The Battle of Principles Part 9

Even the losses of sugar and cotton usually purchased from the South were made up to the North. Threatened with the loss of the Southern sugar, sorghum cane was imported from China, and the people scarcely missed the Southern sugar. When the cotton failed, the unwonted increase of the flocks furnished wool for raiment. It stirs wonder to reflect that one poor crop of wheat and corn might have changed the issue, and defeated the North. Singularly enough also, the failure of crops in Europe not only offered a market for the unexpected Northern surplus, but yielded the highest price ever known, thus bringing in a golden river to enrich the Northern people. Jefferson Davis had said at the beginning of the war that "gra.s.s would soon be growing not simply in the streets of the villages of the North, but in Broadway and Wall Street."

Davis believed that the withdrawal of every fourth man would make our problem of food and clothing impossible of solution. But at that moment the invention of the reaper enabled one harvester to do the work of ten men, and the new tools actually more than took the place of the Northern soldiers who were at the front.

Furthermore, the spirit of patriotism and self-sacrifice descended upon the Northern women. On the little farms where the farmer's wife was too poor to buy a reaper, the mother and the daughters went into the field to plough the corn and thrash the wheat and milk the cows. In many counties in Iowa and Kansas one-half of the men were at the front, and in harvest time it is said that there were more women working in the wheat and corn fields than men.

One other element fought for liberty and the North. A strange unrest fell upon Europe. Foreign peoples became discontented and began to migrate. In the summer of 1862 a vast mult.i.tude landed upon the sh.o.r.es in New York, at the very time when there was a scarcity of labour in the shops and factories. At the very hour when Lincoln was afraid that it might become impossible to clothe the army and equip it, the providence of G.o.d raised up foreigners who stepped into the place made vacant by the newly enlisted soldier; thereafter the North throughout the war actually increased in population, in wealth, in manufacturing interests.

The Civil War ended with the North richer and more prosperous than when it began; while in 1861 slavery had impoverished the South, and war left the Confederacy crushed to the very earth, peeled and stripped, famished and utterly broken. For the South never yielded until she had cast in the last earthly possession, and knew that only life and breath were left.

Despite the abundant harvests, during the early part of the war the Northern people pa.s.sed through gloom, anxiety and bitter disappointment.

At first the colleges and universities were empty, because the students had all gone to the front, but the common schools were as full as usual.

The churches were better attended than formerly, while the newspapers were more widely read than ever before. The crisis sobered the people.

The serious note was manifest. One by one luxuries were given up, amus.e.m.e.nts seemed paltry, and people forgot their usual diversions.

After Bull Run came a succession of calamities. Longfellow writes: "Sumner came to dine last night, but the evening was most gloomy, and all went away in tears." Governor Morton of Indiana wrote Lincoln, "Another three months like the last six, and we are lost." Robert Winthrop of Boston came down to New York, and spoke of three scenes that he had witnessed. The first was a group of soldiers on their way home, in charge of friends, some crippled, some emaciated, gaunt and broken, and the rest carried on stretchers. At another station he saw a group of young soldiers, intelligent, athletic and st.u.r.dy, climbing on the car to start to the front, but on the platform was a group of pale-cheeked and weeping women, wives, mothers and sweethearts. "Oh, it was terrible! It is all black, black, black!" said Winthrop.

But after the battle of Gettysburg, the high-water mark of the war, men's spirits began to rise. The North became inured to excitement. The emotion was converted into hard work and endurance, and that dogged determination to produce the raiment, the weapons and the food to support the army, or die in the attempt. Depositors took risks and loaned their money to the banks. Bankers took their courage in their hands and loaned the money to the manufacturers; manufacturers advertised for labour in Europe and started up their factories by night as well as by day. Wages rose, the balance of trade was largely in favour of the North, the oil regions began to prosper, and industry, commerce and finance all waxed mighty. In 1864 the whole land was in the full sweep of industrial prosperity. The debts incident to the panic of 1857 were fully liquidated. Iron is the barometer, and the country doubled its consumption of iron. An editor writing of his city says, "Old Hartford seems fat and rich and cozy, and everything is as tranquil as if there were no war."

