Lincoln, the Politician Part 1

Lincoln, the Politician.

by T. Aaron Levy.

PREFACE

Love of kind alone transcended Lincoln's political ambition. His career as President, Statesman, Emanc.i.p.ator is a mystery unless his preparation for leadership is demonstrated. He was no product of sudden elevation, no creature of opportunity. No American Statesman was better equipped to meet a national emergency. Lincoln the plain politician, the Illinois legislator, the congressman, and the prairie debater, was a child of the grocery store, of the pioneer gathering, of caucus and convention. It was this political training that determined the mode in which he breathed life into the momentous proclamation of the nineteenth century.

The world that admires his charity is in equal need of his policy.

Until the coming of the industrial movement following the Civil War, the Commonwealth commanded the best heart and intelligence of the Republic.

Captains of industry had not usurped the places of power. A degraded conception of devotion to the general welfare is in itself a sign of degeneration. A corrupt political system is incompatible with a healthy national existence. When individual aggrandizement is often preferred to the common good, when private inst.i.tutions frequently allure the genius of a people, it is an inspiration to return to a politician who in simplicity and sincerity believed that civil service and patriotism are better than gold. An abounding demand of the day is a practical political philosophy.

In spite of golden vision, of saintly Grail, civilization still questions its real progress, and the sphynx of human suffering baffles understanding. Life has ever been a ceaseless compromise between spirit and matter, dream and reality, shadow and substance. In the never ending conflict between the hosts of darkness and of light, of radicalism and of conservatism, the battle often has been won by the use of superior strategy. Wasted energy, a lack of well directed idealism and indifference to the laws of human progress are the main obstacles to human advancement. There is an ever present need of a fine sense of proportion between vision and reality. The reformer needs more method, while the practical representative needs more vision. The solution of vexing governmental problems will be hastened by a clearer and more general comprehension of the gigantic difficulties that stand in the way of the domination of ideas over matter. High political success comes from a profound knowledge of the character of the hostility thwarting human progress. Patience as well as faith must be the guide. Society suffers from misdirected emotion on the one hand and from impervious apathy on the other. Sensational onslaught on evil has been often tested and its futility proved. Likewise the common politician has made many despair of democratic government. Abraham Lincoln represents the sanest example of wise political action, his political life the best platform for eternal warfare on organized evil.

The artist is measured not alone by his sleepless imagination but also by the technic through which his vision a.s.sumes external form. Dante skillfully gave voice to "ten silent centuries." Even so the dreams of prophet and humanitarian await the touch of the political artist to find immortality in visible manifestation. Neither a politician without a luminous idea nor a dreamer without political craft ever develops into a statesman. Democracy can solve its destiny only by an adequate appreciation of the importance of working out its intrinsic mission. The national ideal must become a reality. Dreamer and reformer are needed and likewise the politician, the man of method, the student of matter, the wielder of the tool. A heroic past will not save a nation. "The central idea" of a people cannot be safely relinquished, but must restlessly follow the law of practical evolution in each generation.

Abraham Lincoln was a child of American Democracy. He was trained in the college of republican inst.i.tutions. The danger to Democracy is the treason of her own children. Lincoln stayed with his teachers--the plain people. He never longed for a place they could not give nor an honor they could not bestow. The aristocracy of externality, of clothes, fashion, wealth, station and descent ever remained shadows to him. He valued them at their real worth, with finer judgment than any man in modern history. The possibility of such a career is in itself a justification of republican government.

He walked the way of the average citizen, labored in the factory of political methods. Living in the common atmosphere, loving the strife of debate, near to the pioneer heart and mind, a student of popularity and party organization, he was from the beginning a champion of the better and broader humanity. He lived his democracy and led his people to a higher realization of the resistless purposes of the republic. Striking the better chords of their being, he led them to make a mere declaration of freedom the possession of a forgotten people. During his political pilgrimage he ever sought to widen in a practical way the Declaration of Independence. Many prate much of Democracy but Lincoln dared to make it the bread of humanity.

Abraham Lincoln used political machinery for the welfare of the people.

He was ambitious and loved success but not for its own sake. Station gave him wider opportunity to practice his philosophy of life, his affection for his fellowmen, and sympathy for the downtrodden. He is a guide to the perplexed, to those who have not bartered their idealism in the stifling fight. His life is richly calculated to deepen faith in the ultimate triumph of righteousness, to lead to the conviction that spirit and method are not sundered of necessity, that the vision is not essentially a stranger to the party worker, that policy and compromise have their place in the domain of progress.

He looms up in American History as a politician who glorified his craft, who kept his hands clean in all of the sordidness of material success.

