A Man of the People Part 37

You _are_ using the naked power of an emperor then?

LINCOLN

[_Shaking his head sadly._]

I have been entrusted with that power for a brief term by the people. I am using it sorrowfully but firmly--and I am backed by the prayers of the mothers whose sons are dying for our cause--and the silent millions out there, whom I can't at this moment see--but whom I love and trust.

VAUGHAN

[_With angry tears._]

The Const.i.tution of the Republic guarantees to every freeman the right to trial in open court, confronted by his accusers----

LINCOLN

[_Pa.s.sionately._]

But we are fighting a war for the life of the Const.i.tution itself! I did not begin it. Once begun it must be fought to the end and the Nation saved. We must prove now that among freemen there _can be_ no successful appeal from the ballot to the bayonet. To preserve the Const.i.tution of the Republic I must in this crisis strain some of its provisions----

VAUGHAN

[_In hard tones._]

And you will not interfere to give these accused men a trial?

LINCOLN

I dare not interfere! The civil law must be suspended for the moment--as the law of life is suspended while the surgeon cuts a cancer out of bleeding flesh! I cannot shoot one soldier for desertion if I allow the man to go free who causes him to desert----

[_He pauses, and puts his hands on_ VAUGHAN'S _shoulders._]

Don't think, my son, that all the suffering of this war is not mine!

Every sh.e.l.l from those guns finds _my_ heart. The tears of widows and orphans--all, the blue and the gray--are mine! For we are equally responsible for this war! When I came here from the West, I found a panic-stricken North, strangling with the poison of Secession. Our fathers had only _dreamed_ a Union--they never lived to see it. The North had threatened Secession for thirty years. Horace Greeley in his great paper on the day of my inauguration was telling the millions who hung on his word as the oracle from Heaven, that Secession was inevitable! "Therefore let our erring sisters of the South go!" was his daily cry. I could not have prevented this war, nor could Jefferson Davis. We are in the grip of mighty forces sweeping in from the centuries. We are fighting the battle of the ages----

[_He pauses again._]

But our country's worth it, my boy, if we can only save it! Out of this agony will be born a united people. There has never been a democracy _in this world_ because there's never been one without the shadow of a slave. We must build a real Government of the people, by the people, for the people. It's not the question merely of four million black slaves. It's a question of the life of freemen yet unborn. I hear the tread of these coming millions. Their destiny is in your hands and mine. A mighty Union of free democratic states without a slave--the hope, refuge and inspiration of the world--a beacon light on the sh.o.r.es of time!

[_Pauses._]

--There's but one tragedy, that can have no ray of light, and that is that this blood we are now pouring out shall have flowed in vain, and these brave men shall die for naught, that the old curse shall remain, the Union be broken into hostile sections and these battles must be fought again.

[_He pauses, breathes deeply, and lifts his figure as if to throw off another nightmare and slips his arm around_ VAUGHAN.]

My enemies call me a tyrant and usurper! I who came up here from a pioneer's cabin in the wilderness, out of rags and poverty----

[_Pauses._]

--How well I remember when my mother looked at them and said--"This is nothing--it doesn't count here--it's what you feel--it's what you believe--it's what you see that counts----"

[_Struggles with his emotions._]

Now I'm going to show you something, my son, and I'll let _you_ be the judge as to whether I'm a tyrant--

[_He takes up the booklet and hands it to_ VAUGHAN.]

Read the t.i.tle page.

VAUGHAN

[_Reading in amazement._]

"Why Should Brothers Fight?" By Dr. Richard Vaughan.

LINCOLN

That pamphlet was taken by his sister from the pocket of a poor ignorant boy, who was sentenced to be shot for desertion to-morrow at sunrise----

VAUGHAN

No! No!----

LINCOLN

I pardoned him this morning----

[VAUGHAN _sighs his relief._]

Your father wrote and printed that poison, and has forfeited his life for that boy's act----

VAUGHAN

[_Trembling._]

I know you could order his execution----

LINCOLN

I said to-day that I'd hang such a man on a gallows forty cubits high--but now that I see you trembling----

[_He pauses._]

I shall _not_ order his execution. I shall only hold him until the war is over, and then let him and all the others go----

[_Pauses._]

Tyrant and usurper they call me! And I'm the humblest man who walks the earth to-night!

VAUGHAN