But the industrial conditions of life in the South were very different.

Be it remembered that the North was a self-supporting region, both as to foods and manufactured articles, while the South, under slavery, produced raw material, and used that raw stuff to build up factories in England. When the war came the South found herself without the means of supplying her own wants. Within six months the South discovered that every axe and saw and steam-engine and iron rail and bolt and nail had come from the North. Davis sent out men to scurry the country for old stoves and every iron sc.r.a.p was picked up to be melted into weapons. At the close of the war tenpenny nails were used as five-cent pieces and currency in North Carolina. To crown all other disasters came the debas.e.m.e.nt of the currency. Macaulay says that the world has suffered less from bad kings than from bad shillings and sixpences. The Confederacy issued one billion dollars of paper money, States issued another flood of promises to pay, cities put out munic.i.p.al currency, fire and life insurances their shin-plasters, and they kept pouring out paper money until finally all the printing presses broke down. A month before the collapse, a Confederate soldier, returning to his little cabin, paid $10,000 for a fifteen-year-old mule, knee sprung in front and spavined behind, and $7,500 for the shoes for shoeing the mule.

Lee's army would have collapsed but for the marvellous heroism, resourcefulness and courage of the Southern women. They took charge of the fields, planted the crops, gathered the harvests, and staggered on to the end. Not one Northern home in five was death-stricken through the war, but practically every Southern home had lost one or two members of the family, through father, son or brother.

Nor must we forget what Lee owed to the fidelity of the negroes. Instead of insurrection, arson, pillage and murder in Southern towns and old homesteads, the Southern slave remained true to his mistress, and was the very soul of fidelity. Yet when the war was over, the town had become a wilderness, the plantation a desolation, and where there had been prosperity and even luxury, famine and want and disease had set up their abiding places. Verily secession sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind of destruction.

That the war influenced some people for good and influenced others for evil is beyond all doubt. During the first two years it was a distinct tonic to the intellect and conscience of the people. The sense of national peril quickened the dull and lethargic, steadied the weak drifters, furnished ballast to all the people, made the strong stronger, made the brave more heroic. The first sign of national decay is the note of frivolity. The sure sign of greatness in a generation is the note of seriousness. In the middle of 1863 James Russell Lowell wrote Bancroft that the war had been a great, a divine and a wholly unmixed blessing, and that all of the people were exalted to new levels. Had the war ceased with the battle of Gettysburg, probably Lowell's statement would have held true, but later came the reaction towards graft and corruption, intemperance, profligacy and gambling. Within four years the representatives of the government expended from seven to eight billions of dollars. Government contractors bought at a single time 50,000 suits of clothes, 100,000 rifles, 200,000 blankets. The temptation to graft was strong for all and irresistible to a few. The government records speak of one horse-trader in St. Louis who bought his horses and mules at $75 and sold them to the government for $150, and made enough to buy Mississippi steamboats for $65,000. He then rented these boats to the government for one year for $295,000, and at the end of the year still owned the boats. To what extent charges of graft were made is indicated by the fact that one claim was reduced from fifty millions to thirty-three millions. A cartoon of that time with strange exaggeration represents one man saying to his friend, "So-and-so has obtained a third contract from the government." To which his friend answers, "Well, well!

A couple of more contracts and he will die worth a million." For any manufacturer to obtain a government contract was for that man to be on the highroad to wealth.

Yet the historians who a.n.a.lyze these reports find a large amount of exaggeration in the statements. Some waste there was, but the authorities seem to think that it was the waste of inexperience for the most part. When the war opened the Navy Department was spending $1,000,000 a year. By 1862 it was spending $145,000,000, and with no organization to handle such enormous interests. In general, in view of the sudden emergency thrust upon the people, the marvel is not that there was so much corruption among government contractors, but that there were so many honest contractors, and that there was so little waste through inexperience.

