Abraham Lincoln

As a result of the informal word given by Lincoln, it was generally understood, by all the officers, at least, in charge of posts and picket lines along the eastern slope, that Davis was not to be captured. Unfortunately it had not proved possible to get this informal expression of a very important piece of policy conveyed throughout the lines farther west. An enterprising and over-zealous captain of cavalry, riding across from the Mississippi to the coast, heard of Davis's party in Florida and, "butting in," captured, on May 10th, "the white elephant."

The last commands of the Confederate army were surrendered with General Taylor in Louisiana on the 4th of May and with Kirby Smith in Texas on the 26th of May. As Lincoln had foreshadowed, not a few complications resulted from this unfortunate capture of Davis, complications that were needlessly added to by the lack of clear-headedness or of definite policy on the part of a confused and vacillating President. During the months in which Davis was a prisoner at Fortress Monroe, and while the question of his trial for treason was being fiercely debated in Washington, the sentiment of the Confederacy naturally concentrated upon its late President. He was, as the single prisoner, the surviving emblem of the contest. His vanities, irritability, and blunders were forgotten. It was natural that, under the circumstances, his people, the people of the South, should hold in memory only the fact that he had been their leader and that he had through four strenuous years borne the burdens of leadership with unflagging zeal, with persistent courage, and with an almost foolhardy hopefulness. He had given to the Confederacy the best of his life, and he was entitled to the adoration that the survivors of the Confederacy gave to him as representing the ideal of the lost cause.

The feeling with which Lincoln was regarded by the men in the front, for whom through the early years of their campaigning he had been not only the leader but the inspiration, was indicated by the manner in which the news of his death was received. I happened myself on the day of those sad tidings to be with my division in a little village just outside of Goldsborough, North Carolina. We had no telegraphic communication with the North, but were accustomed to receive despatches about noon each day, carried across the swamps from a station through which connection was made with Wilmington and the North. In the course of the morning, I had gone to the shanty of an old darky whom I had come to know during the days of our sojourn, for the purpose of getting a shave. The old fellow took up his razor, put it down again and then again lifted it up, but his arm was shaking and I saw that he was so agitated that he was not fitted for the task. "Massa," he said, "I can't shave yer this mornin'." "What is the matter?" I inquired. "Well," he replied, "somethin's happened to Massa Linkum." "Why!" said I, "nothing has happened to Lincoln. I know what there is to be known. What are you talking about?" "Well!" the old man replied with a half sob, "we coloured folks – we get news or we get half news sooner than you-uns. I dun know jes' what it is, but somethin' has gone wrong with Massa Linkum." I could get nothing more out of the old man, but I was sufficiently anxious to make my way to Division headquarters to see if there was any news in advance of the arrival of the regular courier. The coloured folks were standing in little groups along the village street, murmuring to each other or waiting with anxious faces for the bad news that they were sure was coming. I found the brigade adjutant and those with him were puzzled like myself at the troubled minds of the darkies, but still sceptical as to the possibility of any information having reached them which was not known through the regular channels.

At noon, the courier made his appearance riding by the wood lane across the fields; and the instant he was seen we all realised that there was bad news. The man was hurrying his pony and yet seemed to be very unwilling to reach the lines where his report must be made. In this instance (as was, of course, not usually the case) the courier knew what was in his despatches. The Division Adjutant stepped out on the porch of the headquarters with the paper in his hand, but he broke down before he could begin to read. The Division Commander took the word and was able simply to announce: "Lincoln is dead." The word "President" was not necessary and he sought in fact for the shortest word. I never before had found myself in a mass of men overcome by emotion. Ten thousand soldiers were sobbing together. No survivor of the group can recall the sadness of that morning without again being touched by the wave of emotion which broke down the reserve and control of these war-worn veterans on learning that their great captain was dead.

