demagogues, satirized by the dramatist +Aristophanes. + + __________________________ + +On the day of his death, this simple Western attorney, who +according to one party was a vulgar joker, and whom the +*doctrinaires* among his own supporters accused of wanting every +element of statesmanship, was the most absolute ruler in +Christendom, and this solely by the hold his good-humored sagacity +had laid on the hearts and understandings of his countrymen. Nor +was this all, for it appeared that he had drawn the great majority, +not only of his fellow-citizens, but of mankind also, to his side. So +strong and so persuasive is honest manliness without a single +quality of romance or unreal sentiment to help it! A civilian during +times of the most captivating military achievement, awkward, with +no skill in the lower technicalities of manners, he left behind him a +fame beyond that of any conqueror, the memory of a grace higher +than that of outward person, and of a gentlemanliness deeper than +mere breeding. Never before that startled April morning did such +multitudes of men shed tears for the death of one they had never +seen, as if with him a friendly presence had been taken away from +their lives, leaving them colder and darker. Never was funeral +panegyric so eloquent as the silent look of sympathy which +strangers exchanged when they met on that day. Their common +manhood had lost a kinsman. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Abraham Lincoln, by James Lowell + Binary files differdiff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a4f2821 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #906 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/906) |