In general it may be said that the moral and religious sentiment of both North and South alike steadily strengthened during the conflict. After Gettysburg, the Southern people and army, always deeply religious, in their distress turned to their fathers' G.o.d for support. Jackson and Lee's men fought by day, and held prayer-meetings by night. In the North, during 1861 and '62 and '63, religious meetings were held all over the land. When the winter twilight fell, the candles began to burn in the little schoolhouses, where the farmers a.s.sembled and prayed to G.o.d. In the small towns and tiny villages the little churches were packed with worshippers, not simply on Sundays but during the evenings of the week. During this interval the layman became as influential as the ordained preachers. At this time, the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation took its rise, all of the old men saw visions, and all of the young men dreamed dreams, and many a Saul was found among the prophets. Poets like Lowell were moved by deeply religious inspirations. During the war Whittier wrote his loftiest songs and his n.o.blest and most exalted prayers. The influence of the great conflict upon philosophers like Emerson is easily traced. American literature lost its note of unreality. Preaching became practical. There was a revival of ethics in politics. The war cleared the atmosphere of the country by sweeping away slavery with all its foundation of lies.

Wendell Phillips once said the French Revolution was the greatest and most unmixed blessing of the last one thousand years. Now that it is all over, and the slain soldiers and the brave women who went down in the conflict have had all their hard questions asked before the throne of G.o.d, perhaps these heroes and heroines who now live unto G.o.d look back upon this era as an era of sorrow overruled for justice and liberty. The conclusion of the whole matter is this: a good house must be founded upon a rock, and no government or civilization can be permanent that is not based on the freedom, property and intelligence of the working cla.s.ses.

To-day the leaders of thought in the South believe that Lee and Gordon were right in the statement that they "thanked G.o.d that they failed to establish States' rights, and that Northern men had succeeded in maintaining the Union." Time has cleared the air of misunderstandings.

At last the North and South understand Lincoln's last words regarding the Civil War: "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same G.o.d, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just G.o.d's a.s.sistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered--that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the Providence of G.o.d, must needs come, but which having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living G.o.d always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pa.s.s away. Yet, if G.o.d wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drop of blood drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as G.o.d gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

XII

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: THE MARTYRED PRESIDENT

Among the heroes who helped save the Republic, the last, best hope of earth, in that it gives liberty to the slaves, that it might a.s.sure freedom to the free, stands Abraham Lincoln, the emanc.i.p.ator and martyr.

Take him all in all, Abraham Lincoln is the greatest thing the Republic has achieved. History tells of no child who pa.s.sed from a cradle so humble to a grave so ill.u.s.trious. The inst.i.tutions of the Republic were founded for the manufacture of a good quality of soul. In the presence of the greatest men of history we can point with pride to Lincoln, saying, "This is the kind of man the inst.i.tutions of the Republic can produce." For Lincoln's most striking characteristic was his Americanism. At best, Washington was a patrician, the fine product of aristocratic inst.i.tutions, so that England claimed him. Washington was the richest man of his era, his home an old manor house, his estate wide inherited acres, his relative an English baronet, his brother the child of Oxford University. The books he read were English books, the teachers he had were English tutors. The root was planted in English soil, though it fruited under American skies. But Americanism is the very essence of Lincoln's thoughts, Lincoln's enthusiasm, Lincoln's utterances, and Lincoln's character. One of the golden words of the Republic is the word "opportunity." Here, all the highways that lead to office, land and honour must be open unto all young feet. A banker's son may climb to the governor's mansion, or the White House, but so may the washerwoman's. The widow's son practices eloquence in the corn fields of Virginia, but he has ability and patriotism, and we bring Henry Clay to the Senate chamber. A child out in Ohio goes barefooted over the October gra.s.s, driving an old red cow to the barn lot, but we bring McKinley to the White House.