Vicarious government in a republic is ruinous. Lincoln is therefore an inspiration for political consecration and the prophet of permanency. He dedicated his talent to the external manifestations of the destiny of the republic. His common sense, his practical sagacity and knowledge of human nature and of its limitations for progress, his prudent recognition of the labored advance of ethical sentiment and of the solidarity of vested interests, as well as his superb idealism and exalted spirit may well become food and life to those who believe in the better politics. As these become the property and the possession of a broader community the republic will know no fear, dissension will little disturb her serenity and she will be equal to every emergency that may threaten her integrity.

Beginning with the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Abraham Lincoln became and remained a national figure. From that time his life belongs to the history of the United States and has been dwelt upon with ever increasing fullness and eulogy. By contrast his early political life has been almost forgotten. This work covers that neglected period, dealing with Lincoln the politician, showing his development and his training for national leadership. The story is largely told in the words of Lincoln himself, stress being laid on crucial incidents. .h.i.therto, in the main, indifferently considered. A unity, dramatic in its simplicity, appears in his recital, giving glimpses of a man who was guided by a supreme political philosophy in seeking to externalize his gospel of the brotherhood of man in statute and decision. Considerable attention is devoted to Lincoln in Indiana and at New Salem, showing the peculiarity of his power, his political popularity, and the rapid maturity of his convictions as to the wisest methods of attacking entrenched evil. An earnest, reverent and impartial study of his political career is an enriching education. There is no need of hiding its humble, rude phases.

The more his life is lingered over, the greater the wonder grows at the emerging of Lincoln from the humility and the poverty of his environment with a "message of range and sweep," to the sons of men the world over.

LINCOLN THE POLITICIAN

CHAPTER I

LINCOLN IN KENTUCKY

The forefathers of Abraham Lincoln, like thousands of Western pioneers, were of a st.u.r.dy English lineage. His immediate ancestry, however, was less distinguished than that of many whose names are forgotten and whose influence on American history is imperceptible. Every effort to explain his career through an ill.u.s.trious parentage has proved altogether futile.

Lincoln's grandfather belonged to that band of fearless adventurers in Kentucky, whose ideal was a lonely house in the middle of a vast farm, even though maintained in the presence of skulking redskins.[1] It was in this land that earned the t.i.tle of "the Dark and b.l.o.o.d.y Ground," that a common frontier tragedy made the grandmother of Lincoln a widow. For one day while her husband was in the fields, a short distance from the house, with their youngest son Thomas, a sudden shot from an Indian ambush broke the stillness of the woods and the father fell dead. The oldest son Mordecai looking out of the loop hole in the loft of the house saw an Indian raising his little brother from the ground. Aiming at a silver ornament on the breast of the redman, he brought him down.

The boy ran to the cabin and the mother opened the door. She hastened to a more settled community where her son Thomas, the father of the President, grew to a shiftless manhood.[2]

[1] Shaler, 116.

[2] Lamon, 7-8.

The inhabitants of Kentucky were bred in the school of hardship. The battle with the forest and buffalo abated, but there remained the heroic fight with the soil. Splendid virile qualities were born in the strife with the Indians and the forest. Inventions were yet unknown and a living was drawn from the earth only through grinding labor. Yet frontier life rapidly gave way to the march of civilization, the trail and the path to the highway.

Hunters and warriors became tillers of the field. The merchant and manufacturer, the pioneer preacher, physician, lawyer and politician appeared with the onward tide of events.

The places of learning were few. Now and then a struggling teacher gave all that he had from his humble store to the young confidently entrusted to his care. Still something in the little log cabin school-house, even on unfrequented paths, developed character. Out of the battle with adverse conditions, with few advantages and manifold difficulties, came statesmen, and even scholars, men who laid the foundation of states, who guided the nation through its crises, and were equal to every emergency that endangered its vitality.

The law abiding character of the people was notably evinced by the supreme patience with which they effected their separation from the mother state, Virginia.[3] With wisdom they established courts of justice and the law of the land was speedily enforced. A malefactor who violated the statute against card playing, after imprisonment, turned his back on Kentucky, swearing "that it was the meanest country a white man ever got into."[4]

[3] Shaler, 107.

[4] Milburn, 65.