The whole people had come to have with the President a relation similar to that which had grown up between the soldiers and their Commander-in-chief. With the sympathy and love of the people to sustain him, Lincoln had over them an almost unlimited influence. His capacity for toil, his sublime patience, his wonderful endurance, his great mind and heart, his out-reaching sympathies, his thoughtfulness for the needs and requirements of all, had bound him to his fellow-citizens by an attachment of genuine sentiment. His appellation throughout the country had during the last year of the war become "Father Abraham." We may recall in the thought of this relation to the people the record of Washington. The first President has come into history as the "Father of his Country," but for Washington this rôle of father is something of historic development. During Washington's lifetime, or certainly at least during the years of his responsibilities as General and as President, there was no such general recognition of the leader and ruler as the father of his country. He was dear to a small circle of intimates; he was held in respectful regard by a larger number of those with whom were carried on his responsibilities in the army, and later in the nation's government. To many good Americans, however, Washington represented for years an antagonistic principle of government. He was regarded as an aristocrat and there were not a few political leaders, with groups of voters behind them, who dreaded, and doubtless honestly dreaded, that the influence of Washington might be utilised to build up in this country some fresh form of the monarchy that had been overthrown. The years of the Presidency had to be completed and the bitter antagonisms of the seven years' fighting and of the issues of the Constitution-building had to be outgrown, before the people were able to recognise as a whole the perfect integrity of purpose and consistency of action of their great leader, the first President. Even then when the animosities and suspicions had died away, while the people were ready to honour the high character and the accomplishments of Washington, the feeling was one of reverence rather than of affection. This sentiment gave rise later to the title of the "Father of his Country"; but there was no such personal feeling towards Washington as warranted, at least during his life, the term father of the people. Thirty years later, the ruler of the nation is Andrew Jackson, a man who was, like Lincoln, eminently a representative of the common people. His fellow-citizens knew that Jackson understood their feelings and their methods and were ready to have full confidence in Jackson's patriotism and honesty of purpose. His nature lacked, however, the sweet sympathetic qualities that characterised Lincoln; and while to a large body of his fellow-citizens he commended himself for sturdiness, courage, and devotion to the interests of the state, he was never able for himself to overcome the feeling that a man who failed to agree with a Jackson policy must be either a knave or a fool. He could not place himself in the position from which the other fellow was thinking or acting. He believed that it was his duty to maintain what he held to be the popular cause against the "schemes of the aristocrats," the bugbear of that day. He was a fighter from his youth up and his theory of government was that of enforcing the control of the side for which he was the partisan. Such a man could never be accepted as the father of the people.

Lincoln, coming from those whom he called the common people, feeling with their feelings, sympathetic with their needs and ideals, was able in the development of his powers to be accepted as the peer of the largest intellects in the land. While knowing what was needed by the poor whites of Kentucky, he could understand also the point of view of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia. In place of emphasising antagonisms, he held consistently that the highest interest of one section of the country must be the real interest of the whole people, and that the ruler of the nation had upon him the responsibility of so shaping the national policy that all the people should recognise the government as their government. It was this large understanding and width of sympathy that made Lincoln in a sense which could be applied to no other ruler of this country, the people's President, and no other ruler in the world has ever been so sympathetically, so effectively in touch with all of the fellow-citizens for whose welfare he made himself responsible. The Latin writer, Aulus Gellius, uses for one of his heroes the term "a classic character." These words seem to me fairly to apply to Abraham Lincoln.

An appreciative Englishman, writing in the London Nation at the time of the Centennial commemoration, says of Lincoln:

The greatness of Lincoln was that of a common man raised to a high dimension. The possibility, still more the existence, of such a man is itself a justification of democracy. We do not say that so independent, so natural, so complete a man cannot in older societies come to wield so large a power over the affairs and the minds of men; we can only say that amid all the stirring movements of the nineteenth century he has not so done. The existence of what may be called a widespread commonalty explains the rarity of personal eminence in America. There has been and still remains a higher general level of personality than in any European country, and the degree of eminence is correspondingly reduced. It is just because America has stood for opportunity that conspicuous individuals have been comparatively rare. Strong personality, however, has not been rare; it is the abundance of such personality that has built up silently into the rising fabric of the American Commonwealth, pioneers, roadmakers, traders, lawyers, soldiers, teachers, toiling terribly over the material and moral foundation of the country, few of whose names have emerged or survived. Lincoln was of this stock, was reared among these rude energetic folk, had lived all those sorts of lives. He was no "sport"; his career is a triumphant refutation of the traditional views of genius. He had no special gift or quality to distinguish him; he was simply the best type of American at a historic juncture when the national safety wanted such a man. The confidence which all Americans express that their country will be equal to any emergency which may threaten it, is not so entirely superstitious as it seems at first sight. For the career of Lincoln shows how it has been done in a country where the "necessary man" can be drawn not from a few leading families, or an educated class, but from the millions.

Rabbi Schechter, in an eloquent address delivered at the Centennial celebration, speaks of Lincoln's personality as follows:

The half century that has elapsed since Lincoln's death has dispelled the mists that encompassed him on earth. Men now not only recognise the right which he championed, but behold in him the standard of righteousness, of liberty, of conciliation, and truth. In him, as it were personified, stands the Union, all that is best and noblest and enduring in its principles in which he devoutly believed and served mightily to save. When to-day, the world celebrates the century of his existence, he has become the ideal of both North and South, of a common country, composed not only of the factions that once confronted each other in war's dreadful array, but of the myriad thousands that have since found in the American nation the hope of the future and the refuge from age-entrenched wrong and absolutism. To them, Lincoln, his life, his history, his character, his entire personality, with all its wondrous charm and grace, its sobriety, patience, self-abnegation, and sweetness, has come to be the very prototype of a rising humanity.

Carl Schurz, himself a man of large nature and wide and sympathetic comprehension, says of Lincoln:

In the most conspicuous position of the period, Lincoln drew upon himself the scoffs of polite society; but even then he filled the souls of mankind with utterances of wonderful beauty and grandeur. It was distinctly the weird mixture in him of qualities and forces, of the lofty with the common, the ideal with the uncouth, of that which he had become with that which he had not ceased to be, that made him so fascinating a character among his fellow-men, that gave him his singular power over minds and hearts, that fitted him to be the greatest leader in the greatest crisis of our national life.

He possessed the courage to stand alone – that courage which is the first requisite of leadership in a great cause. The charm of Lincoln's oratory flooded all the rare depth and genuineness of his convictions and his sympathetic feelings were the strongest element in his nature. He was one of the greatest Americans and the best of men.

The poet Whittier writes:

The weary form that rested notSave in a martyr's grave;The care-worn face that none forgot,Turned to the kneeling slave.We rest in peace where his sad eyesSaw peril, strife, and pain;His was the awful sacrifice,And ours the priceless gain.

Says Bryant:

That task is done, the bound are free,We bear thee to an honoured grave,Whose noblest monument shall beThe broken fetters of the slave.Pure was thy life; its bloody closeHath blessed thee with the sons of light,Among the noble host of thoseWho perished in the cause of right.

Says Lowell:

Our children shall behold his fame,The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man,Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame;New birth of our new soil, the first American.

Ordinary men die when their physical life is brought to a close, if perhaps not at once, yet in a brief space, with the passing of the little circle of those to whom they were dear.

The man of distinction lives for a time after death. His achievements and his character are held in appreciative remembrance by the community and the generation he has served. The waves of his influence ripple out in a somewhat wider circle before being lost in the ocean of time. We call that man great to whom it is given so to impress himself upon his fellow-men by deed, by creation, by service to the community, by character, by the inspiration from on high that has been breathed through his soul, that he is not permitted to die. Such a man secures immortality in this world. The knowledge and the influence of his life are extended throughout mankind and his memory gathers increasing fame from generation to generation.