Yonder stands the Temple of Fame. The door is open by day and by night, and a tall, thin, sallow boy turns his back upon a log cabin in Illinois and seeks entrance. But the angel at the threshold asks hard questions: "Can you eat crusts? Can you wear rags? Can you sleep in a garret? Can you endure sleepless nights and days of toil? Can you bear up against every wind that a.s.sails your bark? Can you live for liberty and G.o.d's truth, and can you die for them?" And that boy bowed his a.s.sent.

Washington climbed hand over hand up the golden rounds of the ladder of success; Lincoln built the ladder up which he climbed out of the fence rails which his own hands had split. Like his Divine Master, he touched two or three crusts and turned them into bread for the hungry mult.i.tudes.

His little log cabin shames our palaces. His three books, the Bible, the "Pilgrim's Progress" and "aesop's Fables" eclipse our libraries. His six months in a log schoolhouse were more than equal to our eight years in lecture hall and university. His fidelity to the great convictions shames our shifting politicians. For fifty years he walked forward under clouded skies. Like Dante, he held heart-break at bay. During one brief epoch only did his sun clear itself of clouds. He died without full recognition or reward. In retrospect he stands forth the saddest and sweetest, the strongest and gentlest, the most picturesque and the most pathetic figure in our history. The Saviour of the world was born in a stable and cradled in a manger, and went by the Via Dolorosa towards the world's throne. Not otherwise Abraham Lincoln was born in a cabin, more suited for herds and flocks than for a young mother and a little child; and by the way of poverty and adversity the great emanc.i.p.ator travelled towards his throne of influence and world supremacy.

History holds a few deeds so great that they can be done but once. There are some laws, some reforms and some liberties that once achieved are always achieved. Thus, Columbus discovered this new world, but his achievement reduced all the other explorers to the level of imitators.

Thus Isaac Newton discovered gravity, and in a moment every other astronomer became a pupil and a disciple. There never can be but one James Watt, for, though a thousand inventors improve his engine, their names are little tapers, shining over against the sun. The last century offered men of genius two signal opportunities, and there were a thousand eager aspirants for the honour. Charles Darwin discovered the golden key that unlocked the kingdom of nature and life, and carried off the honours of science. Abraham Lincoln, in an hour when some would meanly lose it, planned to n.o.bly save the Union, emanc.i.p.ated three million slaves, and carried off the honours in the realm of reform and liberty.

How great was the work done by this man and how supreme was the man himself, we can best understand by comparison and contrast. Among small men it is easy to be great. In Patagonia, where everybody eats blubber, a boy in the first reader is a prodigy of learning.

Anybody can be a giant in heroism and reform among Hottentots and South Sea savages. But the era of the Civil War was an era of heroes. Great men walked in regiments up and down the land. It was the age of Daniel Webster, whose genius is so wonderful that he achieved the four supreme things of four realms,--the greatest legal argument we have, the Dartmouth College case; the greatest plea before a judge and jury, the Knapp murder case; our finest outburst of inspirational eloquence, the oration at Bunker Hill; the greatest argument in defense of the Const.i.tution, his reply to Hayne. It was the age of John C. Calhoun, a statesman whose political theories led half a continent to deeds of daring war. It was the era of Seward, the all-round scholar, of Chase the greatest secretary of treasury since Alexander Hamilton, a man who struck the rock with the rod of his genius, and made the waters of finance flow forth from the desert. It was the age of our greatest orators, for then Wendell Phillips and Beecher were at their best. It was the era of Emerson, the philosopher; of Theodore Parker, the reformer; of Garrison, the abolitionist; of Lovejoy, the martyr; of Lowell and Whittier, the poets of freedom; of Greeley, the editor; it was also the age of the greatest soldiers, Grant and Sherman, and Sheridan and Lee. The great man is a form of fruit ripened in an atmosphere made warm and genial, and the climate that nurtured Lincoln unfolded the talents that represented also other forms of mental fruit.