The pioneers of Kentucky had in a high degree the instinct of government, the pa.s.sion for politics. Their sense of liberty was tempered by devotion to const.i.tutional principles and reverence for the written law. The restless spirit of adventure was tamed by the potency of political responsibilities. At an early day, they displayed interest even in national problems. Their views were kindred to those of Virginia. Accustomed to restrain their own freedom, they did not favor the coercive measures of a distant, unknown, strong and centralized government.[5] The political policy of Washington was far from popular; that of Adams was odious.[6] The presidential contest between Adams and Jefferson agitated Kentucky. Discussions were frequent and widespread and even women partic.i.p.ated. A pioneer boy was so elated over the triumph of Jefferson that, sitting in his chamber alone, he drank in cold water thirteen toasts in celebration of the triumphant event.[7]

[5] Ranck, 181-2, 216.

[6] Collins, 1, 284.

[7] Drake, 211.

It is probable that even in his infancy Lincoln listened at the fireside to many political controversies. In that case he heard doctrines advocated destructive of the national sovereignty, vitally hostile to those avowed and cherished by him in his public career. Traces of his early political surroundings on his vital convictions are hardly discernible. Lincoln became a national politician with little patience for the popular doctrine of State Sovereignty. He belonged to the Federal party by instinct. No American statesman was broader in his outlook of the general welfare. It is worthy of note that he pa.s.sed his infancy in Kentucky; his boyhood and minority in Indiana, and a varied career in the State of Illinois. Not being the son of a single community or commonwealth, he did not look to any individual state with fullness of affection. He was a citizen of the Republic.

As early as 1790, an effort was made in Kentucky to promote the gradual abolition of slavery. The arrival of Clay strengthened this movement.

Strong pa.s.sions were aroused by the angry discussions that followed this futile endeavor. About 1810 the number of slaves increased perceptibly.

The blighting effects of the inst.i.tution soon began their revelation.

Labor was deemed disgraceful and demeaning. The possession of slaves, not "high intellectual and moral endowments," became the test of social status. Almost everything was subordinate to the dominating inst.i.tution.

Such, in general, was the state of society in Kentucky when Thomas Lincoln, in 1816, made his weary trail through tangled woodland to the wild forests of Spencer County, Indiana. He was one of the mult.i.tude discouraged with prospects in the Southern states. It was frequently the overbearing conduct of slaveholders, rather than hatred to slavery, that led the pioneer to leave the land of his nativity. Still it is amazing that the majority of these emigrants bore no resentment to the inst.i.tution that provoked their removal, but became or remained vigorous advocates in maintaining its supremacy.[8]

[8] Palmer,9. Drake, 208-209.

Efforts have been made to account for Thomas Lincoln's movement by reason of his extreme hostility to slavery. Lamon indulges in a more prosaic explanation, stating that there were not more than fifty slaves in Hardin County; that it was practically a free community; that his more fortunate relatives in other parts of the State had no scruples to their ownership; that he was wanderer by nature gaining neither riches nor credit; and that a quarrel with a neighbor, whose nose he bit off, made him more anxious than ever to leave Kentucky.[9] Lincoln in his campaign biography remarks that this removal was partly on account of slavery, but chiefly on account of the difficulty in land t.i.tles in Kentucky.[10] Ida Tarbell even endeavors to make a sort of Abolitionist out of Thomas Lincoln. She quotes an old man, who claims that he was present at the wedding of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, and that Tom Lincoln and Nancy and Sally Bush were steeped full of Jess Head's notions about the wrong of slavery and the rights of man, as explained by Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.[11] If this were the fact, it is very strange that Thomas Lincoln never thereafter manifested any hatred of slavery during a long life. If Thomas Lincoln had been a zealous advocate of the rights of the black man, is it not stranger still that his son never even hinted at receiving the slightest impetus to anti-slavery opinions from his father? The long silence of Thomas, Abraham and Sally Bush Lincoln disproves the contention that Thomas Lincoln was a friend or champion of the enslaved, or that his views differed from the prevailing sentiment in regard to Abolitionism.

[9] Lamon, 16-17.

[10] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 639.

[11] McClure, 234.

One incident looms up in the brief stay of Abraham in Kentucky. "I had been fishing one day," said Lincoln, "and caught a little fish which I was taking home. I met a soldier in the road, and having always been told at home that we must be good to the soldiers, I gave him my fish."[12] This story strikingly displays the influence of his mother.

Events were few in his early life, and made a correspondingly abiding impression.

[12] Nicolay and Hay, 1, 27.

Lincoln was seven years old when he pa.s.sed beyond the borders of Kentucky. There he received the rudiments of an education from two nomadic teachers. At the time of his departure, caste feeling was beginning to dominate society in Kentucky, but Lincoln never showed any of its manifestations. "He was," says Frederick Douglas, "the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself of the difference of color, and I thought that all the more remarkable because he came from a state where there were black laws."[13]