It is thus that men are to-day honouring the memory of Abraham Lincoln. To-day, one hundred years after his birth, and nearly half a century since the dramatic close of his life's work, Lincoln stands enshrined in the thought and in the hearts of his countrymen. He is our "Father Abraham," belonging to us, his fellow-citizens, for ideals, for inspiration, and for affectionate regard; but he belongs now also to all mankind, for he has been canonised among the noblest of the world's heroes.

APPENDIX

THE ADDRESS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Delivered at Cooper Institute, New York,

February 27, 1860.

With Introduction by Charles C. Nott; Historical and Analytical Notes by Charles C. Nott and Cephas Brainerd, and with the Correspondence between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Nott as Representative of the Committee of the Young Men's Republican Union.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The address delivered by Lincoln at the Cooper Institute in February, 1860 in response to the invitation of certain representative New Yorkers, was, as well in its character as in its results, the most important of all of his utterances.

The conscientious study of the historical and constitutional record, and the arguments and conclusions based upon the analysis of this record, were accepted by the Republican leaders as constituting the principles and the policy to be maintained during the Presidential campaign of 1860, a campaign in which was involved not merely the election of a President, but the continued existence of the republic.

Under the wise counsels represented by the words of Lincoln, the election was fought out substantially on two contentions:

First, that the compact entered into by the Fathers and by their immediate successors should be loyally carried out, and that slavery should not be interfered with in the original slave States, or in the additional territory that had been conceded to it under the Missouri Compromise; and, secondly, that not a single further square mile of soil, that was still free, should be left available, or should be made available, for the incursion of slavery.

It was the conviction of Lincoln and of his associates, as it had been the conviction of the Fathers, that under such a restriction slavery must certainly in the near future come to an end. It was because these convictions, both in the debates with Douglas and in the Cooper Institute speech, were presented by Lincoln more forcibly and more conclusively than had been done by any other political leader, that Lincoln secured the nomination and the presidency. The February address was assuredly a deciding factor in the great issue of the time, and it certainly belongs, therefore, with the historic documents of the republic.

G.H.P.

NEW YORK, September 1, 1909.

CORRESPONDENCE WITH LINCOLN, NOTT, AND BRAINERD

(From Robert Lincoln)

MANCHESTER, VERMONT,

July 27, 1909.

DEAR MAJOR PUTNAM:

Your letter of July 23rd reaches me here, and I beg to express my thanks for your kind remembrances of me in London… I am much interested in learning that you were present at the time my father made his speech at Cooper Institute. I, of course, remember the occasion very well, although I was not present. I was at that time in the middle of my year at Phillips Exeter Academy, preparing for the Harvard entrance examination of the summer of 1860… After the Cooper Institute address, my father came to Exeter to see how I was getting along, and this visit resulted in his making a number of speeches in New England on his way and on his return, and at Exeter he wrote to my mother a letter which was mainly concerned with me, but which did make reference to these speeches… He said that he had had some embarrassment with these New England speeches, because in coming East he had anticipated making no speech excepting the one at the Cooper Institute, and he had not prepared himself for anything else… In the later speeches, he was addressing reading audiences who had, as he thought probable, seen the report of his Cooper Institute speech, and he was obliged, therefore, from day to day (he made about a dozen speeches in New England in all) to bear that fact in mind.

Sincerely yours,

ROBERT LINCOLN.

(From Judge Nott)

WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS.,

July 26, 1909.

DEAR PUTNAM:

I consider it very desirable that the report of Mr. Lincoln's speech, embodying the final revision, should be preserved in book form… The text in the pamphlet now in your hands is authentic and conclusive. Mr. Lincoln read the proof both of the address and of the notes. I am glad that you are to include in your reprint the letters from Mr. Lincoln, as these letters authenticate this copy of the address as the copy which was corrected by him with his own hand…

The preface to the address, written in September, 1860, has interest because it shows what we thought of the address at that time… Your worthy father was, if I remember rightly, one of the vice-presidents of the meeting…

Yours faithfully,

CHARLES C. NOTT.