Among these men Lincoln lived and wrote and spoke, and suffered and died;--but he stands forth a master among men, an indisputable genius, one of the five supreme statesmen of all history.

Now if we are to understand the unique place of Abraham Lincoln in our history we must recall again for a moment the men who set the battle lines in array. Unfortunately, most of our histories tell our children and youth that the Civil War raged about the slave. As a matter of fact, slavery was the occasion of the war, but not the cause. Slavery was the sulphur match that exploded the powder magazine, though the powder magazine could have been set off by a spark from the flint and steel, or a hundred other methods.

The Civil War was really fought over the question whether a const.i.tutionally formed nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal could permanently endure. The whole period from 1789 to 1865 was a critical period, during which the Const.i.tution was being tested and tried out.

During this testing many forms of secession were planned, and several actual rebellions took place. In 1787 there was a Ma.s.sachusetts rebellion under Shays, over the question of taxation. In 1794 there was what was known as the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania. In 1830 to 1835 there was a secession movement on in South Carolina, and President Jackson put down that rebellion over the tariff. Then Daniel Webster marked out the final lines of battle, entrenching the Const.i.tution against rebellious attempts. Webster fired the first shot of the war, whose last shot was fired at Appomattox. Webster carried the flag that Grant followed at Vicksburg, and shook out the folds of the banner that was crimsoned with blood at Gettysburg. It was Webster's banner that Anderson pulled down at Fort Sumter, under the stress of fire, and it was Webster's banner that, four years later to an hour, the same General Anderson pulled up on the same flagstaff at the same Fort Sumter.

During the period of the thirties and the forties, the conflict was a conflict of words and arguments between men like Webster and Calhoun and Garrison and Phillips. Later, the strife took on the form of a guerrilla warfare, and here and there leaders like Lovejoy were martyred. At last the strife entered into politics, when Douglas and Lincoln struggled for the supremacy of their principles,--but always it was a question of Const.i.tutional interpretation, against whatever interest attacked the "supreme law."

Soon the conflict entered the Church, and the American Tract Society, to hold the gifts of slave owners, forbade the distributions of Testaments to slaves, while the Bishop of New Jersey destroyed an edition of the Prayer Book because it contained a picture of Ary Scheffer's picture of "Christ the Emanc.i.p.ator," who was engaged in striking the shackles from slaves. The bishop was quite willing that Christ should open the eyes of the blind, make the deaf to hear and the lame to walk, but as for Jesus freeing the slaves--well, that was too much. Over the question of the Const.i.tutional power of Congress to resist the further extension of slavery in newly opened territories, the whole land rocked with excitement. Liberty and Slavery, like two giants, grappled for the death struggle. In such an era G.o.d raised up Abraham Lincoln, to lead the people out of the wilderness, and into the Promised Land of Union, of Liberty, and of Peace.

Never was a candidate for universal fame born under so unfriendly a sky.

His annals are "the short and simple annals of the poor." His home was a log cabin that had but three sides, the fourth one being a buffalo robe, swaying to and fro in the wind. When the biting wind of poverty became unbearable in Kentucky, the scant possessions were loaded upon a horse, carried across the Ohio, and the child walked barefooted through the forests of Indiana, where a new shack was built in the wilderness. There Lincoln's "angel mother" sickened and died--that mother to whom Lincoln said he owed all that he was or hoped to be. Then when the winter of poverty and discontent settled down blacker than ever, the father removed to another State, where the mud was deeper, and the winters colder, where nature was less propitious. Lying on his face, before blazing logs, the boy committed to memory the four Gospels, "aesop's Fables," and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." At nineteen he went to New Orleans, and standing in the slave market saw a young girl sold at public auction, and told his brother, Dennis Hanks, that if he ever had a chance he would hit slavery the hardest blow he could. At twenty he split 1,200 rails for a farmer, whose wife wove for him three yards of cloth, dyed in walnut juice, with which he had a new suit of clothes. He started a little store, failed in business, became a surveyor, bought a copy of the Const.i.tution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence; was made postmaster; several years later returned to the government agent the exact silver quarters and copper cents that he had kept tied up in a bag, because honesty meant that the identical coins must be returned to the government; entered upon the study and the practice of the law; was elected to the legislature, and reflected; was sent to Congress, and on a second campaign for the United States senatorship from Illinois met his compet.i.tor, Stephen A. Douglas, in the great debate. Beginning this contest, he delivered the "house divided against itself cannot stand" speech; and in the course of his marvellous debate made the issue between liberty and slavery so clear that a wayfaring man, though a fool, could not misunderstand; declared that if slavery was not wrong, there was nothing that was wrong. Soon he came to be looked upon as one who each year would coin the happy phrase and the rhythmical watchword that would be taken upon the lips of 30,000,000 of people; was made the leader of the new "party of freedom," and President.

Now, with infinite skill and patience, he entered upon the task of proving that he was the strongest man in his Cabinet, the strongest man in the North, the strongest man in the country, and the only man who had the last fact in the case, and therefore had the right to rule. Seward, experienced politician and statesman that he was, began by delicately hinting to Lincoln that if he felt himself unequal to emergencies, he could rely upon his Secretary of State for guidance, and that he, Seward, would not evade the responsibility. Lincoln answered by reading Seward's statement of a possible measure, and then placing beside it a statement of his own that reduced Seward to the level of a schoolboy standing up beside a giant. Then Stanton entered the lists as compet.i.tor, and quietly Lincoln a.s.serted himself until Stanton's att.i.tude became one of almost reverent worship, as he said of Lincoln, "Henceforth he belongs with the immortals." Then Greeley put in his claim for supremacy, and after Lincoln had published his answer to Horace Greeley, in lines as clear as crystal, and in words as gentle as sunbeams, not a man in the land but saw that Lincoln was intellectually head and shoulders above Horace Greeley. One by one and step by step he ascended the hills of difficulty. Round by round he climbed the ladder of fame. Naturally, therefore, his centennial was observed by a week's celebration, when all the wheels were still, and all the stores and factories were silent, when ninety millions of people were gathered into one vast audience chamber, when one name was upon all lips--the name of Abraham Lincoln, the emanc.i.p.ator of the slaves, the acknowledged master of men, who gave liberty to the slaves that he might a.s.sure freedom to the free.

Thoughtless writers have talked Lincoln's ancestry down, and careless biographers have defamed him. Superficial students speak of him as a miracle, and say that his genius is surrounded with silence and mystery.

But all that Abraham Lincoln was he had at the hands of his fathers and his mothers. Although their greatness was latent, his parents had as much ability in their way as their distinguished son had in his way. How do we know? Because when G.o.d wants to call a strong man He begins by calling his father and mother. There never was a great man who did not have a great ancestry, even though the greatness may have been latent and unconscious.

Every strong man stands upon the shoulders of his ancestors. When you start for the top of Pike's Peak you start at Omaha. When you reach Denver you are six thousand feet in the air, and Pike's Peak is shouldered up on the foot-hills. Socrates is a great teacher, but look at Sphroniscus, the sculptor, his father. Paganini is a great musician, but Paganini was born of musicians whose wrists had muscles that stood out like whip-cords. Bach is a great musician, but there were forty people of the name of Bach mentioned in musical dictionaries. Charles Darwin is the great scientist, but there were four generations of scientists who had made ready for Darwin, just as there were seven generations of scholars that culminated in Emerson. And standing in the shadow behind Abraham Lincoln are half a dozen generations of men and women who handed forward to him a perfect logic engine, a sound mind, in a sound body; a mental instrument that worked without fever and without friction and without flaw. At the hands of Stradivarius one piece of apple wood is fashioned into a violin. If Stradivarius pa.s.ses by the other board because he has not time, let no man say the board that was undeveloped was not full of latent music. The Divine Artist and Architect shaped Abraham Lincoln's nature into a world instrument, but the same quality and the stuff were in his father and mother, who lived and died a bundle of roots that were never planted, a handful of blossoms that never fruited.