(From Cephas Brainerd)

NEW YORK, August 18, 1909.

DEAR MAJOR PUTNAM:

I am very glad to learn that there is good prospect that the real Lincoln Cooper Institute address, with the evidence in regard to it, will now be available for the public… I am glad also that with the address you are proposing to print the letters received by Judge Nott from Mr. Lincoln. One or two of these have, unfortunately, not been preserved. I recall in one an observation made by Lincoln to the effect that he "was not much of a literary man."

I did not see much of Mr. Lincoln when he was in New York, as my most active responsibility in regard to the meeting was in getting up an audience… I remember in handing some weeks earlier to John Sherman, who, like Lincoln, had never before spoken in New York, five ten-dollar gold pieces, that he said he "had not expected his expenses to be paid." At a lunch that was given to Sherman a long time afterward, I referred to that meeting. Sherman cocked his eye at me and said: "Yes, I remember it very well; I never was so scar't in all my life." …

The observations of Judge Nott in regard to the meeting are about as just as anything that has ever been put into print, and as I concur fully in the accuracy of these recollections, I do not undertake to give my own impressions at any length. I was expecting to hear some specimen of Western stump-speaking as it was then understood. You will, of course, observe that the speech contains nothing of the kind. I do remember, however, that Lincoln spoke of the condition of feeling between the North and the South… He refers to the treatment which Northern men received in the South, and he remarked, parenthetically, that he had never known of a man who had been able "to whip his wife into loving him," an observation that produced laughter.

In making up the notes, we ransacked, as you may be sure, all the material available in the libraries in New York, and I also had interviews as to one special point with Mr. Bancroft, with Mr. Hildreth, and with Dr. William Goodell, who was in those times a famous anti-slavery man.

Your father3 and William Curtis Noyes were possibly more completely in sympathy than any other two men in New York, with the efforts of these younger men; they impressed me as standing in that respect on the same plane. The next man to them was Charles Wyllis Elliott, the author of a History of New England. We never went to your father for advice or assistance when he failed to help us, and he was always so kindly and gentle in what he did and said that every one of us youngsters acquired for him a very great affection. He always had time to see us and was always on hand when he was wanted, and if we desired to have anything, we got it if he had it. Neither your father, nor Mr. Noyes, nor for that matter Mr. Elliott, ever suggested that we were "young" or "fresh" or anything of that sort. The enthusiasm which young fellows have was always recognised by these men as an exceedingly valuable asset in the cause… Pardon all this from a "veteran," and believe me,

Sincerely yours,

CEPHAS BRAINERD.

INTRODUCTION

BY CHARLES C. NOTT

The Cooper Institute address is one of the most important addresses ever delivered in the life of this nation, for at an eventful time it changed the course of history. When Mr. Lincoln rose to speak on the evening of February 27, 1860, he had held no administrative office; he had endeavoured to be appointed Commissioner of Patents, and had failed; he had sought to be elected United States Senator, and had been defeated; he had been a member of Congress, yet it was not even remembered; he was a lawyer in humble circumstances, persuasive of juries, but had not reached the front rank of the Illinois Bar. The record which Mr. Lincoln himself placed in the Congressional Directory in 1847 might still be taken as the record of his public and official life: "Born February 12th, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. Education defective. Profession a lawyer. Have been a captain of volunteers in the Black Hawk War. Postmaster in a very small office. Four times a member of the Illinois Legislature and a member of the lower house of Congress." Was this the record of a man who should be made the head of a nation in troubled times? In the estimation of thoughtful Americans east of the Alleghanies all that they knew of Mr. Lincoln justified them in regarding him as only "a Western stump orator" – successful, distinguished, but nothing higher than that – a Western stump orator, who had dared to brave one of the strongest men in the Western States, and who had done so with wonderful ability and moral success. When Mr. Lincoln closed his address he had risen to the rank of statesman, and had stamped himself a statesman peculiarly fitted for the exigency of the hour.