Lincoln's father and mother were like the crystal caves in their own Kentucky. There the traveller is led through a cave of crystals, newly discovered. One day a farmer ploughing thought the ground sounded hollow under his feet. Going to the barn, he brought a spade and opened up an aperture. Flinging down a rope, his friends let the explorer down, and when the torches were lighted, lo, a cave as of amethysts, sapphires and diamonds! For generations the cave had been undiscovered and the jewels unknown. Wild beasts had wandered above these flashing gems, and still more savage men had lived and fought and died there. And yet just beneath was this cave of splendid beauty. Oh, pathetic ill.u.s.tration of men who are big with talent, of women full of latent gifts, of fathers and mothers like Thomas Lincoln and his young wife, who struggle on without opportunity, who are denied their chance, who are imprisoned by poverty, and fettered by circ.u.mstance, who are like birds beating b.l.o.o.d.y wings against the bars of an iron cage, who die unfulfilled prophecies, and dying, transfer their ambitions to their gifted children, believing that their son shall behold what the father and mother must die without seeing. G.o.d worked no miracle in Abraham Lincoln.

There is a photograph of the signature of the grandfather upon a t.i.tle deed in Culpeper County in Virginia. Now, place that signature side by side with the signature of Abraham Lincoln on the emanc.i.p.ation proclamation, and the strong, sinewy sweep in the signature of the grandfather comes down and repeats itself in the strong, steady clearness of the grandson. And perhaps the strong, sinewy sentence came down and repeated itself also, for all fine thinking stands with one foot on fine brain fibre. The time has come for men with a sharp knife and a hot iron to expunge from two or three of the otherwise best biographies of Abraham Lincoln these false, superficial and ignorant statements about his ancestry. Science, observation, experience, history and sifted facts all unite to tell us that whatever was great in its unfolding in the talent of Abraham Lincoln was great in the seed form in his father and mother.

Where were the hidings of his power? Why is Lincoln revered above his fellows, the orators, the soldiers, and the statesmen and editors and secretaries of his time? A line of contrast with the other great men who were his compet.i.tors for fame will make Lincoln's supremacy to stand forth as clear in outline as the mountains, and as bright as the stars.

For example, Wendell Phillips was the agitator and orator of the abolitionists. Phillips said, "Emanc.i.p.ation is the essential thing. The Union secondary. If the Southern States will not emanc.i.p.ate the slaves, force them out of the Union." Horace Greeley was the editor of the war epoch. Greeley said, "Emanc.i.p.ation is first, the Union secondary. If they prefer slavery to liberty let the erring sisters go." Beecher was the all-round man of genius. His great speech in England began with an exordium at Manchester; he stated the arguments at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Liverpool; he p.r.o.nounced the peroration at Exeter Hall, in London, and no such peroration and eloquence has been heard since Demosthenes'

philippic against the tyrant of Macedon. But Beecher's criticisms of Lincoln in the New York _Independent_ during April and May of 1862 led Lincoln to exclaim after reading one of them, "Is Thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" If these great men did not appreciate the national crisis, Lincoln understood it perfectly. Now, over against the editorials of Beecher and Horace Greeley and the lectures of Phillips, stands Lincoln, and to these three men he sent words addressed only to Horace Greeley, explaining to them why the time had not come for the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation. And although a part of this we have quoted in defense of Webster's position in 1850, that and yet more of the famous letter may well be repeated here:--

"I would save the Union.

"If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them.

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery.

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.

"If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it.

"And if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.